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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?

#111

Post by jollofricepeas »

maroonblazer wrote: post #98
xxxtentachyon wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you say more about not being allowed on the internet? Why and how you think it affected you? It’s hard for me to fathom someone at age 12 in 2015 with a somewhat cosmopolitan background (playing games, using an RPi), not being allowed on the internet, period.

Not the parent but, as the parent of a 16 year old, I can imagine that some kids at age 12 simply aren't mature enough to be let loose on the internet.

Yes, this is pretty common.

For the most part my friends and work pals who are all software engineers or work closely with tech (DBAs, SREs, Sec). Their children aren’t allowed to use the internet unsupervised or in some cases not at all. Pretty much all of us don’t let our kids use social media.

For my friends who don’t work in tech, their kids all have social media and use the internet unsupervised.

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

#112

Post by armchairhacker »

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…

> to write some games,

> or alternative to write some tools to be used for themselves to automate or simplify some of their tasks.

This is exactly how I learned programming as a kid.

The one difference I would recommend is to not focus on 3D, low-level programming, AI, data structures, etc. at least for younger children. When I was a kid these things confused me (I specifically remember getting random memory management issues and confusing EXC_BAD_ACCESS, and generally resorted to just liberally retaining everything). I just wanted to make things and got bored easily, so I accomplished most making simple projects on Scratch (very basic game-engine) and high-level IDEs.

Of course ultimately it's up to the kid what they want though. If they're more interested in the low-level mechanics and how things actually work than just getting them to work, good for them.

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

#113

Post by danamit »

Bait him with something, if he is into game introduce him in Lua. I got into programming because I was into websites, and I've met a friend who's into design and I did programming and he did design.

My nephew is interested in making games for Roblox for example.

I think we are beyond the generation of interest in the baremetal, I learned programming in mid 2000s, I spent just a short time with desktop programs, but was enchanted by the idea of making dynamic websites right after, it was enchanting that I can make something interactive that all the world can interact with. The fact that it was easy to show it to others (a URL) made it nice too, handing people an .exe in 2000s doesn't look nice.

Also being passionate in front of him and talking about what you like in programming would help, because that's how my brother got into it. Me broxplaining stuff to him.

In general just open the doors for him, he might love a language more than other.

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

#114

Post by pcthrowaway »

throwawayboise wrote: post #105
pcthrowaway wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm, I studied CS and don't feel like I really understand any of the low-level stuff.

You didn't have a course in machine structures? Including programming in assembly language?

I had one, I got an A in it (one of my best CS classes actually), but I don't remember much because I never applied it outside of the class

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

#116

Post by chaostheory »

Roblox. Everything is free including a nice visual IDE. There's lots of documentation and lots of 3rd party education. It's LUA. Best of all, unlike all the other alternatives, there's no configuration or setup beyond installing Roblox and Roblox Studio, the IDE. There's also a chance to make money on the Roblox platform.

https://developer.roblox.com/en-us/onboarding

If you want something more traditional, Rails for Zombies is good

https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/code-school-rails-for-zo...

Oreilly's Head First series would be great too, if they updated it. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I think it's dead.

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

#117

Post by tuxguy »

smiley1437 wrote: post #42

Harvard's CS50x (taken through edX) is absolutely amazing as an intro to computer science. Professor David Malan is really engaging. I cannot recommend it highly enough. And, if you don't care for the certificate at the end of the course, it's free

came here to recommend cs50 and david malan ! one of the best cs teachers, who really cares about teaching !

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

#118

Post by BenjiWiebe »

beebmam wrote: post #54
_fjb4 wrote: post #50

There's something the "old hackers" know that many CS students don't learn from the start (in the introductory classes), and that is actually how a computer operates. Don't spend a lot of time on this unless he's really interested, but it's a good idea to sit down with him for a few hours and teach him what really goes on inside a computer. I'm talking about the concept of instructions, registers, addressable memory,…

That's what I learned in CS, along with many other topics. There's no way in hell I would learn about registers or assembly languages if I was learning about programming in 2022 outside of a CS program.

You'd have a good chance of being exposed to it if you wanted to mess around with microcontrollers, like for robotics, sensors, automation, etc.

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

#119

Post by dougabug »

Machine learning, for sure. Pytorch. Andrew Ng has a new version of his machine learning class on Coursera, now in Python (the de facto lingua franca of ML these days).

A game engine like Unity, or maybe Unreal Engine. People use game engines for almost everything these days: creating synthetic data for training Computer Vision models, AR/VR applications, even high end Disney shows such as “The Mandalorian.” Motivating use cases can spark greater long term engagement.

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

#120

Post by mynameismon »

Speaking as a 17 year old myself, the way I got into programming was automating. It could be small things, like breaking open a slow dreary web portal and download off things that one might need so as to avoid interacting with the portal, or help out a local business with some repetitive tasks, whatever floats their boat. After they have gotten a hang of it, I would probably have a gentle introduction to the SICP, but thats maybe just me.
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