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Ask HN: Please share your experience teaching your kids to program

295 points by lmilcin 6y ago

Hi HN! My son recently turned 7yo and I have successfully got him interested in programming. We started about half a year ago playing Minecraft and building more and more complicated automated machines. Recently I have added some robots that can be programmed in Scratch and now we have also started writing some simple games in Scratch. I am not just trying to teach him programming but also show that with a bit of organization and working little bit each day you can achieve pretty huge results. So we created a very simple version of a game. I have then created a document where we are maintaining a listing of functionality we want to add. We then take them one by one, discuss how it can be added to the game and then tick off once it is done. For Christmas he asked for some programming books ("how to make complicated Minecraft machines, how to write complicated commands and how to make mods"). We plan to do some more complicated robots and also make our own fun mods for Minecraft (as soon as I figure out how to hook up Scratch to recent version of it). I am trying to not spend too much time on any given day (about 1,5h every day currently) so that ends up still wanting to do more. I am also doing large part of coding myself and we switch who sits by the editor when he says he knows how to do something. I am trying to keep him enthusiastic by showing constant progress which I think is more important than that he actually does everything by himself. I have 20 years of development experience so generally programming is not an issue for me. Please, share your experiences, things that you have tested with your kids that did or did not work. Any tips you have personally tested.

itronitron 6y ago
Each of my children started coding through Minecraft and Scratch, so I think that is a good path. I tend to let them pursue (or not) their own interests so I just make resources available to them. It's worth emphasizing to your child the distinction between 'technology exposure' tutorials, and creative work as children tend to care more about making stuff and can find some tutorials a bit tedious. Luckily there are some high quality tutorials out there now, the mid-range and lower quality tutorials will just frustrate them. Related to that, I would advise you to not let them enroll in any 'technology' classes in school as that will kill their interest since the educators will likely be underwhelming. Also, at a certain age, if you give them too much attention for their interests they will stop pursuing it, so enjoy the next few years :)
- deleted 6y ago
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- MyHypatia 6y ago
  Can you provide links of some of the high quality tutorials you have found?
  - itronitron 6y ago
    Arduino Starter Kit is very good. CodeHS is also good but expensive for families as they tend to sell to schools. YouTube is also a good resource for some things. We haven't found any good programming books yet although they did enjoy the 'Lauren Ipsum' book.
- lmilcin 6y ago
  Electronics is my hobby and I am fortunate to have decently equipped electronics lab all with a dedicated desk. So I was pretty worried when he came asking to get him signed up for a robotics class (3h every Saturday for couple of months). I already have some ideas how I want to introduce him to robotics but I am not going to intervene here. Just made sure he knows he can always come back and tell me he is no longer interested in the classes and we will just cut it. As to creative work, I figured out already it is better if I do most of figuring out how to solve some problems (and let him solve just enough to not get bored with it) and he is spending time figuring out what kind of features we want in the games, for example. We then discuss what is and what is not feasible and how things can be working and I still try to make sure he understands how the program works. I know he understands at least some of it because he can take educated guesses at how to modify the program to change it to do what he wants. This seems to be really fun for him so I plan for it to stay that way for some time.
etherio 6y ago
I'm not close to being a father, but I can provide the experience of having learned not that long ago At first my dad put me a bit on CodeAcademy [0] which taught me tons of basics but didn't really get me hooked. What really got me into coding was by thinking of a way I could use it to build something related to my interests or that would be useful for me. That seems to be what you're doing with the games by linking it to something he's interested in so that's nice. It can really be anything though, and you should try to show him the enormous area of things he can do with coding. In my case I wanted to do my english homework faster, so I tried building a very simplistic program that could find literary devices (metaphors, similes, alliteration) etc... in the literature texts I had to study. Also you should make sure you don't force it and that the passion and interest comes from him, which seems to be the case with the way he asked for books about coding. [0]: https://www.codecademy.com/ https://www.codecademy.com/
- lmilcin 6y ago
  Thanks for you point of view. I pretty much figured out not forcing anything is rule #0 for this project. I would rather be showing how we can have even more fun using programming. The scratch game we are working on has Minecraft graphics and sounds on it and some of the rules derived from Minecraft. Simple arcade game but suddenly much more interesting because it has Minecraft element to it. And instead of trying to force him to solve the problems I give him about 2s before I suggest the answer to the problem. I would rather want to spend time showing he can think of anything he wants and we can make it work (well... most of time).
SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
Kind of different but I started learning programming while in primary school. I mostly messed around trying to learn how to make games in Unity. I didn't actually learn a whole lot of programming this way but it probably improved my interest in the subject and then I eventually discovered code academy which actually taught me how to program. In between unity and codeacademy I tried a bunch of books but none of them really got me to understand what was happening so I didn't learn much from them.
colinmhayes 6y ago
Your kid is 7. I'm pretty sure hat I was eating dirt when I was 7. If he has showed you he's interested in programming then go ahead, but make sure you're not projecting your own interests onto your kid. It'll lead to resentment in 7 or 8 years.
- jgwil2 6y ago
  1.5 hours a day seems like an immense amount of time for that age, but if the kid is pushing for it, good for them both.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Kids have a different relationship with time. As a kid who was intrinsically interested in programming, 1.5 hours was a joke and a non-starter. I didn't really feel comfortable doing any coding until I could secure 2-3 hours of time for it, and I would easily spend 8+ hours on the rare days when my parents were otherwise engaged and didn't call me away to do other things.
    - jgwil2 6y ago
      At age seven? Again, if the kid is up for it then great, but I think most kids that age have a hard time committing that amount of time to any single activity.
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        It's not commitment if it's voluntary play.
  - sjg007 6y ago
    My 7 years olds will spend 1.5 hours minimum playing roblox and minecraft. So... I think designing and building a game with them is a great idea!
    - jgwil2 6y ago
chasd00 6y ago
The most success i've had with my 8 year old is building games in Roblox and the LUA scripting that comes along with that. We also have written some MicroPython to drive a small rover. With kids, or my kids at least, you have to be able to show some tangible results quickly or else they get bored. ...kind of like dealing with your boss. another thing that my 8 year old is really into that surprised me is networks. Explaining how networks work and how he can start a minecraft server for him and his brother to play but his school friends can't because of the "firewall" has him on the edge of his seat hah. edit: i want to add that i don't bother with explaining programming concepts like object-oriented design or algorithms just very simple cause/effect. Then to simple if condition effect. I get excited and end up overcommunicating and then boring my kids, it's like trying to start a carbureted engine without flooding it. You have to do give them just enough info to get started and hope it catches.
