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Ask HN: It's 2022. Where should I direct the youths to learn about programming?

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Re: Ask HN: It's 2022. Where should I direct the youths to learn about programming?

#31

Post by mattrighetti »

sthu11182 wrote: post #24

If he was younger, I would have recommended scratch. I recommended that to my then 11-year old cousin and he is now an engineering undergrad student. At your son's age, there are plenty of how to program python courses using udemy and the like that show to build progressively harder apps for a complete beginner. From there, he could probably try to do one of those google certificate courses on android development or…

> These days, people have made fortunes on creating videos on how to program.

Correct, and it's great! Unfortunately most of them are in English (and probably mandarin?) and not every 11-year old knows it at that age.

I remember the 12-year old me studying English on XDA forums talking about custom ROMs for the good old HTCs. That's what got me into programming and computer science, so many good memories.

Re: Ask HN: It's 2022. Where should I direct the youths to learn about programming?

#32

Post by sefrost »

albertzeyer wrote: post #25

I usually recommend everyone who wants to learn programming: - to write some games, - or alternative to write some tools to be used for themselves to automate or simplify some of their tasks. Writing games can be so much fun, and is incredibly deep such that you can pretty much touch upon all topics of programming, networking, computer science, algorithms and data structures, artificial intelligence, 3D graphics, GPU…

XNA was great for this.

Re: Ask HN: It's 2022. Where should I direct the youths to learn about programming?

#33

Post by dgb23 »

How you start almost doesn’t matter, it’s the stuff that happens after, such as actually take the time to answer questions and do stuff together.

After some initial experiments it should be more clear where the journey goes. Some learn better bottom up, meaning few abstractions are suitable. Some like bells and whistles, UI or games. Some like domain specific stuff like math or robotics.

There’s plenty to explore. The big realization has to be „I can do pretty much anything!“ and off they go. Just be there when needed and it’s going to be fine.

Re: Ask HN: It's 2022. Where should I direct the youths to learn about programming?

#35

Post by belkarx »

Make him install an easy Linux distro (I recommend LMDE). Give him an IDE (start with VScode, if he enjoys Linux he'll switch to vim/emacs soon enough), some Leetcode problems, a browser, and have him figure it out. Advise him on compiling if his language of choice* requires it, as it's a pain to figure out when you don't know anything about programming. Should probably also find a basic syntax guide on the language.

*This really depends on his goals. AI/general scripting -> python. Sysadmin -> C/Perl. Games -> C#/Java if Minecraft. Etc.

Re: Ask HN: It's 2022. Where should I direct the youths to learn about programming?

#36

Post by SCUSKU »

Speaking from own personal experience, I tried to learn programming by buying a book on Ruby on Rails in 9th grade, as well as Visual Basic. Obviously it didn't stick. I programmed turtles in middle school, and took a intro to CS class in high school.

But what really did it for me was buying an Arduino Starter Kit and working through the example projects in that book. I was a freshman in college and $100 was a lot of money for me but I told myself it was an investment in myself, and boy was I right. It was also immensely fun because you get to also interact with a physical object (circuits, buttons, etc) whereas most software is on a screen.

I would highly recommend Arduino or Raspberry Pi :) Best of luck!

Re: Ask HN: It's 2022. Where should I direct the youths to learn about programming?

#37

Post by jonahbenton »

18yo is college/transition age. Are they attending college or continuing with education, or do they need to/are motivated to get a job, and see coding as a means to that end? What to recommend depends entirely on the context.

Agree though- do not under any circumstances introduce/subject them to the toolchain bullshit we have to deal with.

Re: Ask HN: It's 2022. Where should I direct the youths to learn about programming?

#38

Post by unityByFreedom »

slyrus wrote: post #5
sharemywin wrote: post #2

Personally I would start with one of these: https://bubble.io/how-to-build or scratch then build some things. then search on the internet and see if there's any tutorials on how to do it with code. I think the first step is to think about what he would like to build.

Interesting. I'm scarred from spending years learning how to sharpen axes and shave yaks. Maybe the kids today don't need to do nearly as much of that anymore.

I like Scratch. I'm not sure about Bubble's idea of teaching code "without a single line of code."

Eventually you need to write code. Spreadsheets are code, and functional to boot. Everyone can do something in them, and fewer are proficient. It's not that hard to get started coding anything, however it may be hard if you don't know where to start, which is where Scratch comes in handy.

Re: Ask HN: It's 2022. Where should I direct the youths to learn about programming?

#39

Post by guilherme-puida »

sefrost wrote: post #32
albertzeyer wrote: post #25

I usually recommend everyone who wants to learn programming: - to write some games, - or alternative to write some tools to be used for themselves to automate or simplify some of their tasks. Writing games can be so much fun, and is incredibly deep such that you can pretty much touch upon all topics of programming, networking, computer science, algorithms and data structures, artificial intelligence, 3D graphics, GPU…

XNA was great for this.

Monogame (https://www.monogame.net/about/) is nice too.

Re: Ask HN: It's 2022. Where should I direct the youths to learn about programming?

#40

Post by Decabytes »

If you still want to use a Lisp, consider using Racket. It comes with Drracket, which is an editor for the language which has a repl embedded in it. It has the standard cut, copy, paste shortcuts (though you can use Emacs key bindings in it) and is simple enough not to be overwhelming (like other more robust editors can be)
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