Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is there a modern “power on to basic” computer, for kids to learn on?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 340 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is there a modern “power on to basic” computer, for kids to learn on?

#171

Post by teddyh »

itomato wrote: post #143
teddyh wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your personal experience is not the only correct one. I assure you that the people coming before you, making their own computers out of chips and resistors with a soldering iron, would say the same thing about you. And people who grew up with Windows 98 say the same thing about people only exposed to iOS and Android, and so on.

They are all more justified than the person who claims Swift playground on an iPad is the pinnacle of CS for Primary School.

I understand, in a sense, what you mean (since I am of an earlier generation than the one which learned programming on that particular platform), but why should that necessarily be true? Hasn’t it always been the case that the current generation skips learning about useless lower layers used by older generations? How could it be that the layers you grew up are the special ones which are still useful, when all the layers which came before, which people at the time thought essential, have turned out not to be so?

I am, below, trying to imagine what an argument could be for any specific example to be worse than the previous ones.

One could make an argument that when the level of abstractions eliminate Turing completeness, they have eliminated an essential quality. (But this does not even eliminate Swift playground, I think, so in this case it does not apply.)

Or one could make an argument about a lack of program interconnectedness, which, I am given to understand, is very much a problem in modern smartphone and tablet environments. But I could be out of date and/or misinformed. Nevertheless, it would be a reasonable argument (and I don’t know if it applies to Swift playground on an iPad or not).

Very constrained environments, like Minecraft, can also be argued against on practical grounds – it’s simply too difficult to make something useful within them. Not technically impossible, just too difficult once you get up a bit in abstraction levels. In my opinion, this argument also applies, sadly, to BASIC: The lack of functions and other methods of abstractions is, I think, a killer.

Or one could argue (which I think I personally favor doing) that software freedom for end users is an essential quality which must never be lost, for reasons which are only tangentially based on what is good for learning. It is almost special pleading, but has its own reasons for doing so, and the logic, on its own terms, is sound.

But none of these arguments are insurmountable by some theoretical device and environment which avoids any or all of these specific criticisms. Therefore, I think that any argument based solely on the age and abstraction level would not be valid.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a modern “power on to basic” computer, for kids to learn on?

#172

Post by anigbrowl »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #93
blihp wrote: post #81

For those of us who grew up in the 8-bit era, this has a lot of appeal since that's how we got engaged. But for most kids today, is this sort of ab initio approach really the right way to go about it? Based on my experience with a few different types of kids/personalities, I'm skeptical. Dropping them into the command line / IDE of any language / environment is likely to leave them both unimpressed and lost. Neither…

Kids have it too easy today, they don't have to work very hard to get decent computing experiences, and its not like they have to do any programming at all to have fun. It is also super easy to get addicted to just consuming all the time. It is quite depressing. My kid is still a toddler, but I think I might put a stripped down CLI-only computer in his room when he reaches 5 so he can at least play with it if he want…

Kids like you had it way too easy. When I was young you had to solder your own components together to make a calculator.

Kids like me had it way too easy. When they were young they had to look things up in log tables and use slide rules.

Etc. back to hunting wild beasts and digging vegetables out of the frozen ground

Re: Ask HN: Is there a modern “power on to basic” computer, for kids to learn on?

#173

Post by fusiongyro »

dmlorenzetti wrote: post #144
fusiongyro wrote: post #13

I would suggest checking out the Micro:bit: https://www.microbit.org/ Not exactly the same as what you're looking for, but the idea here is to introduce kids to programming with a small, self-contained environment, and there is both a graphical coding environment and you can move to Python or Javascript.

Micro:bit has a lot going for it. Comes with a 5x5 LED array, an accelerometer, two physical push-buttons, three capacitive sensors, and a bluetooth antenna, already on-board. It means you can start programming without having to plug in to a breadboard and wire up your inputs. You can also hang external sensors and actuators off of it, but the point is you don't need to in order to move beyond toy demonstrations. It…

You can also get Python onto it directly with uflash.

https://pypi.org/project/uflash/

Re: Ask HN: Is there a modern “power on to basic” computer, for kids to learn on?

#175

Post by setr »

simion314 wrote: post #101
kyleperik wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use a nice text editor, whitespace shouldn't be an issue. Even with any other language, you would want to show them how and why to indent. If it becomes an issue, they may be writing code that's too complicated. In other words, I think a child will more easily learn about indentation, than handle writing flat code, which can get difficult to understand pretty quick

You did not mentioned if you teach python to kids, things that are intuitive to us are not for them, yesterday I was working with my son on Physics exercise, something like how much Km are 1234cm (we are using metric system here) and in all similar exercises he did everything reversed, like a few centimeters are a few millions of Km which is obvious absurd but it was not easy for me to make him understand(plus the te…

That just sounds like a direct result of not memorizing the prefix orders; not of anything related to actual understanding (or failing thereof).

