[deleted]
Why kids don't program
61–70 of 96 posts
Re: Why kids don't program
#62In reality, I'd wager there's a _lot lot_ more kids programming today than 30 years ago. How many people had a computing device at home back then? This anecdote makes the point that a very specific kind of thinking was better suited by the tools of the late 70s, and maybe - I've never been much inclined towards it, so I dunno. And what we consider 'programming' is blurrier than it used to be. Is HTML programming? Wha…
If you boot up an Apple II without a disk in the drive (or something incredibly simple like that), it drops into AppleSoft Basic. That's how I learned that one could program a computer. For sample code I could turn to a number of magazines about my computer, or the manual that came with it. No questions or outside research dependent on anyone else (including the Internet) were required. This was when I was of single-…
I was a little after this, but it was similar. Dad had QBASIC on his Gateway2000 machine that we played Oregon Trail, WITWICSD, Prince of Persia and so forth on. I had fun with qmaze, qbricks, and so forth - and then I asked dad if there was a way to cheat. He showed me the qbasic ide, and handed me a qbasic manual. And then he said, "Have fun!" - I was in the single digits when this happened, as well. Unfortunately, I never really made much with it - just had fun making custom brick shapes in the tetris clone.
I was lucky, and in middle school, we had an elective that allowed us to use lego robotics and logo to do some really basic stuff (one of the projects, if I recall, was building a robot arm to sort bricks based on color). Not much problem solving involved in it, though - they just gave us "type this in" and "put the legos together this way" instruction booklets. If we had been encouraged to solve the problems for ourselves, I might have gotten a lot more out of it. As it is, I don't recall any logo at all.
Didn't do any more programming until sophomore year of high school, and things like optimized sort algorithms really caught my imagination. Haven't really looked back since...
Re: Why kids don't program
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is scratch so different from other programming environments ?
Typing. The physicality of an interaction is not to be understated. I've seen wizards with specialized interfaces (Flash, PhotoShop, Final Cut, etc) struggle miserably with text based input.
Yes, but programming is about patterns, and, in my opinion, patterns are more simple to spot visually than with text.
It's maybe more important for a kid to learn that than learning about the "materiality" of programming.
Re: Why kids don't program
#64For me it was exactly the opposite. I started learning programming at 13 reading the zx spectrum manual chapter after chapter until I came to sin and cos which I did not know. My parents hadn't studied, so they could not tell me. Instead of just skipping that chapter, I gave up programming. Much later I studied economics. Working as an economist I discovered the fun of programming with visual basic, and then decided…
That makes me feel really sad. My epiphany was your iron curtain coming down. I can see how. In fact I had the same reaction initially (and my parents are graduates, but they don't know the first thing about maths, so they were no help to me either). I have no idea why I wrote the program to plot a circle that made it obvious what sin and cos were. In fact I think I might have misremembered my own story. I had a ZX81…
In fact I think I might have misremembered my own story. I had a ZX81 first...
I think you're correct here. I had a ZX81 first too (then various Spectrums, a VIC-20, and a Dragon 32!) and I also seem to remember the ZX81 manual telling you how to draw straight lines first, with FOR loops, and then progressing to circles.
The upcoming generations of programmers and mathematicians are going to be Gods.
Google and Wikipedia are awesome. I would have had my head buried in them all day if they had existed when I was a kid.
But I do worry a little about the next generation of programmers. Whenever a mum asks me what to recommend for her kid, who's fanatical about computers and just wants to dive in and write some games, I'm really at a bit of a loss for something to suggest. I usually go with Python, but it sucks to know that the kid in question is going to have to do some extra work to get things like graphics and audio going.
Re: Why kids don't program
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see that it is that much harder now. Boot your mac, open a terminal, type python, and start programming. Does it take one more step? Maybe, but it is a joke to say that is somehow more difficult.
