https://scratch.mit.edu/
Wow, that's pretty awesome. I've never heard of Scratch.
Ask HN: How are you teaching your children programming?
41–50 of 66 posts
Re: Ask HN: How are you teaching your children programming?
#42Currently, in the worst possible way, Roblox. I hate everything about their business model but the environment is perfect for encouraging programming. For starters, developers/hackers are often represented as heroes. Kids know who they are because they're the subject of in-game lore and YouTubers talk about them a lot. Second, Roblox Studio is a mostly complete, easy to work with game making environment, assets are easy to obtain and scripting is in Lua. Most importantly, kids can show off their work immediately to all of their friends in a multi-player world.
The bad parts of Roblox provide an opportunity for me to explain exactly what's bad about proprietary tools, centralization, pay-to-win, spending real money on digital goods, etc. Roblox isn't much worse than AAA games in this regard. My kid is showing forethought about spending his limited supply of Robux and he's parroting some of my rants when he talks himself out of buying something. Hopefully that parroting turns into genuine understanding. Eventually, he'll want to move on from Roblox or they'll disappear and he'll learn first-hand the pain of moving to a new platform and leaving all of your code and digital goods behind; and that the only things that last are libre code/assets, algorithms, concepts, ideas and memories.
Re: Ask HN: How are you teaching your children programming?
#43I would not. Kids should be outside playing and interacting with other kids, not coding.
While I agree, you don't want to stifle your kids childhood; these are not mutually exclusive. You teach your kids how to read, how to do math, history of the world - Computer science will soon be no different. Might as well get ahead and teach them during learning time.
> Computer science will soon be no different
What makes you think that? It's a very specialized field. It's not going to be something parents are casually teaching to their kids.
Re: Ask HN: How are you teaching your children programming?
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
By seeing all the fat stacks that mommy or daddy is bringing home?
Ew, on several orthogonal levels.
Could you expand on your reaction a bit?
Seems like encouraging children to follow an interest that could lead them to wealth through work isn't a bad thing?
Re: Ask HN: How are you teaching your children programming?
#45I would not. Kids should be outside playing and interacting with other kids, not coding.
They aren't asking for parenting advice here. Kids need more than just playing outside, hence the whole school thing.
I like how you went right ahead and contradicted your advice - kids don't need school either, lots of kids thrive on "education otherwise" (a UK expression covering unschool, homeschool, home ed, etc.).
Re: Ask HN: How are you teaching your children programming?
#46My son is 12 and a half. I have recently handed him a copy of "Learn you a Haskell..." and a laptop running ghci. He has been making his way through the first couple of chapters with only a little help from me, and seems to be understanding everything that's come up so far.
I can't tell if this is a joke or real.
Re: Ask HN: How are you teaching your children programming?
#47I actually picked up this Code & Go Robot mouse activity set from a local Micro Center this past weekend.
Its ages 5+, but a 4 year old can do it. you can command the mouse to go forward, backward, turn right, and turn left. You build your own maze out of the pieces. There are little cards with the action that they can place on the maze to help plan out the steps.
I think this is a great option. Previously I had recommended the board game robot turtles, but I think this is more appealing to a child.
Re: Ask HN: How are you teaching your children programming?
#48First get them hooked on minecraft. They'll use youtube to learn about mods and plugins. And a few years later they're downloading Eclipse and starting to code their own plugins again using youtube to learn how.
True story.
Re: Ask HN: How are you teaching your children programming?
#49By cultivating interest, not by forcing them into it.
And how to do that ?
If a kid is really interested in learning about computers and programming they will do it. One thing that can end badly is if you try to force the subject on them. It will become like a class at school then.
I would leave them alone, let them see what you do maybe, show them minecraft. But don't expect them to magically take to it.
When I was a kid I gained my interest in computers from seeing my Grandfather building a computer, my sister was there when he was building it. Yet I kept to it and she pursued other endeavors.
Re: Ask HN: How are you teaching your children programming?
#50We're teaching our kids programming by having them on FIRST teams. The youngest is on his second year FIRST LEGO League team, and the oldest is on a FIRST Tech Challenge team. http://ev3lessons.com is a great resource for introducing robot concepts using the LEGO Mindstorms EV3, which uses a block programming interface derived from LabView.