We're trying really hard to educate the next wave of talent... a lot of open-source community effort in the Ruby community.
We should teach all our kids to code
41–50 of 81 posts
Re: We should teach all our kids to code
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Massively popular games like Angry Birds are much simpler than Call of Duty. The basic mechanics of such a game are easier to create with today's hardware and tools than a sprite based game was a long time ago. Sure, you won't be able to get anywhere near the professional game quality, but you can still have a lot of fun. I remember buying a C++ game development book that spent a couple of chapters before getting the…
Developing angry birds whilst considerably simpler than Call of Duty is not that simple. At a minimum you have to implement smoothly scrolling graphics and quite a lot of physics. Of course there are libraries available which help with these things but then you have a lot of documentation to read (if it even exists). I believe angry birds cost in the region of $100,000 to develop. Not really a learning exercise for a…
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Re: We should teach all our kids to code
#43Coding today is a waste of time. Everything has already been coded.
Re: We should teach all our kids to code
#44So we want them to learn problem-solving (i.e. "given tools, solve problem" for any set of tools and any problem.) Given the experiences I've had trying to teach things to programmers, I'd like them to learn problem-solving, as well. Most programmers have a small tool-box of solutions (i.e. languages, libraries, platforms, &c) and the bad ones (i.e. most of them) run DFS over that tool-box until the problem appears to go away, and start quaking in terror if you give them new tools or radically different problems.
Programming is a kind of problem-solving. Learning it makes you better at solving the kinds of problems it solves. I have seen no evidence for the assertion that the kind of discrete-approximation problem-solving style inherent in most programming necessarily makes you better at solving problems in the general case.
Re: We should teach all our kids to code
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems like an excellent technique. Although I think it'd be much harder today. In my childhood I'd be easily entertained by a text adventure or a pretty simple sprite based game. Now a days your kid would have to create the next Call of Duty. Perhaps a strategy that would make more sense in today's world is to get them the Valve Hammer Editor (or equivalent SDK) and instead have them make levels for their favori…
Last summer I taught introductory programming courses for middle-schoolers, and one of the first things we did was play Zork for about half an hour, as a class. Then I started showing them how to make their own text-based adventure game with rooms, a basic inventory and simple puzzles. All of my students were having a blast with Zork, and they seemed to find making text adventure games highly rewarding. I think you u…
I second that sentiment. I think text adventure games engage your brain more than, say, battlefield 1942. Similar to perhaps books vs movies/tv.
Re: We should teach all our kids to code
#46I remember when we got our first computer, my dad won't let me play any games for more than a few minutes a day, but I could play the games I wrote myself as much as I wanted. That was a brilliant idea - it gave me the taste of the good games, which was a huge motivation. It did take a while to create an actual playable game (back then we didn't have easy to use graphics libraries like Processing), but then it all be…
This seems like an excellent technique. Although I think it'd be much harder today. In my childhood I'd be easily entertained by a text adventure or a pretty simple sprite based game. Now a days your kid would have to create the next Call of Duty. Perhaps a strategy that would make more sense in today's world is to get them the Valve Hammer Editor (or equivalent SDK) and instead have them make levels for their favori…
Now a days your kid would have to create the next Call of Duty.
Your mileage may vary: my kid was quite happy to muck around with a text-based game he crafted.
Then he laid it to one side: he's enthralled by actual engineering: building things made out of atoms, not bits.
Re: We should teach all our kids to code
#47I have a 10 year old son who seems a natural to take an interest in programming. I tried starting him with a Basic interpreter cause that's how I started, and he struggled to stay interested - largely due to the non-graphical nature of the output. The next thing we tried was Kodu from Microsoft ( http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/kodu/ ). He found that enjoyable - very visually appealing and you can get so…
I just tried out Processing [0] right now, and it seems like you get a lot of control in it, and it looks pretty good on the eye candy side too. You could try that out.
[0] - http://processing.org/
Re: We should teach all our kids to code
#48I remember when we got our first computer, my dad won't let me play any games for more than a few minutes a day, but I could play the games I wrote myself as much as I wanted. That was a brilliant idea - it gave me the taste of the good games, which was a huge motivation. It did take a while to create an actual playable game (back then we didn't have easy to use graphics libraries like Processing), but then it all be…
This seems like an excellent technique. Although I think it'd be much harder today. In my childhood I'd be easily entertained by a text adventure or a pretty simple sprite based game. Now a days your kid would have to create the next Call of Duty. Perhaps a strategy that would make more sense in today's world is to get them the Valve Hammer Editor (or equivalent SDK) and instead have them make levels for their favori…
I dont believe that.
My first serious programming was Povray scene desciption language on a 486dx2. (yes, it was turing complete)
The joy of programming was not in ipressing anyone with the fancy graphics, but tweaking and trying new things to see what would happen - being creative.
My older brother and I, actually messed around with a hybrid Autodesk Animator / text based adventure, earlier. I think it was batch file based, but nothing came of it. Still, it was great fun to mix together sprites from my favorite dos games.
Re: We should teach all our kids to code
#49This is an issue I'm very passionate about, and I'm sure many others are too. I'd love to hear other's thoughts on how we educate the next generation and the best way to teach coding in 2012.
I wouldn't bother. Why? It takes a certain mindset to write code. Not everyone has it or is interested in it. My children couldn't care less about it and that's up to them. They'd rather be digging holes in the garden and covering things in paint. I'm not here to indoctrinate them with my own interests but to nurture their interests. Education is fundamentally flawed on the basis that it mandates knowledge on politic…
A-fricken-men. I have an allergic reaction every time I come across one of these posts about "how do I teach my kid to code." The whole sentiment strikes me as extremely myopic.
I'm all for providing exposure to a variety of things in school and at home, coding included, but we need to let our children be themselves. Give them exposure, let them taste what the world has to offer, but don't compel them to be the über-coder that you wanted to be.
Re: We should teach all our kids to code
#50I remember when we got our first computer, my dad won't let me play any games for more than a few minutes a day, but I could play the games I wrote myself as much as I wanted. That was a brilliant idea - it gave me the taste of the good games, which was a huge motivation. It did take a while to create an actual playable game (back then we didn't have easy to use graphics libraries like Processing), but then it all be…
I had this exact idea for my [expected future] children. I'm glad to have at least anecdotal evidence that it works.