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I’d be careful about teaching foundational coding or significant literature too early. Not everyone has superior intelligence (I certainly don’t, but that shoul
by runawaybottle 6y ago
I’d be careful about teaching foundational coding or significant literature too early. Not everyone has superior intelligence (I certainly don’t, but that should go without saying for most, perhaps not here since the bell curve is outta whack on HN) and if you take on abstract or tough material too early, you could associate a discomfort from the struggles of being bad at it initially. It’s kind of one of the reasons people basically look at reading like it’s the worst thing on Earth because they get hit with Shakespeare too early, and this develops life long habits of non-reading.
Making these habits sustainable is more important initially. You’ll lose a generation of kids if you start them on raw CS.
Something to think about, because ultimately we want more people that get into it because they really wanna make games or apps, vs the current reality of ‘hey this field pays and others don’t’. But this is the ideal we want for all disciplines.
- Jtsummers 6y agoOne way to mitigate the challenge is to make it ungraded. It's an opportunity to explore a subject, not a chance to get an A or yet another F. The way that we want to attach a score (and the consequent impact of that) for every activity is what creates a lot of strife for learners. It's bad enough that the material is challenging, but worse when a poor grade means yet another parent teacher conference or letter home or remedial course.
- runawaybottle 6y agoSure, so the one magic bullet we have as a field is that we can pretty much woah them with the possibilities of learning this stuff. So you play Fortnite or sit on Reddit all day? This is how you build that. A good simple game engine would do wonders for programming education. Take something like React, not exactly a learners platform either. We never really build apis like that anymore (or ever have it seems), where we literally ask ‘could a kid do this?’.
- watwut 6y agoIssue with games is that it is much less fun to make them. It also have strong artistic component that discourages non artistic kids. It is often tedious to test. Just because someone likes programming does not imply he will enjoy actual making game. It is good to attract kids to at first, but not so great after. Also, just because someone enjoys playing games does not imply he has any motivation to quite code for game. People mostly fall love with visuals or story or online competition. Which leads to drawing, modeling and writing or level design more.
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- yepthatsreality 6y ago> I’d be careful about teaching foundational coding or significant literature too early. Not everyone has superior intelligence Disagree. The problem is that everyone learns differently and has different home lives that create learning hurdles. There is no intelligence barrier for individuals, it’s more an interest barrier.
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- kccqzy 6y ago> you could associate a discomfort from the struggles of being bad at it initially That's not my experience at all. My Mom taught me algebra at home when I was in elementary school, years before algebra is generally taught. I struggled a lot and did have the discomfort you mentioned. That instantly went away when schools started teaching algebra and I discovered that I already learned everything and can do the exercises so much faster and better than my classmates. I was already pretty confident but it was another confidence boost.
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