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How to teach programming to your loved ones [video]

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Re: How to teach programming to your loved ones [video]

#41

Post by elbear »

avip wrote: post #28
mrspeaker wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A talk entitled "How to teach programming to your loved ones: Enabling students over example-driven teaching" and you reply "Step 1: You don't"... that's pretty harsh. How would you say the author should have approached it instead?

It's harsh because it's true. There's no reason to teach love one's coding. In fact, there's no reason to teach them anything that does not resonate with them naturally.

Where does it say that you should teach them if they don't resonate with the topic?

I took the talk as learning how to teach the topic better to your loved ones or anyone else for that matter.

(I haven't watched it yet)

Re: How to teach programming to your loved ones [video]

#42

Post by codazoda »

I recently started a little series of zines where the idea is to learn programming by creating art. It's a little akin to a puzzle or paint by numbers. Each issue is a type-in that produces an image on a JavaScript canvas. I hope that it teaches programming in the same way I learned from books and magazines in the 80's. Check it out at: https://splashofcode.com

Re: How to teach programming to your loved ones [video]

#43

Post by toomanybeersies »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #24
kyleperik wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true. It comes down to two things I think that go hand in hand 1. Do they have enough persistance to learn and then tackle problems 2. Do they even care? Most people just aren't wired that way and it's nice enough if you find someone who's even willing to listen to you talk about technical things

I agree that we shouldn't force programming down the throats of loved ones that aren't interested in our careers and hobbies. However, I strongly disagree with the popular notion that most people "just aren't wired that way" and can't learn to program. Certainly some people take to it much more quickly than average, but dismissing everyone else as doomed to never be able to comprehend the cosmic complexity of a while…

I counter that most people "just aren't wired that way". But I don't think that programming is some magical special talent.

Most people are't wired to learn how to program effectively, just as most people aren't wired to be a mechanical engineer or a chemist or a doctor.

I don't want to sound like an elitist asshole, but it does require an above average intellect (oh wow I sound like a neckbeard here) to be able to do any of the above. That immediately disqualifies half the population.

Most of my friends cannot and will not become software engineers (or engineers of any kind), and that's fine. I don't know why they'd want to.

Re: How to teach programming to your loved ones [video]

#44

Post by toomanybeersies »

Why would you want to?

I have no desire to teach calculus to my loved ones, or chemistry.

On the other hand, I do have an interest in teaching technology literacy to my loved ones. How to avoid falling for phishing scams, how to find information you need on the internet, how to make a spreadsheet to plan for things, how to write a resume using a word processor. People are lacking such fundamental tech skills that teaching them how to code should be the last thing on our mind.

Re: How to teach programming to your loved ones [video]

#45

Post by barrystaes »

jniedrauer wrote: post #30
gabrielshaad wrote: post #2

Step 1: You don't.

No one taught me to code. I realize that this is not true for everyone, but for me, it is difficult to comprehend "being taught how to code." What does that even mean? Learning to code is synonymous with reading documentation and then implementing it. Do it a lot and you get quicker at it. Do it enough, and you memorize the standard library. Congrats, you know how to code. It's an entirely self-driven process. I have…

> No one taught me to code.

As a kid i learned to code using an old book i found, with a computer but no compiler:

I simply had not figured out that EDIT.COM was not QuickBasic. Looks the same but had no Run menu... if only somebody told me! As a kid i could use a teacher.. as a knowledgebase to query, not necessarily as a teacher.

It was fun to run what i wrote before, once i figured that out though.

Not much later i found out how to delete files..

Re: How to teach programming to your loved ones [video]

#46

Post by yspeak »

yeahitslikethat wrote: post #37
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I listened to Amy Bruckman give a talk about LambdaMOO some years back. She mentioned that kids frequently took much better to physical object-oriented metaphors than adults did. They might say things like "I don't understand why adults can't understand that a dog is-a animal, but a house has-a dog in it." I think it's a great idea for a book. Send me a PM when it's published and I'll buy one :)

Its brilliant. I hope he writes it. There's a riddle that little kids get right away but Harvard grads hardly ever get. What's greater than God. Meaner than the devil. Poor people have it. And if you eat it you will die?

Nothing

Re: How to teach programming to your loved ones [video]

#47

Post by shard »

avip wrote: post #28
mrspeaker wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A talk entitled "How to teach programming to your loved ones: Enabling students over example-driven teaching" and you reply "Step 1: You don't"... that's pretty harsh. How would you say the author should have approached it instead?

It's harsh because it's true. There's no reason to teach love one's coding. In fact, there's no reason to teach them anything that does not resonate with them naturally.

I think there are many topics that should be taught to loved ones even if it doesn't resonate with them naturally. The ones that come immediately to my mind are: financial literacy, how to prepare for and respond in emergency situations (e.g. natural disasters, medical emergencies, threats from assailants), critical thinking. Knowing these can potentially save them from many expensive or life threatening mistakes and I would force them on my loved ones even if they resist.

Re: How to teach programming to your loved ones [video]

#48

Post by avip »

shard wrote: post #47
avip wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's harsh because it's true. There's no reason to teach love one's coding. In fact, there's no reason to teach them anything that does not resonate with them naturally.

I think there are many topics that should be taught to loved ones even if it doesn't resonate with them naturally. The ones that come immediately to my mind are: financial literacy, how to prepare for and respond in emergency situations (e.g. natural disasters, medical emergencies, threats from assailants), critical thinking. Knowing these can potentially save them from many expensive or life threatening mistakes and…

You know something? you're right. You had me at financial literacy.

Re: How to teach programming to your loved ones [video]

#49

Post by naveen99 »

tvanantwerp wrote: post #10
BossingAround wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my experience. I wanted to teach programming to my SO, because I know she's extremely intelligent and she could do programming quite well. She just had a mental block, and never got it past the second week of the (Coursera) class, when she had to program something small and felt extremely stupid for not knowing how to do it. I remember going through the same when I was studying programming though. Some people…

The mental blocks can be totally unrelated to the difficulty of the concepts, too. My wife is also smart and totally capable of learning to program. I've seen her self-learn subjects (e.g., how email headers work or basic SQL queries) just to scratch a particular itch, though she didn't think of it as learning a technical skill. But she'll never bother learning to program, because she's "not a tech person". It all go…

My 8 year old daughter wants nothing to do with programming, but loves math. This morning she asks me in the car for a math problem: “papa give me another hash to calculate!” :). ( I had taught her a simple hash function that just calculates a 1 digit hash by adding all the digits together repeatedly until you get 9 or less.)
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