- leesalminen 6y ago
  Networking was what really got me to do a deep dive into technology. Circa 2002, I really really wanted to LAN Party with my neighbor across the street remotely but neither of our 802.11b routers could reach. We spent so much time reading about how to do this and we ended up building a pair of Pringles can antennas on WiFi extenders, and long ethernet cables running through our yards into our bedroom windows, which ended up working great. Fun memories. Networks are cool.
- brianush1 6y ago
  > LUA Not that it really matters that much, but just for future reference: Lua is a proper noun, not an acronym.
- reubens 6y ago
  "You have to do give them just enough info to get started and hope it catches." That's an important mantra, I think. If you cast the net wide enough, you'll find something they like, and want to follow... but it might not be programming.
- jugg1es 6y ago
  Interesting! Networking is what really caught my attention as a young teenager. My personal epiphany moment early on was chatting on an AOL chatroom with someone in Japan when I was 10 and realizing what computers could actually do
ceautery 6y ago
https://appsbykids.org/ https://appsbykids.org/ is a hastily thrown together site showing some of my work with kids. I've been running volunteer computer clubs at schools my daughters attend, pre-covid anyway. I've also run a summer immersion program for basic software design principles using the Scratch language for Girls Who Code. We've played with Adafruit Circuit Playground dev boards, written a "choose your own adventure" engine with Python, and added pixel graphics to some simple Javascript games, where the kids drew animation frames in a barely functional editor I wrote. The first thing I'd call out is that 7 is really young. 5th grade is the point where kids can start to "get it" beyond basic maze problem solving things (e.g., code.org's Minecraft puzzle - hop Alex around the creeper and into the house). Since you're a dev, and he's enthused about it already, he can probably flex those muscles a little early. Beyond age, the complexity of what you're doing matters a lot. Kids want to see something get on the screen right away, and they want to make a code change that changes what it does. Building a program from scratch is a chore, and something as simple to us as nested if statements will throw them for a loop. The most success I had was building a simple program without them, and letting them experiment with changing values. That may sound like cheating, but it gets the gears turning, and before too long they're able to follow along with making a broader logic change, and soon enough even following along with you adding a new feature. I was in a classroom setting with a bunch of kids, and they tended to like being in small groups and comparing notes, or play each others games. Sideways thinking is important. For example, the main draw of Circuit Playground is making the LEDs do things, but they also have an accelerometer. A good exercise was figuring out how to read the tilt position, and figure out which light was lowest, and light up just that one. Instant fidget spinner. Building on that, I threw them for a loop by using the same principle where the tilt was input to a computer program. Suddenly the thing they were programming before to flash lights was now a game controller. Keep it fun, let him screw around too long on things he builds instead of learning software engineering at an "acceptable" rate. He can learn fast, but complexity will probably be a struggle, so growing slowly is just fine. Encourage him to explore concepts from different angles. Hope that helps.
- lmilcin 6y ago
  Yes, tinkering with existing program is really fun. I did this with his first ever project (which was a robot programmed in block language that is even simpler that Scratch) and made entire program for him, with him sitting by me and discussing how I am adding new steps to the program and what they are changing, each time running the program on the robot with another step implemented. Then he got his turn to have fun with the program. We stopped with that robot after couple of sessions when he was able to program some functionality up to my specification. For example, there was no sensor that would say the arm was closed, so to preserve the worm drive I asked him to change all places in program where the arm is getting opened to instead close it first and then open for an exact amount of time so that it does not hit the limit, which he was able to do on the first try, which gave me confidence he more or less understands what the idea is. Now, the games we do are getting a little bit complex (a lot of messages flying around), so what I do is basically write most of the code and shape the structure of the program and figure how do to some stuff so he doesn't get lost managing complexity. I make sure he understands what the things are doing and he modifies whatever he wants (and then we discuss what happened or how he can get what he wants). I am now unsure whether I want to stick to some more complex projects or whether it is better to have more small but wide variety ones. For now what I plan to do is to throw a bunch of ideas and see which ones he is most excited about.
skinner_ 6y ago
I recommend Scratch and editor.p5js.org My kid is 7. He can't really code alone, but he can do nontrivial modifications to Scratch programs based on trial and error, he can create very simple but visually interesting p5js apps like this: https://editor.p5js.org/skinner/sketches/xjUwFm1pF https://editor.p5js.org/skinner/sketches/xjUwFm1pF , and he enjoys a lot being the product designer when we create more complex p5js apps like this: https://editor.p5js.org/skinner/sketches/bPh8JRHrV https://editor.p5js.org/skinner/sketches/bPh8JRHrV .
ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
My girl first got interested when she was 5, when she was already a pretty solid MC Survival player, so I got her into Scratch to mod her MC creative world and automate some agents. From there she was more interested in making stand-alone little animations/games in Scratch itself, and now (almost 2 years later) is mostly obsessed with making objects in Blender and has started doing physical electronics using various kits. I basically let her follow her own path, I show her how I do something then if she’s keen to try it I stick her in front of the keyboard and she does it herself with me verbally guiding (but never reaching over to take control, something I personally think is important). She loves hanging out in my workshop and watching me prototype electronics or work on my own game dev or tinker on other hardware/software projects, and she knows at any time she can have a go (and she does, regularly).
- lmilcin 6y ago
  Ah, how I wish I was game dev instead of working mostly on Java backends for large financial institutions (and actually spending most of the time in meetings). I am pretty interested in the modding Minecraft with Scratch part. I have found some abandoned projects. Can you point me to what you have used that worked for you? Happy it worked for your girl and little scared she started at 5. I have two boys, one is 7 and the other is 4. The younger one is inseparable from the older so I wonder how it is going to be different for him. I have been thinking about who gets to actually program. For now I am happy that mixed routine where we regularly switch works for him (he seems to be happy and engaged) and so I think I will continue this way for some time before I experiment with it. I see that the best results we got were when he actually himself figured some stuff and made it by himself. His first machine -- ugly chest to destroy unnecessary items with a noisy clock that runs constantly whether there are items or not -- is still occupying middle of main room of our hobbit hole but I don't think I will touch it, because he was so happy when he got it to work.
  - ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
    For what it’s worth, I’m not actually a game dev it’s just something I’ve been playing with in the last few years as a side hobby. My primary career is infosec/red team, something she’s not playing with (yet) but she’s already picked up a few cheeky habits. My general rule with all this stuff is just to expose them to as many things as possible and if they show ANY hint of interest in something then give them support and unlimited resources towards exploring that topic. Even if it means I’m staying up all night learning some new sport/software/etc so I can give them a solid go at it. This is what my dad did with me and I’ve grown to appreciate how instrumental that was in me finding my passions early and building both a career I love + passionate hobbies from it.
Simulacra 6y ago
My father tried to introduce me to programing when I was 12, BASIC, but it didn't go well, nor did it go well when I tried to learn every subsequent language. Being ADHD I needed instant gratification with minimal effort, to pull me deeper in so I wouldn't bounce to the next thing. Programing was chaotic, hard to keep straight, and frustrating because my ego wouldn't let me say "hey, you don't have all the answers, let's go figure out what we're missing." So my advice: Help him to understand that when an answer to a problem is not visible, it doesn't mean he's dumb, etc. It means he doesn't have the right puzzle piece of information, and needs to find it first. (i.e. a formula, code block, etc.) Be ok with not knowing the answer, and be ok that he will need to learn in order to apply knowledge (like puzzle pieces) to the problem.
- jgwil2 6y ago
  I think it's a problem for a lot of kids that it's hard for them not to be instantly good at something. Learning patience is part of growing up and gaining experience.
sherlockx 6y ago
BBC micro:bit V2 - Will be able to get tangible results very quickly. Start with the simple stuff: https://microbit.org/projects/make-it-code-it/ https://microbit.org/projects/make-it-code-it/ I find games in scratch are complex and require too much programming knowledge to really get something interesting up and running. The micro:bit on the other hand can do interesting lights, sounds, etc with just the drag and drop of a few lines.
- lmilcin 6y ago
  I didn't know micro:bit works with Scratch, thanks a lot!!! I had plans to make some kind of board with STM32 that could be programmed with Scratch but maybe I will put that project off and use micro:bit instead.
  - sherlockx 6y ago
    No prob. I'm going through the same process as you at the moment, have been looking at all the options for a while. Micro:bit seems to be the best fit for young learners.
jgwil2 6y ago
Relevant blog post for a slightly older kid: https://stopa.io/post/246 https://stopa.io/post/246
snaveen 6y ago
I have 2 kids 14 and 12. My 14 year old has started solving medium level leetcode problems (which I am happy about). Talk to them often about code, technology etc.One thing that helped IMHO spending a lot of time in solving math problems (AOPS) , which made think through hard problems and had to grind through solutions which took time. My kids love Big Bang Theory and anything that is geeky. I talk to them about the latest things that are happening in tech like the recent hack and the malware. I recently read this book https://www.amazon.com/But-How-Know-Principles-Computers-ebook/dp/B00F25LEVC https://www.amazon.com/But-How-Know-Principles-Computers-ebo... and sat and drew with my kids and,or , xor and nand gates.Building Mindcraft MOD can be another fun project. Be patient and it helps a lot IMO. Good luck :)
- snaveen 6y ago
  I have got my kids hooked on vim https://vim-adventures.com/ https://vim-adventures.com/
  - boogies 6y ago
    I used the gratis demo of that site to introduce a 7 year old to vi, and hoped I just might have been an accomplice to a world record when he successfully completed vimtutor afterwards. He now uses the skills to do his schoolwork in HedgeDoc (last week I taught him to make macros, which he uses for markdown headings and checklists).
ketanmaheshwari 6y ago
I taught my 15 year old python programming over summer. We used the material provided by this course [1]. It worked out very well for us. We took a little detour at one point and I taught her basic skills to navigate around Linux terminal. Files, directories, editors, basic operational stuff. Then I took another little detour and showed her ropes on git and github. Then we got back to the python course and now I encouraged her to push everything she practices on her github account which she has been doing since. Now that the course is over, we have started working on a project that aims to manage personal income tax. I chose that project because it could start simple and can evolve to be as complex as you want it to be. However, ultimately it is all simple arithmetic. The project is going very well so far. We are discovering new things about taxation almost every single day. We are at a stage where learning vim would really help her so we plan to take another detour next week and start with a vim tutorial until she gets comfortable. [1] https://help.uis.cam.ac.uk/service/support/training/downloads/course-files/programming-student-files/python-courses/pythonab https://help.uis.cam.ac.uk/service/support/training/download...
- dharmab 6y ago
  On the one hand, taxes are boring. On the other hand, pretty much everyone I know wishes they had learned more about how taxes work in high school beyond the very high-level concepts of progressive taxes....
  - ketanmaheshwari 6y ago
    That is what I figured when choosing tax as a project. She will learn programming but also doing tax which is going to be useful to her and perhaps others who will come in her contact over time. And who knows, if the tax project takes off, it could be a revenue generating side hustle for her.
lhorie 6y ago
My kid was playing Lightbot at 6yo. Most programming toys I've seen have similar mechanics. I put together a cardboard version myself to help him practice some concepts (e.g. procedures), with the difference that it uses actual directions (up, down, left, right) instead of the usual forward, turn left, turn right commands, which in my observation was more intuitive. He didn't seem to take much more interest in programming after mastering that, but he did eventually take interest in chess. The reason is that we borrowed a bunch of chess books from the library and he would go read them whenever he was bored, and he would play with his grandpa to try to apply the tricks he was reading about. Point being that having self-study and tight feedback loops seem to help in acquiring proficiency in a skill. Personally, after the most beginner level, I'd start to move away from using game development as a motivator for learning programming simply because after some threshold, the math requirements ramp up substantially (e.g. implementing jumping in a side-scroller requires middle school level math at a very bare minimum). In my own journey, I've found that web development (using only the most vanilla subset of technologies) was a relatively gentle way to get into programming. The syntax is relatively forgiving, the building blocks are high level enough to allow easy creation of interesting interactive things, the built-in tooling in browsers nowadays are amazing and the tight feedback loop is there. YMMV
tannhaeuser 6y ago
Had very good experience using Python as first programming language for 8-9 year-olds; professionally, I don't like it, though. And even though I prefer it over Python as a language, I had disastrous results teaching Javascript to 12-14 year-olds for light browser games. My intent was to bring kids with signs of early stage addiction to mobiles "onto the other side", by looking at games professionally and with creativity (as much as I could, anyway). Turned out fiddling with async and rAF is really a bad fit for learning basics.
ro_bit 6y ago
> We plan to do some more complicated robots and also make our own fun mods for Minecraft (as soon as I figure out how to hook up Scratch to recent version of it). You can't quite hook up Scratch itself to Minecraft (not that I know of, at least), but if you want to use Minecraft as a backbone for this kind of education, you might be interested in Pneumaticcraft, which includes little programmable drones that are programmed using a simple mockup of scratch (https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/pneumaticcraft-repressurized https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/pneumaticcraft-...) or ComputerCraft, which tries to emulate shell scripting and lua in particular (https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/cc-tweaked https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/cc-tweaked). In the future, if you wanted to teach him Java, you could have him develop mods himself through the Spigot, Forge, or Fabric modding APIs.
