Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program. • Hacker News Board

Re: Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.

#51

Post by SamuelMulder » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 5:02 PM UTC

EliRivers wrote: post #38

jessriedel wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is there something about programming that makes people think it should be done by everyone? Yes.

Is it possible for you to expand on this? To give just one example, plumbing is far more fundamental to civilisation and we're happy to have a trained cadre of plumbers, and for most people to go their whole lives with no knowledge of it. Do plumbers wander round shaking their heads and wondering why nobody else knows how to do it?

Programming is a much more general skill than plumbing. Don't just think Java enterprise apps for a Fortune 500... programming is fundamentally about learning how to use computers to their fullest. The ability to explore and create with computers is a powerful skill that complements most of the potential careers that a child may pursue in the future. Pretty much any science or engineering field will benefit from programming experience. Increasingly other fields are starting to move in directions that will make those skills more valuable.

Computers are just at the very beginning of revolutionizing the way that human society interacts. Why would you not want your children to have an edge?

Re: Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.

#52

Post by sixbrx » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 5:02 PM UTC

EliRivers wrote: post #46

brianobush wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

programming hones logic and abstract thought. these skills underly almost any endeavor that humans tackle.

We already have a subject taught for that. Maths. As an aside, to the extent that when we're hiring fresh grad programmers, their maths ability is a better indication of future quality than their programming ability. We find it easier to teach people who can think how to program than the other way around.

It's different than the classical/non-algorithmic sort of math taught in schools, it's more like "maths in motion" which can be very exciting and give early rewards in the feedback loop of learning, when kids see their creations actually do something. It also requires a different sort of thinking than the study of classical/non-algorithmic math, IMO. It's a very exciting time to be involved in the borderland between mathematics and computer science, with languages like Agda giving a whole new take on constructive mathematics.

Re: Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.

#53

Post by SamuelMulder » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 5:05 PM UTC

apaprocki wrote: post #5

Has there ever been a serious study which tries to determine at what age children are able to grasp programming constructs? (loops, functions, etc) We were all once little children and I know my own personal timeline, but I can't say I've ever seen a large collection of data points analyzed.

I haven't seen a serious study, but I've taught Scratch programming to kids in the 6-10 age range and found that they were all able to grasp loops if presented in an appropriate way. Similarly, we didn't talk about functions exactly, but each Sprite in a Scratch program can have multiple blocks of functionality triggered by different things.. i.e. functions. By the end of a year-long course, all of the students understood at least the basic idea and several of them had a pretty deep understanding.

Re: Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.

#54

Post by mapmeld » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 5:13 PM UTC

To teach for loops, I start with this example:

  word = "banana"
  for letter in word:
    print letter

It isn't a counter, but it makes it clear that print is happening for each part of the word. Then you can write programs using arrays and other counters.

Re: Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.

#55

Post by irahul » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 5:35 PM UTC

anuraj wrote: post #47

Being an architect and developer for the last 14 years I should confess that I would not want my kids or anybody I love to choose software as a career. The job can become repetitive, alienate yourself from social circles and you may loose all zest for outdoors. It is a job that can work for people of certain temperament (which I believe I am one of), but rarely the best thing you can do in life. Having a great life i…

> Being an architect and developer for the last 14 years I should confess that I would not want my kids or anybody I love to choose software as a career.

Learning to program doesn't mean you have to choose software as a career. A lot of jobs will become more productive and interesting if the people involved could program in addition to their specialized knowledge - finance; almost all sciences do simulations, machine learning etc; basic data crunching...

Re: Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.

#56

Post by tankbot » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 6:11 PM UTC

wccrawford wrote: post #30

The other day, out of the blue, my young niece starts telling me about Scratch (online visual programming site), and how she's written some stuff on it. She then proceeds to start telling me about other people, how they had done things wrong, and how she knew how to fix them. I was so freaking proud. I had never tried to teach her to program because she's as hardheaded as I am. Trying to force it on her was doomed to…

My niece, also 10, has been bugging me to teach her how to make computer games of her own. After thinking about this for a couple of months the Raspberry Pi came out so I ordered 2 (one for her, one for me!) and set her up with Scratch. While waiting on the RasPis to arrive, I bought her a copy of Loren Ipsum[0] and read it first to make sure it was good for kids and had the right kind of information (it does!).

