Ask HN: How do you teach 9-year old to code?

You could start with circuitpython since you know python. https://www.adafruit.com/product/4333

Adafruit has got good tutorials as well https://learn.adafruit.com/welcome-to-circuitpython

Here are few other suggestions https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29438050#29438836

If you run into any issues or like to bounce project ideas, feel free to contact me, my email is in my profile

ASAP!

He should be interested in something, and then should face some problem in it, and then be able to solve it with programming. Or use programming to make things better.

I don't think that you can make a 9 yo interested in outputting a bunch of text into console.

You can get started with Scratch, and see how things go.

Or you can introduce him to Minecraft where he can get started with Java to do stuff in the game.

You can also buy Osmo and check how that goes. Someone I know teaches her 3 yo using Osmo.

My personal choice would be to buy a Raspberry Pi kit with some sensors or an Arduino kit, and download and use Open Source prewritten code with those. Then tweak the code to do things. Then eventually write his own code to do stuff.

Another way would be to introduce him to text-based games like the ones in early-years of computing. There's a book around called- Land of Lisp, where Lisp is taught with Text-Based Games.

I would ask you to remember three things-

1. There would be a trial and error component to it. You will have to be willing to try different things to see what sticks.

2. Code with your son. I mean, give him a place, a desk, maybe, to sit beside you and code together.

3. A boring thing becomes interesting when there is chance to outsmart one's peers. An interesting thing will become more interesting this way. So, after initiation, try and enroll your son in a group activity involving programming.

I hope this helps.

There was a Google doodle some years back where "programming" was introduced. You should check this out and give your son this [0].

[0]: https://g.co/kgs/NbCoHY

My idea is to keep children off screen addiction for as long as possible, whilst still teaching them the relevant mindset, patterns of reasoning, and the way computers actually work.

On another angle, my son did start throwing together maps and sprites in no time with the (Lua-based) TIC-80 and Pico-8 when I showed these to him. Load81 by antirez is a similar Lua environment without the constraints: https://github.com/antirez/load81

Or, why not put together a low-cost computer/Z80-like terminal with your son, like the RC2014 that runs BASIC: https://rc2014.co.uk/

Good luck!

[1] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/book.pdf