Ask HN: 12 year old tech savvy girl – books, programs, events, advice?

For example, if she is interested in how apps work, start with some iOS tutorials and demonstrating a simulator. Or perhaps she has questions about how websites are made, in which case demonstrate some HTML and CSS. Maybe "tech" means a hardware focus, in which case start with the Raspberry Pi or Arduino kits.

In general, the advice would be to dig deeper into what type of technology she's interested in and go from there. Her mom may have classified "tech" as "taking things apart and putting them back together again", which may indicate a more mechanically oriented (and not necessarily electronic/computer) mindset.

I agree with many of the sibling comments that project-based learning approaches especially for hobbies are generally highly successful with inquisitive children and young adults.

I also believe it's good to read CS history. Following article is a personal favorite. http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/fp.html

The next day her father asked me, "How much is a violin going to cost me?".

Lesson: Children can get more interested in activities they see adults interested in and liking.

The difference: The girl's mother didn't like piano enough to play it. I really like violin and was working hard playing and practicing it. The Bach 'Chaconne' is not a trivial piece of music, and it's possible to get really involved in it, which I did. Those are all big points.

So, for a girl and computing, first, interrupt some of your hard work at you computer, sit her down next to you, and show her how to do some things. E.g., show her how to type "Hello World" into some word processing program and print it. Show her how to use a Web browser and e-mail. See what else she is interested in, and help her with that.

Eventually get her father to buy her a computer. I suggest a desktop computer in a mid-tower case, with your help, she can assemble herself. Likely install both Windows and Linux.

Get her started on programming, say, in some interpretive language, maybe Python.

Get her a project she would like to do, maybe build her own Web site and use her computer as a Web server.

Get her well into word processing so that she can do better with school term papers and, more generally, practice her writing.

Learning to read in some data, analyze it, and plot it stands to be good for her when she gets into high school math and science.

I have a special suggestion: Get her a really good editor, one with a good macro language. I use KEdit. Except for Web browsing, I by far my most heavily used program is that text editor; I use it for a huge range of things. Good skills with a good text editor are darned good to have.

Take it from there, and, say, report back on what did/didn't work!

1. We installed Scratch, and let him learn that.

2. After he got good at Scratch, I installed Love2d and helped him write a few really tiny games in Lua.

3. Last Christmas we bought him the book "Sam's Teach Yourself Minecraft Modding in 24 hours" by which he slowly learned the basics of Java.

4. This weekend he borrowed a 9-books-in-1 book for Java which he's using to port his Pong game from Lua to Java in, using a custom JComponent.

That's the order that's working for him. He's well on his way to being able to write things like 2048. Not there yet, but soon.