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

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

#81

Post by gizmo686 » Fri, Aug 31, 2012, 2:34 AM 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.

I suspect Khan Academies decision was more motivated by implantation details. It is far easier to right an interperater when you can ask the browser to interpetat for you.

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

#82

Post by Evbn » Fri, Aug 31, 2012, 6:42 AM UTC

malandrew wrote: post #80

vacri wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can: send your child to a private school. Or do it on the cheap, send to a government school, and get the mass produced education that's a poorer fit.

I think that there are plenty of options that have yet to be explored in education. I'm honestly not surprised that there have not been groups of parents with children around the same age getting together to "time-share" teaching their collective group of kids skills according to their abilities as adults. It's a very different experience to learn something from somebody with a passion for subject X than someone who…

Why not get a job as a teacher or open a school then?

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

#83

Post by Evbn » Fri, Aug 31, 2012, 6:53 AM 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…

Construction workers get outdoors, but I bet plenty would love the sortware developer life. Your kids will have cellular connections and all day batteries, so they won't be chained to a desk.

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

#84

Post by Evbn » Fri, Aug 31, 2012, 6:56 AM UTC

pulplobster wrote: post #42

EliRivers wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'd say for a number of reasons they're different. Plumbing, while probably useful at some point in your life, is just one activity. Programming is NOT just one thing. It's closer to woodshop (which I hope is still in schools...). Another difference I think is that you can create something bigger with it, something that scales. Last but not least, I think it's inherently fun and fulfilling to create something out of…

Woodshop is mostly gone. And it's kind of a shame. But we have Chinese factories to make all our wood stuff now.

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

#85

Post by Evbn » Fri, Aug 31, 2012, 6:57 AM 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.

You may be missing a large cohort who found school math boring, but have an aptitude.

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

#86

Post by Evbn » Fri, Aug 31, 2012, 7:02 AM UTC

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #77

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.

Reading this story about a 10 year old who doesn't know what a computer is and what it can be used to do, I had to check the date of the article. To me, it doesn't seem like a plausible scenario in this day and age. In 1986, my grade school classroom had 4 Acorn computers [0]. Each student could use the computers for one hour every day — to program in Basic, do word processing, and play educational games. It was an e…

Not having something specific in mind to learn is different from not knowing what computers do.

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

#87

Post by primitur » Fri, Aug 31, 2012, 7:04 AM UTC

tremendo wrote: post #24

primitur wrote: post #21

LOAD81 is good for this purpose too, thanks to antirez: http://github.com/anitrez/load81

typo in link, fixed: https://github.com/antirez/load81 (and thanks!)

Oops .. sorry about that - and thanks for following up with the correction. Did you try LOAD81? I really love it as a way of getting started with Lua hacking, and I'd love to hear others experiences too ..

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

#88

Post by malandrew » Fri, Aug 31, 2012, 4:44 PM UTC

Evbn wrote: post #82

malandrew wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that there are plenty of options that have yet to be explored in education. I'm honestly not surprised that there have not been groups of parents with children around the same age getting together to "time-share" teaching their collective group of kids skills according to their abilities as adults. It's a very different experience to learn something from somebody with a passion for subject X than someone who…

Why not get a job as a teacher or open a school then?

Because I'm passionate about what I do for a living and want to practice it daily. I'm also passionate enough to share it with others. But when sharing it with others becomes a full-time job, you no longer get to practice it. 80% practicing, 20% sharing is a pretty good ratio in my book.

Plus being a teacher has become an institutionalized career, full of needless bureaucracy that in many cases sucks the fun out of what is fun about that job.

I think Google could try something out in this space as a way to attract more talent, maybe by allowing employees who are parents to set up a school taught by other Googlers in their 20% time. If I had a kid already, I would definitely want to join Google if it meant my kid would be taught by the really smart people that work there.

FWIW, I worked as a teacher for 1.5 years. English language teaching to ~11 year olds for 6 months and presentation skills to graduate students for 1 year.