IMHO this might be the best way to introduce kids to programming. The book teaches fundamental concepts (she was blown away by the infinite string being less than 2 inches) without bogging them down in jargon and syntax (fuck semicolons...). On top of that, Scratch has really great visual logic and design pieces that fit together like a puzzle and let kids explore the concepts themselves, again without all the nitpicky syntax. This keeps things fun an interesting while they learn.

She is now a Scratch wiz and loves making stuff. Since she is an avid reader, she likes to create characters from her books and make them do crazy stuff. During the months I considered how to approach her education, she has amassed an impressive amount of design notes on her first game, including characters and levels. She is now working out the story to go with it and will begin putting it all into scratch soon. I can't wait to see what she comes up with!

EDIT: Forgot the link for [0]!

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Lauren-Ipsum-Carlos-Bueno/dp/146117818...

Re: Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.

#57

Post by chc » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 6:16 PM UTC

cygwin98 wrote: post #6

I respect the efforts the author put in to teach kids how to program. That being said, I really don't think HTML/Javascript is the right choice for kids. The web stack is even considered messy from professional web programers' perspective. My son will turn seven soon. I did some research on programming languages/kits for kids around that age. I finally settled down on Robomind, which is more or less of a modern varia…

I first learned to program back in the '90s with Adventure Simulator and World Builder, which made old-school adventure games.

Adventure Simulator was buggy as crap and would crash pretty regularly with about a 33% chance of corrupting your data when it did so, but I still learned a lot from it.

World Builder was much more solid, but I think most programmers would still consider it fairly awkward. A lot of things (non-static maps, even basic animation) required some weird hacks, and it had a bunch of separate bins that your code went into that all interacted but which you couldn't view at the same time.

Despite the fact that modern programmers (and probably most "real" programmers of the time) would view both of these tools as difficult and limiting, I still thought it was a great, fun way to learn that kept me motivated.

Re: Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.

#58

Post by saraid216 » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 6:24 PM UTC

arkitaip wrote: post #7

dkhenry wrote: post #3

I am continually amazed at the capabilities of kids. Their ability to understand whats presented to them is astounding. I really think one of the problems with the education system is we have this idea that everyone must progress in all areas at the same rate, and we stop teaching kids new things until they understand the set of things they "should" know for their age. In a structured school system she wouldn't be al…

Or maybe we're expecting too much of the school system when it should be the responsibility of parents to teach their skills valuable skills. School isn't the solution to all our problems.

I wish school systems would ask parents to become regular volunteer teachers.

Re: Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.

#59

Post by saraid216 » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 6:28 PM UTC

cbhl wrote: post #17

cygwin98 wrote: post #6

I respect the efforts the author put in to teach kids how to program. That being said, I really don't think HTML/Javascript is the right choice for kids. The web stack is even considered messy from professional web programers' perspective. My son will turn seven soon. I did some research on programming languages/kits for kids around that age. I finally settled down on Robomind, which is more or less of a modern varia…

I've always thought that you'd have to worry about "technical elitists" dismissing HTML/JavaScript as "not programming", since that's what I experienced when I was growing up. On the other hand, Khan Academy CS chose JavaScript because it made it easy to share the results with others. So... nowadays I wonder.

It's a lot different these days where so much is on the web and undeniably Javascript-driven. While there are always going to be purists who refuse to recognize Javascript as anything more than a dinky toy, their opinions aren't exactly relevant or prevalent anymore.

Re: Teaching my 10 year old niece how to program.

#60

Post by saraid216 » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 6:31 PM UTC

xyzzyb wrote: post #37

"A normal person would have told her computers are for nerds, and not to waste her time with one." I doubt that would actually be the case these days.

Yeah, that put me off immediately.