Teaching our five year old to code by cheating • Hacker News Board

Re: Teaching our five year old to code by cheating

#71

Post by schwartzworld » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 12:34 PM UTC

boltefnovor wrote: post #7

Kids should be taught programming when they express an interest, and when their brain is ready which in my non-facts based opinion is 11-13 years old. Trying to make kids learn programming without them being interested is about the parent wanting their children to be like them.

Hardly. Programming should be treated like reading: an essential life skill. And if you use reading as the example, you can start developing an interest in books before the child is actually old enough to read.

The OP isn't taking his daughter through a coding course, just showing her that cool things are capable via coding. What could be wrong with that?

Re: Teaching our five year old to code by cheating

#72

Post by watwut » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 12:44 PM UTC

globular-toast wrote: post #66

Buttons840 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These statement don't sit well with me. Anyone "just being a " in their life feels incomplete. (I think you were implying this by reversing the genders.) To the GP, if it's OK for girls to "just be mothers", is it then OK to describe a woman as "just a mother"? I have a daughter. I suspect that if she becomes "just a mother", what that really means is her skills and interests are so foreign to me that I can't come up…

"Just a regular guy" etc. There's nothing wrong with being just anything. You need to stop treating everyone in the world like a member of your scrum team or something. Understanding people's "skills and interests"? They're just people for crying out loud, speak to them. And no, there's nothing wrong with being "just a person". Stop being so analytical and desperate to have everything conform to your fantasies of wha…

"Just a regular guy" is still assumed to have distinct personality, interests, hobbies and skills. "Just a mom" is not. That is not the statement on what actual moms are like, but what people imagine when they hear the phrase.

Like in the original comment this started with "girls just want to be mothers" is contrasted with being a person who has any out of parenting interests at all.

And for all the talk about "noble", no interests at all leaves you with nothing to think about, nothing to talk about, nothing to do, nothing to be happy about when children are not present. Nothing to be proud about once the kids are not toddlers anymore and their achievements are their own.

Re: Teaching our five year old to code by cheating

#73

Post by otikik » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 12:47 PM UTC

My 4yo doesn't know how to read yet, introducing him to programming is definitively out of the scope for now.

And yet.

We have been doing videogames together. (Maybe spent 4 or 5 hours total, distributed in several months. I don't want to overwhelm him or anything).

I found that pico-8 is an excellent platform for doing this kind of collaborative thing. I can do the programming (for now) and draw basic sprites (for now). He's the art director, and provides game design ideas. It's fun, although he gets frustrated when I am "writing" too much time. But I think the idea that "games are made out of letters and graphics" is already permeating into him. I would love to teach him the programming part, but I will wait for him to express some interest on it first (after he learns how to read). If he prefers the graphics (or doing something else) that's fine too.

Re: Teaching our five year old to code by cheating

#74

Post by ldeangelis » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 12:50 PM UTC

Deukhoofd wrote: post #5

The script you included doesn't actually work, as you're comparing a string with an integer. It will always return false.

I was going to comment the same thing. It can be fixed by addding a conversion in the if like this:

  if int(guess) == lulu + boonie:

instead of

  if guess == lulu + boonie:

Re: Teaching our five year old to code by cheating

#75

Post by globular-toast » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 1:02 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #72

globular-toast wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just a regular guy" etc. There's nothing wrong with being just anything. You need to stop treating everyone in the world like a member of your scrum team or something. Understanding people's "skills and interests"? They're just people for crying out loud, speak to them. And no, there's nothing wrong with being "just a person". Stop being so analytical and desperate to have everything conform to your fantasies of wha…

"Just a regular guy" is still assumed to have distinct personality, interests, hobbies and skills. "Just a mom" is not. That is not the statement on what actual moms are like, but what people imagine when they hear the phrase. Like in the original comment this started with "girls just want to be mothers" is contrasted with being a person who has any out of parenting interests at all. And for all the talk about "noble…

> "Just a regular guy" is still assumed to have distinct personality, interests, hobbies and skills. "Just a mom" is not.