- lmilcin 6y ago
  There is a mod that allows running Scratch on Minecraft server but it was not ported beyond 1.8 or something. I plan to see how it works and maybe port it or do something like that for recent Minecraft version. I like the idea of Pneumaticcraft. He already knows absolutely everything about Minecraft (can tell the version the map was generated in by looking at it). One Christmas wish was for Santa to help Mojang release 1.17 faster... So I am pretty confident he would like to be able to have some new game mechanics to play with.
GraffitiTim 6y ago
My daughter (who just turned 4) seemed like she might like programming, so I started out having her "program" a stuffed walrus, by telling it whether to go forward, backward, left, or right to get to a piece of food. Her natural inclination was to point to where it should go, so I first taught her that the walrus doesn't understand pointing or the word "here", just the directions. Then we started "programming each other" by telling each other where to go, and I introduced doing multiple steps at once (like "step forward 5 times"). My goal wasn't literally to teach her to program, but just to introduce that way of thinking, which is pretty different from how we normally think in day-to-day life. She was excited about it, so I got her the Osmo programming kit for iPad. You program a little monster walking around, using physical, scratch-style code blocks. She's been excited about programming the monster every day, and is able to (sometimes) do some short programs of a couple blocks. If she learns a bit more, my plan is to show her how to program a simple lego robot with scratch, like one that spins a flag when it sees something pink. I love that idea because with 2 lines of code you can make something really happen in the world, plus she'll be able to come up with new ideas for the robot on her own, and learn about the constraints, sensors, and eventually more basic programming logic.
- lmilcin 6y ago
  I bought this for my 4yo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlnP-8SczF0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlnP-8SczF0 Sorry the vid is in Polish but I think you can get the idea. It is a talking robot that does "missions" where you have to program it to go forward, backward or turn, take objects from the map, etc.
  - rahimnathwani 6y ago
    You reminded me of a robot I had as a kid in the early eighties. It had some rubber keys on the top (similar texture to the rubber buttons on a Sinclair Spectrum, but smaller). You could program it with a sequence of moves (IIRC forward, turn right, turn left, pause). The robot you linked looks great, with the addition of the missions. But I'm not sure whether it's available in the US, so I ordered this one instead: https://www.amazon.com/Fisher-Price-Code-n-Learn-Kinderbot/dp/B07MFRD29W https://www.amazon.com/Fisher-Price-Code-n-Learn-Kinderbot/d...
throwaway201103 6y ago
I got into programming at around middle-school age, with no particular guidance from my parents beyond general encouragement. I have three kids and none of them are interested in programming. It's fine to support and encourage something your kids are interested in, and to give them opportunities to try things and discover those interests. But be careful you're not pushing them into something just because you like it. Your kids are independent human beings and may be interested in very different things than you are, or than their siblings are.
benibela 6y ago
I learned programming when I was 8 years old from books and experimenting Mostly helpful was that I had a 386, QBASIC and GORILLA.BAS, but not much else. No games and no internet
- lmilcin 6y ago
  I also learned from books (and no actual computer for many years). But I don't think that's a good goal for today's world. There is absolutely no way books are going to compete with shining rectangles so one must find a way to integrate new technology to get kids hooked on something more productive.
shireboy 6y ago
I'm in exactly the same boat, and doing very similar to you. My son is 11 and daughter 8. Both do Code.org and/or Scratch fairly regularly. Son wants to get into modding Minecraft, but honestly I'm a little annoyed with how shady and complicated that process is. Or maybe I'm just too old to "get it". I don't discourage him from it, but haven't been able to teach him that as much. Son also recently bought with his own money a Arduino starter kid off amazon. You can get an arduino, LCD, servo, LEDs, etc. for 30-40$. We've taken it a step at a time and go through various concepts, etc. For example, I talked to him about 'rubber duck debugging' (ie explain the program to a rubber duck or plus toy line by line), semicolons, code blocks, etc. This has been great for learning real C and tinkering with electronics. I plan to start them on basic web stuff on glitch.me sometime. That should let them build simple websites etc. for free.
- geomark 6y ago
  Have you seen the book "Adventures in Minecraft [1]? Modding Minecraft with Python. I'm working through it with my 10 year old at the moment. Pretty good so far. Nothing "shady" (not sure what you meant by that) and not complicated. [1] https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Adventures+in+Minecraft%2C+2nd+Edition-p-9781119439585 https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Adventures+in+Minecraft%2C+2nd+E...
  - shireboy 6y ago
    Thanks will check it out. By shady I meant the sites filled with ads that you go to to download mods, and the mod installers that I worry about what else they might be installing on my machine. Am I doing it wrong?
    - geomark 6y ago
      Oh yeah, that. This is a book so you don't have a lot of that shady stuff. But you do need to download and install their server code so you can run a Minecraft 1.12 server on localhost. Seems safe and no malware.
- lancefisher 6y ago
theelous3 6y ago
I taught in a coderdojo for a while. As a mentor; unless the kid wants to go, please don't come :) So many uninterested kids from helicopter parents. Kids as young as 6 just absolutely clueless and learning nothing. If you want your kid to program, just buy them an actual computer system with files and a terminal, not some ipad shit, and let them at it. If they code they code. If they don't, you can try teaching them when they're like 13-14 and actually have a bit of brain wattage to back up what you're throwing at them.
- bigmattystyles 6y ago
  >> As a mentor; unless the kid wants to go, please don't come :) This so much. There is no quicker way to turn them off of it permanently whereas they might just not be ready to come to it yet. Alternatively, wait for the kid to be hungry for a snack then have her program an Arduino controlled can opener to open a can of beans. /s
  - TeaDrunk 6y ago
    Places where I didn't expect to see bean dad spicy takes
- stolenmerch 6y ago
  I taught one as well. Always felt horrible because I gave most of my time to the couple of kids who were naturally jazzed about it. It felt like I could have done more to inspire the other kids who didn't seem to care, but maybe I did more good helping the ones who did.