What happens if you give him a reference sheet? (I have little experience teaching kids but I’m a firm believer in that the only good test is one where all the puzzle pieces are provided; its the composition thats worth testing, knowing the pieces by heart is just to speed things up)

Re: Ask HN: Is there a modern “power on to basic” computer, for kids to learn on?

#176

Post by banach »

I would consider https://www.nand2tetris.org/ for a similar from-metal-to-application understanding of computing. It is a ground-up course that covers the construction of a CPU using only a NAND circuit, and ends with implementing Tetris on top of this computer.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a modern “power on to basic” computer, for kids to learn on?

#177

Post by linsomniac »

amasad wrote: post #159
linsomniac wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like the Kano, but my son was able to figure out how to get into youtube with it and it's become a "all youtube all the time" environment. Been using repl.it and the "Python with Turtle" flavor this week and he's been having fun with it.

That's awesome. Repl.it ceo here. Check out our forum, there's lots of material shared by kids like your son. Here is one tutorial on pixel art with Turtle https://repl.it/talk/challenge/How-to-draw-Pixel-Art-on-Pyth...

Thanks! We will check that out tonight!

Re: Ask HN: Is there a modern “power on to basic” computer, for kids to learn on?

#178

Post by JacobJans »

This post reminds me of a running line of thought that's been going on in my head for quite some time: "Single Purpose Devices."

The main disadvantage of most computing devices is that they offer too many options; making them mentally unwieldy. A "single purpose device" is created to support just one purpose. The Kindle is perhaps the most famous example; it practically created an industry. Sure, it can do more than just present books, but everything is designed to support reading.

Ideally, there would be a "computer", where every aspect of it was designed to teach computer programming.

I often fantasize about a device designed solely for producing new writing. It would have a nice screen, and a nice keyboard, but only a very very limited web-browser, and would sync with Google Docs, Office, or something similar, so that you can do the more advanced stuff elsewhere.

Such devices are about empowering the user to go down a specific path; one they choose as soon as they start interacting with the device.

Kindle -> Reading

Typewriter -> Writing

Hammer -> Hitting things

"Power to Basic" -> Learning to program

Re: Ask HN: Is there a modern “power on to basic” computer, for kids to learn on?

#179

Post by jasonm89 »

PyroLagus wrote: post #88
reificator wrote: post #48

> Like in ye olde computer days when you brought home your Commodore 64 and turned it on you were in basic. Why not try, you know, a Commodore 64? https://thec64.com Hooks up via HDMI, powered by micro USB, and has two USB ports for keyboards and joysticks. No longer boots straight into BASIC, but scroll to the right and hit enter and you're there.

There's also going to be the http://mega65.org/ which is a spiritual successor to the C64. It's completely open source, even the FPGA code implementing the 6502 (although the FPGA is most likely not going to be open source), and it has better specs than the C64, but it should still be compatible with the original C64 and its games from what I understand.

Any idea when the mega65 is going to be released?

Re: Ask HN: Is there a modern “power on to basic” computer, for kids to learn on?

#180

Post by syn0byte »

astrodust wrote: post #124

In the old days you saved up an extraordinary amount of money, bought a Commodore 64, plugged it in, and then had absolutely no idea what to do unless you had books. So you went and got books or magazines, some maybe from the library, some from bookstores, and many of them might be for systems other than the C64. It wasn't uncommon for a magazine to have to cater to a dozen slightly different versions of BASIC: Apple…

If one side is "Golden-Hued", the other side takes for granted what they learned along the way to get to the current state.

We abstract away the concept of memory addresses and pointers in some languages. Great! Until your program segfaults and now because you don't understand how memory addresses or layout work you can't tell what part of your code is causing the problem nor why it is a problem at all. Is the problem even in your code or one of the dozen module packages you imported because you were told to(they will explain the modules in a later chapter)? Why your object instance disappears between calls in an app because you didn't access it quickly enough or the 'right' way and the GC reaped it. WTF even is a garbage collector and why do we need it(again, they will cover that in a later chapter)

Modern computers are like airplanes. Why would you make a piloting student learn on an old, purely mechanical Cessna prop plane instead of a modern Gulfstream? The Gultstream is way safer, way faster and way harder to crash after all.

Post reply on HN