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I agree that these are two very important skills, but I have yet to see a "Learn to code" endeavour that actually focuses on teaching these skills. Usually, th

by pmilot 11y ago

I agree that these are two very important skills, but I have yet to see a "Learn to code" endeavour that actually focuses on teaching these skills. Usually, these are more focused on I/O and making the machine output interesting things like visual charts and sounds (something that is more immediately satisfying and therefore keeps the student's attention).

malux85 11y ago
Excellent point. There's got to be a sweet spot between visually interesting and "symbolically" useful (maybe algorithmically is a better word there) I tried a rather ham-fisted restaurant menu example below, but that's boring as hell. I wonder if there's something better? I really think a nice simple language like Python is a good choice - python has a few WTFs for beginners, but the more immediate visual niche languages give immediate payoff (good) but then later their impracticality re-enforces to the child that learning it was a fun intellectual exercise but ultimately useless. Challenge: Whats the shortest, simplest, most appealing python program we could use to teach kids? I dont know the answer to that, but it's fun to think about :)