  - theelous3 6y ago
    I didn't waste my time. Of all the kids that came one actually cared. We've kept it touch and I now consider him a friend. He just started comp sci in my country's most prodigious uni, which while it was obviously his own doing - I'm a little proud of :) Then and now, I'm glad I focused on the ones that cared. The investment in them and subsequent payoff for them is extremely valuable. With the others, it wasn't even clear if you were doing more harm than good. I was probably more cutthroat than most because I was the only mentor who showed up week after week, so I had to have strong boundaries.
x87678r 6y ago
I learned to program in middle school and I loved it, you couldn't tear me away from the school Commodore Pet. My kid we played with scratch for a bit and she had fun making some games but it fizzled out after a few weeks. No real love. I gave up. Maybe I'll try again in a few years. There are coding classes and they're all very popular but to me it seems pushy parents signing up their children, none of them seem to enjoy it.
deleted 6y ago
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turtlebits 6y ago
Unpopular opinion, but I am of the mind that my kid (now 8 yo) needs to get a full experience of learning with writing/drawing/reading on paper before I "shortcut" him to doing it on a computer. Same goes for self-entertainment.
- forbiddenvoid 6y ago
  I think this is important. A lot of programming classes or teaching focuses just on the tools, but not really on the goals of what you want to use those tools to do. My daughter is really into Minecraft and has learned that there are mods out there. So, now there is something she actually wants to be able to DO. That's a big part of what drives programming motivation for kids.
  - matt_j 6y ago
    Making a mod is a really good driver for learning development. That's how I got started. It's good that the goal is so unreachable at the start. There's an awful lot to learn and you need to boostrap yourself, somehow, into doing something remotely productive. I never finished my mod, but I spent 2 years learning C++, Photoshop, 3DS Max, Worldcraft, and all manner of other tools on the way. It was great exposure and it never felt tedious because my goal wasn't learning how to program, it was learning how to make a homing missile, or a texture for my fort. :) I wasn't really interested, at the time, in learning how to write a simple bank that could process transactions, or a task list.
contingencies 6y ago
6.5 year old. Cultivating an interest in electronic components through toy disassembly and repair (actually thinking about doing a video channel analyzing low end electronics for fun), no actual circuit design as yet. After achieving literacy and exposure to minecraft, currently having success with co-op puzzle platformers which require multi-step solutions to puzzles (Putty Pals, Koala Kids, Ibb and Obb, Shift Happens, etc.), Crypt of the Necrodancer (turn-based dance pad rhythm game requiring comprehension of algorithms), a short JRPG (A Short Hike) and in terms of actual programming a Steam robot programming game called SMIB. Lots of board games, currently Puerto Rico ("Age: 13+"). Also recommend Sleeping Queens (card game requiring creative deployment of simple equations). Endgame: Shenzhen IO.
arctic_bean 6y ago
I would be cautious about trying to make a child enjoy something you found interesting in your childhood. The world has changed so much, and what interests children today may be significantly different. Get them on the cool high level concepts of today (mobile apps, web apps, machine learning) and over time, they might gain an appreciation of the stuff technology has abstracted away. Some things are just not as important anymore. I'm not a parent (I just graduated) and have not tested my thoughts above. It's also not a direct response at OP, more of something I will definitely keep at the back of my mind. Empathy.
lordnacho 6y ago
I got my kid doing some minecraft python coding, but I wrote out the programs and walked him through it, and then let him change some constants. Those are the most obvious things that you can change with no experience. I also gave him a first mental model of how it works. You have a genie, he sees you want to make a label called "height" and put a integer, 5, in it. He decrements it by 1, places a tower of the height, walks over, etc... until you have a 5,4,3,2,1 triangle. But I don't try to push it too much. I think it's good at age 7 or 8 to be exposed slightly, but unless your kid is a prodigy it ain't gonna click for a while. We just want to marinate them gently for a bit until it hits them. MC is good because he plays it a lot and occasionally it comes up that you want to be able to do something quickly instead of placing hundreds of blocks. Or you want to copy something you built. The MC Python code allows you to write a script that does this.
jennyyang 6y ago
My son picked up Scratch programming over lockdown by taking an Outschool course, and then he joined John Hopkins CTY online courses and has been programming on his own since then purely for pleasure. He has made videos and animations and I'm most shocked by his ability to debug his programs so well. I will give him tips every now and then, especially if he runs into problems, but I largely just let him do whatever he wants. I never forced this on him, it's something he enjoys immensely. I myself didn't learn how to program until after graduating from college, so I know how little value learning programming at an early age is, except as a form of enjoyment. He asked to learn Python but I refused, since I find it weird that he would be learning the same language that I myself am using to earn a living! But the upside is I can always outsource my work to him while I relax. Seriously though, I will teach him when he's ready but right now there's no use case for him to learn.
brutus1213 6y ago
Check out FIRST Robotics. I mentored there and it was great. My own kid .. I have been using snapcircuits and littlebits to spark an interest (they are younger than 5 at the moment). Seems to get them interested.
jazzyjackson 6y ago
When I was a kid I was totally self directed with a bunch of LEGO mindstorms motors and sensors. I would build little carnival games that had all kinds of conditional branches, plus rovers and walking robots with complicated gear trains. I think playing with gears set my mind up for building programs more than dragging the block based if statements on the screen. I can also recommend the classic book "Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas" by Seymour Papert, it talks about the LOGO turtle and has some really powerful ideas about empathy in general, with a special case for thinking from the perspective of a machine.
Aeolun 6y ago
So far I’ve given my two year old a duplo train that you can ‘program’ by putting specific tiles on the track, but the only one he’s shown much interest in is the one that stops the train. It’s early days yet ;)
spacemanmatt 6y ago
They're more interested in math than programming. I'm rolling with it.
