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Ask HN: Teaching programming to a 10 year old, and I'm kind of lost

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Re: Ask HN: Teaching programming to a 10 year old, and I'm kind of lost

#11
What does the 10 year old want to program? Most likely a game, which is challenging but which fortunately may be satisfied by a working snake or Space Invaders rather than requiring stereoscopic 3d with a physics engine. But a simple interactive graphing calculator can be just as much fun as a game. Tools and diagnostics are good too - instead of teaching arbitrary-seeming practices for problems the kid has not encountered yet, let them run into the problem (eg having to check the dimensions of the window on loading) and write a tool to make the computer do the work.

As a kid, I found the logic relatively easy, and the control structures moderately easy. Abstraction and complex types were the difficult part for me, and I still tend to evolve them by trial and error rather than defining them in advance (though having done so, I usually enjoy refactoring as soon as I have a working prototype).

Re: Ask HN: Teaching programming to a 10 year old, and I'm kind of lost

#12
I personally started by learning basic when I was about 9 or 10 years old...thing that got me interested was an open source game I used to play a lot. I accidentally stumbled onto the knowledge that changing the voodoo magic text at the beginning before launching the game (it was written in QBasic i think) managed to change things around in the game itself. If they like games, that could be a good way to start? It gives early rewards, as they're modifying something that already exists. From there I started getting ideas of things I wanted to make myself...and just experimenting here and there.

Re: Ask HN: Teaching programming to a 10 year old, and I'm kind of lost

#13
post #8

Logo worked for me. If you want to teach a "real" language (Logo is practically a LISP! It's real!) then Python has a turtle module.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_%28programming_language%29 Logo also worked for me as well, I was in the 3rd grade when I started to program with it. It is a lot of fun

Re: Ask HN: Teaching programming to a 10 year old, and I'm kind of lost

#14

What does the 10 year old want to program? Most likely a game, which is challenging but which fortunately may be satisfied by a working snake or Space Invaders rather than requiring stereoscopic 3d with a physics engine. But a simple interactive graphing calculator can be just as much fun as a game. Tools and diagnostics are good too - instead of teaching arbitrary-seeming practices for problems the kid has not encou…

http://inventwithpython.com/ this isn't a bad book for teaching those simple games.

Re: Ask HN: Teaching programming to a 10 year old, and I'm kind of lost

#16
post #9

Umm well if you have the money go for lego mindstorms, if I was a kid again I'd want to play with legos and robots. (Hell they are still cool)

And if the kid gets bored of the visual programming language that goes with Mindstorms, try setting up NQC for him/her:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Quite_C

Re: Ask HN: Teaching programming to a 10 year old, and I'm kind of lost

#17
I've done some Scratch stuff with my 10 year old (he was 8-9 at the time). It is a good starting place for teaching some of the concepts like looping, objects, and messaging. If nothing else, it is a good way to visualize those, even if you turn to something like Python for "real work".

I would start by asking him/her what she/he wants to do. Pick the tool that fits best. Want to build a game? Start with Scratch because it teaches the actor-based programming that you want to use for games.

Hard to give more advice without more specifics.

Re: Ask HN: Teaching programming to a 10 year old, and I'm kind of lost

#19

What does the 10 year old want to program? Most likely a game, which is challenging but which fortunately may be satisfied by a working snake or Space Invaders rather than requiring stereoscopic 3d with a physics engine. But a simple interactive graphing calculator can be just as much fun as a game. Tools and diagnostics are good too - instead of teaching arbitrary-seeming practices for problems the kid has not encou…

http://inventwithpython.com/ this isn't a bad book for teaching those simple games.

It's very good - I had an earlier unfinished version. Thanks for reminding me of it, it's expanded considerably since the last time I saw it.
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