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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?

#121

Post by p1esk »

jollofricepeas wrote: post #111
maroonblazer wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why not?

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

#122

Post by empressplay »

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…

turtleSpaces is a 3D Logo environment that allows fit pretty straightforward creation of simple 2D and 3D games in the browser using turtles and can provide a bridge between Scratch and Python https://turtleSpaces.org

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

#123

Post by u2077 »

mynameismon wrote: post #120

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, bu…

+1 for automation

https://automatetheboringstuff.com/ may be a good place to start. Python is powerful with only a few lines of code.

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

#124

Post by p1esk »

boogies wrote: post #99
cellularmitosis wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll second the recommendation for PICO-8 to get started with making games. The built-in game browser, combined with being able to easily see the source for those games is fantastic. https://gist.github.com/cellularmitosis/6e191bf6b6f062e5f558...

> The built-in game browser, combined with being able to easily see the source for those games is fantastic. TIC-80 gives you those + all four essential freedoms (seeing, sharing, modifying and using) with the source of the fantasy console itself. There are some good examples prepackaged with it (from drawing a single sprite to a little ~½ dozen screen top-down action adventure).

I wish they didn’t try to look like a console.

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

#125

Post by lamontcg »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #67

Unity. It's "cool" and relevant. The coding part is C# so a nice language and environment. You don't really need to understand all the low level stuff, you can write some scripts and just press play! There are heaps of official and community tutorials. API Quite well documented too. Its not just code. There is a big editor to learn and become good at. Your kids may decided they like other aspects. Modeling, Lighting,…

I would also strongly recommend these tutorials for Unity:

https://www.gamedev.tv/

They've got a ton of videos and you could go broke buying them all, but they do good work, they're actually decent educators and the intro 3D game dev on Unity course has 30 hours of content in it and 5 different minigames it walks you through building.

All their courses are also on udemy.com and you should be able to buy them there for $10-$20 each during the "sales" that they have every other week (unfortunately there's a bunch of mildly scammy patterns there to try to create a sense of urgency, but never buy a course for "full price").

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

#126

Post by sathish316 »

Think Python or what used to be called “How to think like a Computer scientist” is still one of the best beginner programming books IMHO. There is an edition which is upgraded to Python 3 which you can find here - https://greenteapress.com/wp/think-python-2e/

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

#127

Post by g42gregory »

p1esk wrote: post #121
jollofricepeas wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why not?

Internet services are designed to be addictive for kids (and adults). Usually, this addiction is not good for the kids. That’s why my kids are not on the Internet unsupervised.

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

#128

Post by kjellsbells »

I suggest the most imputant thing is to find an itch that the kid might enjoy scratching. It doesnt need to meet any kind of bar for "proper" programming. And since tech is everywhere, there are lots of places to start:

- alexa skills (start with one and modify it)

- game mods eg skyrim (ditto)

its a ton easier to make tiny tweaks to a codebase like this and get instant feedback, even if you are essentially cargo culting at this point.

- mobile app kits. MIT had a kit once, i forget the name. make an app that makes a fart noise or texts a buddy etc. we're not talking material design and deep frameworks here. quick feedback and tinkering.

- scratch games. i know ppl. think its toy but its quick to experiment with and the results are quick.

do not, under any circumstances, let the kid get sucked into the tarpit of webapps. if they are into the web, have them spin up a wordpress site and start tinkering with plugins.

tl;dr - newbies need quick feedback and early successes. tinkering helps.

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

#129

Post by gandalfff »

_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,…

Non-programmer here. I've been interested in learning more about exactly this. Where should I start?

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

#130

Post by terrycody »

mkeedlinger wrote: post #80

I can't believe https://futurecoder.io/ hasn't been mentioned! It has an integrated Python environment in the browser, so the learner can hop right in! That's not even the best part though; I love how well simple concepts are explained. I've been programming for a long time, so there are a lot of things that I forgot aren't a given. futurecoder explains those things really well. I really cannot recommend it enough! I…

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