herodoturtle 6y ago
Hey man, incredible piece. Your deeply thought out discipline and equally well balanced enthusiasm is a model that instantly resonates with me. Thanks for sharing. I'll share my thoughts, at your invitation, with a disclaimer: My fathering strategy is based largely on my lived experience - because it's what worked for me - and I'm hoping to repeat it with my daughters. For context: I have 25 years of programming experience. Started when I was 11. My folks didn't even know how to turn a computer on, let alone enforce an educational playtime environment. But in my disk-hunting solace, I discovered that DOS 6.22 came pre-installed with this game called Gorillas, and I soon reverse engineered GORILLA.BAS in the pursuit of red bananas. Next thing I knew, I was implementing NeHe's OpenGL tuts, and by age 21, I was building database integration layers for a bunch of local companies - which over time evolved into the company I now run, which has provided my wife and I with a stable source of freedom-providing income for many years. How is any of this relevant!? We all want to be successful, and we all have personal definitions of success. I'm happy to be enjoying mine. And yeah, I'm a dad, so I want my girls to have that same level of success. Which in turn guides my fathering strategy. When I first began reflecting on how to best raise them, I thought about my lived experience as a kid. I was lucky to discover my passion (Zero Cool had something to do with it), but what is important is that I discovered a passion. And then what is equally important is that I had tons of time to pursue my passion at my own pace. My folks were always right there - so I felt safe - but they never interrupted me. Then sometime in my teens I had a vision for a software company and the rest is history. Being exposed to successful and inspirational uncles from a young age helped form my world view extensively. So back to your boy, and how I raise my girls (3 and 6): On a daily basis I expose them to as many different experiences as possible - be they arts, crafts, puzzles, and outdoor fitness - and crucially, I give them space - complete freedom - to pursue knowledge of the world around them at their own pace, based on wherever their interest leads them. In other words my sole job is to create this safe, free, curiosity-breeding environment, and to guide them only when they have questions - ultimately allowing them the freedom to lead and teach themselves. Oh and none of this disciplined routine stuff. This is all day. Every day. My wife and I take turns (mostly to give each other space to pursue our respective careers - she's a healthcare worker - 2020 was rough). We believe that our taking turns has the benefit that our girls get two completely different styles of parenting, which we think will help teach them to adapt. Of course we parent them together too - bath time is the most fun, and my rendition of Let it Snow is the stuff of legends. So far we have learnt that our 3 year old is very peaceful. She's quite serious too - which I absolutely love (I've always been accused of looking too serious). She takes in her local environment with an exploration of every one of her senses, intently. Lately I've been exposing her to an abacus, which is proving to be a recurring interest. As for my 6 year old, she isn't as smart as her sister, but hearing her belt the lyrics to Frozen when I return home from my early morning row puts a joy in my step for the rest of the day that I suspect only other dads will understand. Does this mean performing is her passion? I reckon it's still too early to tell - but perhaps it is, so I take delight in listening to her sing in the car, and she takes delight in singing out the window as we drive past our eternally patient neighbours. So may I ask you - how did you figure out that your boy's passion lies in programming? Or perhaps it would be more fair to ask, so that I may better understand your point of view - what is your goal with your parenting strategy? If programming is indeed your boy's authentic passion, great! If not, well, you're obviously brilliant, so I have no doubt that you'll figure out his passion(s) one day. But I do think his having the freedom to play independently is critical. With my girls, I often have to fight the urges I have to steer their learning in an effort to optimise their pursuit of each potential passion. But over time, I've become somewhat of a zen master at it. I now relish in the opportunity I have to witness them as they find themselves. Heck, I hope it works! Good luck with your boy. He does sound brilliant. I deeply respect the responsibility you mindfully bear.
peterburkimsher 6y ago
I live with a family who have two daughters, age 7 and 9. I was able to rescue some laptops from office trash, running Windows XP. We had a lot of time during lockdowns and in evenings to play - whether that was on computers or with magnet toys, dolls, etc. I first learned programming when I was 7, drawing a cube in Logo on a Mac Plus. I taught myself programming when I was 11, writing AppleScript to rip music from an iPod and download the Bible and Shakespeare books, and turn them into 1000-character Notes so I could share my book with classmates who forgot theirs. Yes, I used eBooks in school in 2003. These notes are just a messy summary, which I'd like to turn into a real curriculum. Some of them were surprisingly fun for all of us (Escargot MSN messenger, binary morse code to send a smiley face using flashing lights, and drawing the result on squared paper). Now they watch a lot of YouTube, but the need to search for things on Google is motivating the 7 year old that reading/writing/typing is actually important. Done: Google Chrome. Bookmarks. Save image. Age of Empires. Worms. Mahjong, Solitaire, eSheep, Asteroid, Alien Force, Bejeweled, stressreducers. Satellites, rocket ships, Lego. Rummikub. Connect 4. Slime, unicorn poo cleaning game. Dancing robot. YouTube Tayo, Miniforce, PJ masks, watchcar, Kaycee and Rachel. Google Images. Escargot MSN messenger server to teach typing. Anna discovered backgrounds, emoticons, nudges, fonts by herself. Your/you're. World map on paper. Maths homework +-*/, >,<,=. Roman numerals. Binary. Additive and subtractive colour mixing. Google doodle for Mother's Day. North Korea: Crossing, friends. Old photos of me, rocket designs, ex-girlfriends. NASA. Kid Pix. Birthdays, contact phone numbers in paper book. Narwhals song. Nyan cat. The Japanese Tradition sushi. Princess Bride. How To Train Your Dragon. Copyright (Charlieissocoollike magic mars bars). TPB, rar. Writing letters, making cards. Drawing stegosaurus. English jokes. External mouse. USB drive. External screen. Headphones. Power bank, USB phone charging. How networks send messages to servers (big computer, bigger than a rocket ship). Wires in walls, under roads, WiFi to space to talk to satellites. My work is building servers. Minecraft. Printing, scanning. Line rider. Pacman, snake, breakout, pinball Webtoons Custom icon design. MS Office, PS Reading on laptop screen: Comics, Bible. Chatterbox Difference between battery and power supply. Jokes emails, short jokes Reddit. FML? TED. Weebl. Minesweeper. Pic slider with photo of me. Bluestacks. Teach Kid Pix again with printer, Paint, PhotoShop to make line drawings for colouring. Teach Logo. Play with it. Google maps for navigation, Google Earth for satellite pictures. Wikipedia about Harry Potter. Web server. Run Pingtype. Teach basic HTML. Then Wordpress.org. Perhaps PHPBB? Field trip to server farm, observatory. Rocket Lab? Build flashing red and blue lights with LEDs and put them on toys. Computer hardware repair? Fit Win7 ultimate IDE disk to desktop PC. YouTube ripping. Music in iTunes. Movies in Kodi? Or VLC? Music creation? Copying photos from phone. Organising photos on computer. KMart, eBay, Craigslist, Amazon online shops. Writing programs beyond Logo. Some JavaScript game; Python web scraping. Charities: WWF, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, UNHCR, UNICEF. Google Drive, Dropbox only after having an email account. Outlook calendar, contacts? For all Anna's animals: Reirei, Titi, Snowy, Bunbun, Koaly, baby koaly, Annabelle, Kang Karen, Liky, Kitty, Uni. Writing documents in Word and printing them. Making graphs in Excel. PowerPoint presentations: lyrics, slides, photos. Typing Chinese, Korean. Lightbulb, power sockets, adaptors. Veggietales, Sesame Street Advanced: not just "good with computers" but actually a dev. Windows: reinstalling, drivers, certificates. Linux: ssh, nano, cat, echo, mv, cp, chmod, tar, sudo. Mac: Time Machine, AppleScript Networking: dd-wrt, ipconfig, DNS, hosts file. TCP sockets. Hardware: common voltages: 1.5, 5, 12, 220. Electroboom. Soldering. Finding V+ and GND. Tracing faults. Virtual machines. Jailbreaking, rooting. XKCD, Hacker News. IRC. YouTube uploads, live streaming. OBS. Audio feedback. Imagemagick, ffmpeg. Tableau, PowerBI These kinds of things can be used for interviews, not only education. Bitmap graphics A1, D1, ... smiley face Code.org is logo Morse code, binary Numberblocks YouTube Babybus super panda youtube Toca Life for Android. Among Us on Android. WeChat. Mathletics.