Show me a tutorial on Python graphics on OS X that doesn't require installing an external library or learning about a really complicated graphics framework (Quartz 2D) and I'll believe what you just wrote. Apple basic graphics was one of two commands: GR or HGR
But you had to learn about those from somewhere. That's no different, in practice, from today.
Re: Why kids don't program
#66For me it was exactly the opposite. I started learning programming at 13 reading the zx spectrum manual chapter after chapter until I came to sin and cos which I did not know. My parents hadn't studied, so they could not tell me. Instead of just skipping that chapter, I gave up programming. Much later I studied economics. Working as an economist I discovered the fun of programming with visual basic, and then decided…
That makes me feel really sad. My epiphany was your iron curtain coming down. I can see how. In fact I had the same reaction initially (and my parents are graduates, but they don't know the first thing about maths, so they were no help to me either). I have no idea why I wrote the program to plot a circle that made it obvious what sin and cos were. In fact I think I might have misremembered my own story. I had a ZX81…
"The upcoming generations of programmers and mathematicians are going to be Gods. How could they not be with a library like that!"
...because they also have lolcats?
Seriously, there are a lot more distractions these days, too.
Re: Why kids don't program
#67I am the same age, and I had a very similar experience, especially with regards to the BASIC manual. I would just go through the list of keywords, A to Z, skipping the ones that didn't make sense at first, and then circling back and starting all over until I had them all. In a way, a limited manual made it easier to circumscribe the problem, and gave my little nerdy self a "goal": Finish The Book.
I guess the same could be done with the information available on the Internet. If someone wants to learn javascript they have all the info they could possibly ever want. There are so many options now. But learning to program is a question of interest and determination, not availability of information.
Re: Why kids don't program
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Show me a tutorial on Python graphics on OS X that doesn't require installing an external library or learning about a really complicated graphics framework (Quartz 2D) and I'll believe what you just wrote. Apple basic graphics was one of two commands: GR or HGR
Your requirement that there be no external libraries is unfair. It's perfectly valid for a tutorial to start with "Download this package and run the installer," which is easier than any actual programming the reader might do. There are plenty of great tutorials for PyGame and pyglet. The main issue is that you have to open a terminal. If you look past Python, Scratch provides a very low barrier to entry for this sort…
Your requirement that there be no external libraries is unfair.
If the question being discussed is "How likely is an 8-year-old to randomly discover programming", it's not unfair in the slightest. Installation of anything is a huge barrier to discoverability.
Re: Why kids don't program
#69I miss _why ...
Hackety Hack, like all of _why's projects, got adopted by someone else after his departure: http://github.com/steveklabnik/hacketyhack/ Alas, it doesn't seem to be getting much activity.
It's true. A crazy series of events took lots of my time recently... including the launch of my startup. I'm planning on getting back into the swing of things with Hackety, though, as my local Ruby Brigade just started up, and I feel like I could get a decent helping hand from some of those guys. I'd love to not be the only guy doing something with it. I have one other core contributer, but again, he's busy as well.
Every project goes through slow periods. _why has some quite large shoes to fill.
Re: Why kids don't program
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
And I disagree with you here. Writing declarative HTML and writing a simple interactive computer game are two activities that could not be more different. Like it or not, the act of programming has become much more difficult than it once was. 1988 I could reboot my Apple IIgs, hold down a couple of keys, and I could start writing a BASIC program immediately.
And in 1995, I could write interactive (quasi) graphical games on my TI-81. Without rebooting. At the time, a TI-81 was pretty fancy, but I've seen plenty that leads me to believe that nearly every kid today has a TI-83 for their math class. It's not quite basic, but it's certainly programming, and it's just as easy and accessible as an Apple used to be.
TI-83 and the manual where the ways that I started in programming. I would most likely try to spark my own kids interest in programming the same way. The greatest thing about programming on the TI-83 was that I could write programs anywhere. I took that calculator with me everywhere and would even program while we were out at a restaurant or after completing an assignment in class.