Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: My child's first program

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 139 posts

Re: Tell HN: My child's first program

#61

Post by noboostforyou »

taylodl wrote: post #41
belthesar wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a kid? When writing stupid scripts, I frequently use `fart` as a variable name to this day. I'm a staunch supporter of naming variables intentionally in software that lives, but I'm definitely not above doing a `fart=True; while fart: ...` in temporary repl work. Maybe I'm just eternally 10 years old, haha.

I must be old-fashioned! My variable names in throwaway programs tend to be x, y, and z and my iteration variables tend to be i, j, and k.

Same (did you start learning programming with C?). i++ is pretty much hardcoded into my brain.

Re: Tell HN: My child's first program

#63

Post by jvm___ »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #25
highfrequency wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the ChatGPT sample code/tutorials much better than the tutorials that can be found on Google?

Sounds like copying from GitHub with extra steps

Less steps as the code it generates will do what you ask of it, or be modified based on your english language changes.

It also gives you a human readable section, in addition to the code, that tells you what the code is doing, and where exactly to copy/paste it to make it run.

Give me an app in flutter that does X How do I install flutter How do I run my first flutter app

That only requires typing and reading for exactly the results you want.

Github only gives you what you know already. ChatGPT only gives you what you asked for, and holds your hand for how to use it.

Re: Tell HN: My child's first program

#64

Post by craigkilgo »

taylodl wrote: post #41
belthesar wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a kid? When writing stupid scripts, I frequently use `fart` as a variable name to this day. I'm a staunch supporter of naming variables intentionally in software that lives, but I'm definitely not above doing a `fart=True; while fart: ...` in temporary repl work. Maybe I'm just eternally 10 years old, haha.

I must be old-fashioned! My variable names in throwaway programs tend to be x, y, and z and my iteration variables tend to be i, j, and k.

Everyone doesn't use i,j,k for counting variables?

Re: Tell HN: My child's first program

#65

Post by ihaveajob »

My kid really took to Scratch last year when he was 6. We got a Raspberry Pi 400 and reading the manual he saw a full chapter on Python. Now when I'm working, he'll come by and say "hey! that's Python!"

Conveniently, the [turtle module](https://docs.python.org/3/library/turtle.html) comes built-in and he also got to draw some fun patterns after reading the "Secret Coders" comic book series. It's really fascinating to see him develop his mental models.

Re: Tell HN: My child's first program

#66

Post by Mawr »

xyzelement wrote: post #32

I love the variable names. I definitely had the same naming conventions as a kid :) Funny story. Sophomore year at college, I worked at a dev shop, and I was the first person to set up version control there (CVS... it was like year 2000.) The next day I reviewed changes that were merged and variables $tit and $ass were all over the place. I assumed the guy who checked it in was just immature and met w him to "profess…

"I got fired over a variable name...." - https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/dpcfns/i...

Re: Tell HN: My child's first program

#67

Post by eggroe »

I just was showing my daughter some basic Python last night as well and she seemed very interested, but didn’t leave my laptop with her lol so crazy to see this on HN today! Let her have fun! Lol cool to read about today!

Re: Tell HN: My child's first program

#69

Post by Vaslo »

Mawr wrote: post #66
xyzelement wrote: post #32

I love the variable names. I definitely had the same naming conventions as a kid :) Funny story. Sophomore year at college, I worked at a dev shop, and I was the first person to set up version control there (CVS... it was like year 2000.) The next day I reviewed changes that were merged and variables $tit and $ass were all over the place. I assumed the guy who checked it in was just immature and met w him to "profess…

"I got fired over a variable name...." - https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/dpcfns/i...

lol nice find
Post reply on HN