dscokween 6y ago
There are some great resources with arduino devices and arduino.cc - though it might be a little tricky for 7. I suppose it depends on the kid. Getting some light kits from adafruit and some prebuilt scripts can help, though. Wearable LED tags are a pretty clout-earning trinket for the 7-year-old set. Thonny http://thonny.org http://thonny.org is fun browser based tool for learning things as simple as turtle graphics (anyone else start with LOGO?) or even up to more fully developed programs. My kid and some of her friends did some video game design using the "Bloxels" game, but the (free) app makes the actual box of color pixels mostly irrelevant. I think this is a great way to think of tile based gaming structure and layout in a GUI format without the burden of command line. It's the same sort of appeal as Minecraft target audiences.
deleted 6y ago
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02020202 6y ago
Frankly, you should teach your kids how to socialize. Programming can be picked up whenever one wants but social skills must be developed in the early age.
murgindrag 6y ago
Path for an eight year old (who started at 5): 1) Hour of Code and Blockly, as well as some Blockly Games, age 5-7 2) Khan Academy JavaScript and processing.js at age 7. He's pretty awesome at JavaScript now. The programming courses on Khan Academy are great. I will mention your child needs to be ready for it. At that age, a few months one way or the other is huge, as is having the mechanics of typing and mousing. Next step from there is the book "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software (Developer Best Practices) " and Nandgame, as well as Micro:bit. I recommend against Scratch. It's a rabbithole that goes in the wrong direction. You get stuck in a local minimum, where it's really hard to move onto real programming, and within Scratch, there are a lot of local minima (move to random position).
PebblesRox 6y ago
My kids aren't quite old enough, but I recently enjoyed the following stories: "Haaarg, world!" (writing a vampire-themed number-guessing game with a six-year-old): http://davidbau.com/archives/2005/07/29/haaarg_world.html http://davidbau.com/archives/2005/07/29/haaarg_world.html Madlibs with a 13-Year-Old: https://nedbatchelder.com/text/madlibs.html https://nedbatchelder.com/text/madlibs.html
aantix 6y ago
If he’d like to make a Minecraft mod, a Roblox game or a comprehensive game in Scratch, check out Codakid. Their video walkthroughs explain everything step-by-step. They keep it very basic and assume no prior knowledge. Our 7 year old had a really basic Roblox obby (obstacle course) set up in no time. We played the videos on the iPad, the Roblox dev environment running on my Macbook Pro. That way he could easily go back through the video if he missed something. The courses are worth the money. https://codakid.com/ https://codakid.com/
codyjones 6y ago
One of my kids learned Scratch at home. He tried some local classes, hoping they would teach more advanced material, but they were introductory and he spent his time tutoring the other kids (not a bad lesson in itself!) We briefly tried GameMaker Studio 2, however we had no prior experience and finding out what functions were needed or called made it a high friction experience. He has been playing Minecraft since a young age, and creates elaborate redstone mechanisms. I like how this mixes creativity, spatial planning, and boolean logic, and doesn't require learning a new UI or language. Most recently we tried creating a Minecraft mod in Java using Forge. I cannot state strongly enough: do not do this. The Forge architecture is fundamentally broken, whereby it adds some functionality but otherwise forces you to code directly against decompiled Java classes. Most tutorials only work with a specific version of Forge/Minecraft. There are no release notes or documentation, because there is no API. (To be fair, the Forge aspect is documented, though I only found it useful once I already knew what it was trying to explain.) So what started out as an exciting father-son project became something I dreaded.
mxyzpt1k 6y ago
My kids and I played Warcraft 3 together quite a bit. It came with an editor that let you create custom maps, including the creeps. From about the age of 10 my oldest loved making worlds for the rest of the family to explore. It was enough of a hook that he eventually wanted more than the map editor could offer.
eitland 6y ago
When I have taught kids programming I feel I have been most successful by when I could give a glimpse into the high level workings. Most of the time I don't have many hours so what I try is to inspire by creating something in a few lines and show what it is all about: input, output, calculations, loops and branching and how we can have fun with it. I've used the tools at hand: 20 years ago I used VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) and made a Caesar Cipher, ran it in a debugger. When I taught teenagers in school I mostly used autohotkey. Later I've used Go or Java, even with JSF(!) when that was what I was using at the time. Mostly I try to get as fast as possible to the point were something works, then set a breakpoint and single step through it. One favourite of mine is the good old guessing game that hasn't changed that much since BASIC on C64: > Write a number from 1 to 100: 64 > My number is lower, Try again. > Write a number from 1 to 100: 37 > My number is higher, Try again. > Write a number from 1 to 100: ... etc etc ... You gueesed it! This introduces output, input, loops and if-statements, and you can let the kids have fun with the debugger, looking at the secret number in memory to guess it correctly at first try etc. It can also be done easily in most mainstream languages and frameworks that you have a working environment for, from VBA through WinForms through Java or Python console apps to serverside or frontend web applications. Also FWIW: Kids around here (Norway) often have some programming at school it seems - even before grade 7. It is mostly scratch variants I think, but I'm also happy to see that at least some teachers have shown them how to open the console in the browser (Inspect Element) and have fun by "hacking" the html and css.
ropable 6y ago
If you'd like to reinforce some of the same mental muscles used during programming, you might consider certain tabletop games as a good way to do so during play. There is a game out there called Robo Rally which is excellent for the purpose, where you "program" your robot via a series of cards. It's not just for kids, being enjoyable by adults as well.
zmmmmm 6y ago
It's interesting I have had little success in garnering enthusiasm for coding with my kids. I have taken the route of giving them exposure to it and occasional incentives to go a bit further, but never pushing it much beyond that. I wonder if technology these days is just so advanced that they do not see the link between the basics that programming starts out with and the apps they use day to day. For me, at 10 I could write a program myself in basic that was within range of the actual games and professional applications that were being made at the time. That is just so far from possible these days.
