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Linda Liukas' Programming book for Children has Huge First Day on Kickstarter

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Re: Linda Liukas' Programming book for Children has Huge First Day on Kickstarter

#151

Post by guscost »

A children's book about programming is a great idea and it's very nice to see the market encouraging this kind of work.

That said, I'm not sure if I'd be comfortable giving this particular book to a young child. From the sketches it seems as if it will be light on fundamentals like logic and data structures, and a bit heavy on Ruby-specific abstractions and borderline political value judgements. I don't want to tell the younger generation which application stack they should be using, to say nothing of the completely out of place "Apple is selfish, Python is fascist" storyboards.

If you're interested in honest advice I'd remove the parts about what is wrong with all the other technologies and substitute material related to the history and engineering that made all of these tools possible. Mention how strings and floats are encoded as bits, for example. Young children are not going to be wondering why they are learning Ruby instead of C or assembly, but they will be wondering how it does all that cool stuff.

Re: Linda Liukas' Programming book for Children has Huge First Day on Kickstarter

#152

Post by Karunamon »

MartinCron wrote: post #128
Confusion wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is definitely something wrong with doing that with a top-level comment. It distracts from the actual topic. You should only do that if you have a very good reason, such as noting the same behavior multiple times on multiple topics. You should certainly not do it within two hours after the article was posted, to allow time for selfcorrection. That is the point of the voting system. There is also something wrong…

You should only do that if you have a very good reason, such as noting the same behavior multiple times on multiple topics A top level comment seems to be the only appropriate place to discuss the overall tone or tenor of a conversation. Responding to each dismissive/negative/unconstructive comment seems redundant and annoying.

How about you don't respond to tone or tenor at all? It's a bad argument on the best of days (PG's hierarchy has that near the bottom, one step above straight up ad hominem.)

It's a diversion at best. If you feel someone is being unpleasant, deal with it. You needn't be pleasant to be right. If they're being unpleasant and wrong, reply with why they're wrong, or alternatively downvote and move on. No need for meta noise in any case.

Re: Linda Liukas' Programming book for Children has Huge First Day on Kickstarter

#153

Post by manish_gill »

chc wrote: post #145
manish_gill wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The truth is that you're being overly defensive. > I'm excited about this book. Even if I wasn't, I honestly can't imagine anything bad/wrong coming out of its existence. So we should all make smiley faces and exclamation marks and ZOMG children will learn coding because "nothing bad can come out of its existence"? > (a) the OP asks for it Oh I'm sorry, I'll never criticise anything ever again if OP doesn't ask f…

You're allowed to be a hater — much like you're allowed to walk around creepily breathing on people's necks — but it still makes your comments unpleasant and drags down the level of discourse here.

Because there was a fairly intelligent discussion going on here, in which people call other people Jackass. :)

And honestly? I was't being a hater. I was apathetic towards this whole thing before reading the GP.

In any case, I got nothing against the project itself. If it succeeds (which is fairly evident at this point), good for the people involved.

Re: Linda Liukas' Programming book for Children has Huge First Day on Kickstarter

#154

Post by manish_gill »

maaaats wrote: post #146
manish_gill wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The truth is that you're being overly defensive. > I'm excited about this book. Even if I wasn't, I honestly can't imagine anything bad/wrong coming out of its existence. So we should all make smiley faces and exclamation marks and ZOMG children will learn coding because "nothing bad can come out of its existence"? > (a) the OP asks for it Oh I'm sorry, I'll never criticise anything ever again if OP doesn't ask f…

> But of course, how dare I criticise anything about those cute drawings. Think of the Children! Your way of "argumenting" is not doing you any favors.

I like how you ignored everything else in the comment.

Re: Linda Liukas' Programming book for Children has Huge First Day on Kickstarter

#155

Post by deveac »

shangxiao wrote: post #144
deveac wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but please don't argue that boys benefit from this by having the chance to be obedient little utilities. I wasn't arguing anything, merely clarifying the point of that poster. But since you brought it up , the argument that boys benefit from being exposed to values like acceptance of diversity, and stand to gain by not being exposed to gender prejudice as they learn about the world around them...well it is an argume…

Here we go... the delicate genius has been insulted... Your use of quoting and italicised text makes you look so much more intelligent than me. Btw, I wasn't reframing the poster's comment. That's what I was agreeing with, but I bet you couldn't see from behind all the red.

