101–110 of 139 posts
My girl's favourite saying at the moment is "command not found". That's the thing she reads the most, except on the occasion it does something. Walking around the house saying it gave way to answering back to requests with "command not found daddy". What have I unleashed?
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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.
Would you mind sharing how old is your child? My son is almost three. I also want to get him into programming. I am utterly sad that my dad wasted his brain doing manual labor as we grew up in a small city in Poland and he never had the resources to even own a computer. He would be a good programmer, as I got it from him. He is really good at finding solutions to repetitive tasks and hates to do the same thing twice.
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…
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>they could have a phone if they made an app I think this is a great way to get your kids to have a habit of self-learning. In my opinions, this is the single most important skill a kid can learn. Every time my little cousins ask me something they want to learn, I go with "Let's search for the answer together" and guide them on how to do basic research. Sometimes I ask them follow-up questions if they find the topic…
I think it's a great way to ensure that the only motivation your kids have is external. "What's the point of doing X is no one offered me a phone for it" When I was a kid, I heard that some friends were getting money from parents as a reward for good grades. I always had good grades so I suggested to my mom that I should get money for good grades. She said "No, because then you'll get used to only work hard when I'm…
10 PRINT "Whatever obscene thing comes to mind"
20 GOTO 10
RUN
That's probably the only code many of them ever learned.
Adorable. Interesting that mindstorms didn’t take while Python did. I’d kind of assume the opposite, since MS is more tangible and easier to visualize.
IMO Mindstorms is a bit more of an all-in proposition; you have to build a thing that does a thing, and then build a "complete" program for it. I never really got into Mindstorms either, I remember I would build a thing, then use the pre-loaded programs to run stuff, but then because I was starting from zero and didn't really have an understanding of what was going on, I wasn't able to really fiddle around very much.…
That said, I did get really into Mindstorms when I went to summer camp that split the days between that in the morning and 3D modeling in the afternoons. Once the time was more structured, the feedback loop of "modify working code on a working robot and see what happens" was very fulfilling.
Kids I have taught, love that they can record and play back the sounds with programming blocks.
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Now re-contextualize that as if it were an employer/employee relationship. That's actually a pretty messed up lesson to teach a kid about negotiation and self worth.
But it's not an employer/employee relationship. It teaches you that you should _also_ consider your own long term goals, as opposed to only chasing the someone else's short term goals. I think it's a great lesson to teach a kid about self-worth.
You didn't describe any explanation of why good grades are an important step towards your own long term goals.
I'm not saying that paying for grades is a good way to motivate kids. I'm saying that framing it as "I won't pay you because it'll make you lazy" is a very weird way to teach a kid about long term payoffs.
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Every Commodore 64 in every department store that I went to was running that loop (but with "Hello") after I left.
I got thrown out of Currys (UK electrical store) aged 11 for doing that with 10 PRINT “Welcome to Currys the electrical ripoff store” 20 GOTO 10