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When I learned to program (I was ~13 years old) using Small Basic I had no issues whatsoever with the errors the interpreter gave me, even though they weren't e
by sandov 8y ago
When I learned to program (I was ~13 years old) using Small Basic I had no issues whatsoever with the errors the interpreter gave me, even though they weren't even in my native language. It was pretty obvious to me that I had committed a mistake at some point of my code.
For kids younger than that, maybe it's better to learn scratch, but I wouldn't trade Small Basic, it's a great language to learn, the only bad thing is that it's made by Microsoft and only runs on Windows.
- jpk 8y agoYeah, in my experience teenagers (especially those that are highly self-motivated) can see stack traces and stuff as just another part of the puzzle. It's the younger and less motivated kids that tend to get frustrated. Edit: I'll also point out this: > It was pretty obvious to me that I had committed a mistake at some point of my code. How a student handles this is also often a sticking point. "Oh no, another error, I'm bad at this, maybe this isn't for me." Is an attitude that I've had to turn around. It goes a long way to convince a kid that it's actually the computer's fault because it isn't smart enough to understand what you're trying to tell it. So you have to be really specific in how you write to it. Then suddenly error messages are informative clues on the way to making your program work, rather than the computer scolding you for being a bad coder.