Again, I think you may be confused. The poster's argument that you're claiming to agree with is the same argument that you're taking issue with when you say:

>I agree with the sentiment here, but please don't argue that boys benefit from this by having the chance to be obedient little utilities. but please don't argue that boys benefit from this by having the chance to be obedient little utilities.

That boys benefit is precisely the argument the poster is making (your framing them as "obedient little utilities" notwithstanding).

Additionally, the usage of italics simply indicates emphasis. It's one of the most mundane aspects of written English. Nothing fancy about it, FYI.

Re: Linda Liukas' Programming book for Children has Huge First Day on Kickstarter

#156

Post by nicolethenerd »

One line of code on the whole page, and the syntax is wrong. (Need quotes on "hi computer")

But besides that, I think this has the potential to be great... but I honestly didn't get much from the video about the content of the book. It's a story, and it's about Ruby. How? What does it teach? How does it encourage kids to interact with technology, or program computers, or whatever the goal is? All I saw were a bunch of pretty pictures and a promise that kids will learn something.

Re: Linda Liukas' Programming book for Children has Huge First Day on Kickstarter

#157

Post by Keyframe »

danabramov wrote: post #138
Keyframe wrote: post #104

Here I was open-minded as ever, prepared to see something great, also prepared to scold at misogynistic crowd because there were hints in some comments that there is such crowd here... and then I watched the video. Everything that can go in other direction related to stereotypes and gender roles - DID. It went so overboard that I think it's a part of marketing strategy for it. This is just sad, because I think the pr…

No idea what you mean there. She was being playful . As a former kid, I appreciate that.

Imagine the same video, exactly the same, but with a dude. Still playful, still the same message? Or weird?

Re: Linda Liukas' Programming book for Children has Huge First Day on Kickstarter

#158

Post by bloat »

fidotron wrote: post #147
bloat wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people, myself included, cut their teeth on machines where graphics were far from easy. Most of my early programs on the VIC20 and C64 were text adventures, and occasionaly I'd get into some games where the graphics were as exciting as moving asterisks.

Yeah, but as others observe this is a moving target. What impressed you and me in the 80s is not going to motivate a child that grew up playing on an iPad. The art here is in finding the set of virtual objects needed for the desired result, ideally about which there is some existing intuition for reasoning about. In Mindstorms they have a good term for this that I've forgotten, of which the turtle is the object used…

Thats true, but my son has enjoyed typing in "moving asterisk" games from an old VIC20 book into an emulator, and has enjoyed playing them too. He would still rather play on an iPad though. Oh well.

Re: Linda Liukas' Programming book for Children has Huge First Day on Kickstarter

#159

Post by leoc »

davidw wrote: post #140
callmeed wrote: post #62

The comments on this thread make me want to quit HN for good. I don't know Linda but I volunteered at RailsGirls in SF this past weekend. It was a wonderful experience and I'm hoping to organize one here in my area. I've got 4 kids (3 girls, 1 boy) and we do everything from LEGOs to making movies to programming to SnapCircuits to building robots. I'm excited about this book. Even if I wasn't, I honestly can't imagine…

As the father of a nearly 6 year old girl, my first reaction when seeing the nice drawings and "programming for kids" was "COOOL! How much? Let me get my wallet out!". But then I saw "32 pages", and... yeah, that flipped my skeptic bit too. 32 pages is fine, but what am I getting there? An extremely broad but shallow overview? A few concepts explained... how? A neat story about how cool computers are? I don't really…

The old Usborne computer programming books got a lot done in about 50 pages. But then they were quite textually dense, and by no means perfect as teaching tools either https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7110676 .

Re: Linda Liukas' Programming book for Children has Huge First Day on Kickstarter

#160

Post by [deleted] »

Karunamon wrote: post #100
callmeed wrote: post #62

The comments on this thread make me want to quit HN for good. I don't know Linda but I volunteered at RailsGirls in SF this past weekend. It was a wonderful experience and I'm hoping to organize one here in my area. I've got 4 kids (3 girls, 1 boy) and we do everything from LEGOs to making movies to programming to SnapCircuits to building robots. I'm excited about this book. Even if I wasn't, I honestly can't imagine…

WTF is this crap? Have we gotten so deep into the PC weeds that any criticism of something a woman does is de-facto sexist/incorrect?! If the (rather mild) contents of this thread are what you're hemming and hawing about, please make good on your threat, leave and take the horse you rode in on with you.

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