Speak for yourself. Sounds like projection to me.

Do you have children? Parents can be very proud of their children's accomplishments.

Re: Teaching our five year old to code by cheating

#76

Post by watwut » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 1:08 PM UTC

shean_massey wrote: post #51

I love reading these. My daughter is only 2 but I've been compiling these tips as "learning hacks" to present as soon as she's ready since before she was conceived! I was also introduced to software development through "hacking" some 20 years ago and immediately fell in love (ms frontpage websites made in school and hosted on free hosting servers that injected banner ads.. my first ever hack was getting rid of those…

Try scratch junior with her. 2 is too soon, but small creative kids can have fun with that.

Re: Teaching our five year old to code by cheating

#77

Post by babuskov » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 1:13 PM UTC

tommilukkarinen wrote: post #49

Captains log, stardate 345.455.33: I record this for people who might want to try this with kids around 10 years old: I made a game with my daughter, according to the .apk date it was 5 years ago so she was 10. I started by making a project in android studio. Then a gameloop, where you had one function for drawing and one function for handling clicks/screen presses. So when you pressed 'play' on studio, it opened an…

I made a game with my 9-year old who's struggling with math. Because of this I did all the programming, but I made him draw the main hero and all the monsters. He's got an interesting style. You can see the game here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1226170/Forest_of_MATH/

Of course, the game itself is meant for him (and other kids) to play and practice basic math.

I hope he'll get to program his own games in a couple of years.

Re: Teaching our five year old to code by cheating

#78

Post by pessimizer » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 1:16 PM UTC

boltefnovor wrote: post #7

Kids should be taught programming when they express an interest, and when their brain is ready which in my non-facts based opinion is 11-13 years old. Trying to make kids learn programming without them being interested is about the parent wanting their children to be like them.

Kids should be taught whatever their parents know well, starting as early as possible. If the kids have no aptitude or interest in those things, they should eventually be dropped. But when you teach your children what you know, you get to take advantage of the fact that your children have an interest in and an admiration of you, and you might be able to cram in the basics of a trade that they can always fall back on later in life.

> Kids should be taught programming when they express an interest

If we felt this way about other subjects, we would never teach 95% of kids math, or 50% of them how to read.

edit: the best outcome is that they might love it, and if they do will probably end up far better than you at it, and will make a trustworthy business partner once they reach adulthood.

Re: Teaching our five year old to code by cheating

#79

Post by Cyph0n » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

mjevans wrote: post #27

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just putting this out there: You don't need a windows machine. Minecraft, including programming mods like ComputerCraft run fine on Ubuntu (and therefore probably on a lot of other distros).

"Java Edition" is, assuming the system can run "modern" games decently well. I've also heard good things about "ro blocks", but having watched a stream or two I'm less sure of it as a good introduction. Computercraft turtles and LUA aren't terrible, but when I see a FOR loop I think C style, while LUAs is the other kind and I'd really love for that for to be named something like ITER instead.

I think you mean Roblox.

Re: Teaching our five year old to code by cheating

#80

Post by alphadevx » Wed, Oct 07, 2020, 1:24 PM UTC

schwartzworld wrote: post #71

boltefnovor wrote: post #7

Kids should be taught programming when they express an interest, and when their brain is ready which in my non-facts based opinion is 11-13 years old. Trying to make kids learn programming without them being interested is about the parent wanting their children to be like them.

Hardly. Programming should be treated like reading: an essential life skill. And if you use reading as the example, you can start developing an interest in books before the child is actually old enough to read. The OP isn't taking his daughter through a coding course, just showing her that cool things are capable via coding. What could be wrong with that?

I'm curious why anyone would think programming is an essential life skill, considering how many successful people are alive today who cannot code.

Another thought: when ML starts getting applied to solving programming (see recent GPT-3 demos for many examples), do you think by the time that 5 year old is 20, programming will still be a viable career for humans?