RocketSyntax 6y ago
Just make sure that is not all that you do together. Balance.
daniellarusso 6y ago
This made my day. Thank you for sharing this. I had a Tomy Tutor computer that I made my mom enter BASIC programs into, but she did not have any development experience. I really like your to-do list to keep track of accomplishments and stay within scope.
ajfjrbfbf 6y ago
Make sure they're bored out of their mind all the time. No Fortnite, no YouTube, no tablet. (steers them clear of ADHD too) Either they go play outside with their friends or they hack what they can on some outdated/underpowered device you give them (Arduino, TI84, Arch linux boot screen, etc). Read them technical books before bed.
- djeiasbsbo 6y ago
  > "steers them clear of ADHD too" Could you elaborate on that a bit more? I have ADHD and am very interested in anything about it but have never heard anything like that.
  - splintercell 6y ago
    Not OP, but I kinda know what he's talking about, here's a shortened version of how it works: - Stop drinking coffee - Get rid of Social media notifications and stuff - Actively aim to bore yourself when the day starts, don't look at the phone. - Then suddenly you'll notice that your brain is dying to do something interesting, so much that you'll start reading toothpaste's label while brushing your teeth. Start building up stories about how that label came to be (and all that is ok, as long as it isn't jumping around). - Then open your computer and the task you want to do, and find yourself be VERY INTERESTED in doing that.
    - djeiasbsbo 6y ago
      I see.. but that's something else. These are strategies to not get distracted, actually a big part of ADHD is having these strategies, otherwise there would be no productivity whatsoever. However, the OP is talking about distractions which cause ADHD to be present, something I have not heard about.
unemphysbro 6y ago
My brother is 11 and he's more of a hands-on type of person (he's built some furniture, wooden stencils and functional crossbow; terrifying for our parents) and doesn't like to sit in-front of a computer for more time then school necessitates. Because of this I figured I wouldn't force him to learn programming, rather nudge him towards it. I bought him a Tynker membership and he seems to enjoy that. It seems like a fun, gentle introduction into programming. https://www.tynker.com/ https://www.tynker.com/
SteveNuts 6y ago
Haven't seen it mentioned here but maybe graduate him to Factorio. Has a lot of "complex systems" thinking and also has the combinators to play with.
generalcalm 6y ago
It is awesome that you are having fun with your son, and actively curating a path to fun with programming. It is very likely he will look back at the time you spent with him in this area with great fondness. If he wants to continue to program later or not, this quality time is the most important. Kids want to spend time with their dads.
markc 6y ago
Didn't work: - BASIC, Ruby, Python, Java setups + intros, tutorials. - LEGO Mindstorms - Scratch, Squeak - Coding classes / camps Note that I "made these things "available" but never pushed. I'd set up the environment, show him to to edit and run the code, and pointed him to tutorials. After some time went by I'd show him the next thing. Rinse and repeat. Worked: A Texas Instruments programmable calculator. He read the manual, played with it a bit, then found out he could automate some of his homework. Then found out he could make simple games. Then fairly impressive games. After that, he did a bunch of Minecraft programming and loved it. Fast forward a decade and he smokes through Advent of Code without breaking a sweat, and is a co-founder and CTO. I.e. all my efforts to pique interest didn't have any effect that I could see. He had to find his own way to it.
- compscistd 6y ago
  A classmate of mine in HS always played with his TI in class and I had a similar calculator (TI-84 plus silver edition). I asked him what he was doing and he introduced me to basic logical operators to make math class easier. That’s how it all began for me. Will, if you’re reading this, I owe you my career!
- mywittyname 6y ago
  > A Texas Instruments programmable calculator. He read the manual, played with it a bit, then found out he could automate some of his homework. Then found out he could make simple games. Then fairly impressive games. Some thing never change. This is literally how I started programming too. "Hey, I can automate my homework" -> "Wait, I can write a program to play poker with all the time I saved by not doing homework."
  - jacobkg 6y ago
    Same here. Twenty years ago my dad gave me a TI-85 and told me I could program it. I remember being stuck for a while until I learned that “string” meant text. The first game I built was hangman, using “split mode” where you could show half the screen as a graph and half as text
chondl 6y ago
I've started working with my third child who is 10 years old. The older two weren't interested, but my youngest is really interested. We first tried to use Scratch and some of the online learning sites, but they all drove me crazy because things would break or wouldn't work like the videos. We switched to Python using Pygame Zero which is going MUCH better. Definitely recommend Python: using whitespace for blocks is very understandable and easier than balancing {}. At 10 my child is able to exclusively drive the keyboard and make many of the changes he wants. We've been doing this for about 6 weeks spending 1-2 hours on Sat and Sun. My older son is much more interested in mechanical engineering so I'm mentoring his robotics team for programming.
asicsp 6y ago
Not personal experience, but I've been listening to Teaching Python podcast [0] They talk about setting up the environment, making it exciting for the kids to come and play, creating expectations, letting kids figure out instead of always answering every question, etc. [0] https://www.teachingpython.fm/ https://www.teachingpython.fm/
beamatronic 6y ago
They mastered it and then lost interest.
_ouml_ 6y ago
Two months ago I bought a starter kit with some electronics: breadboards, LEDs, cables, transistors, resistors, etc... My 8/9yo daughter really got hooked, and since then I've bought all kinds of logic gates, switches, timers, flipflops etc... I use the videos from Ben Eater as inspiration but I haven't told my daughter that you can build a programmable CPU using this stuff. I don't want to spoil the surprise. After learning binary numbers, I asked her if she could build a circuit to add two digits. She designed her own version of a full adder, chained 4 of them together, and now has her own 4-bit calculator. The cool thing is that she will explain it in detail to anybody who wants to listen. But she is also quickly discovering that modt people don't know binary... What I like most about this is that she is now hacking independently, and having here own ideas. At some point I might teach her some formulas, but she hasn't shown interest there. And the occasional LED burning up isn't going to make me bankrupt (-; Tl;dr: breadboard electronics is cool, worked with my 9yo daughter
winrid 6y ago
When I was seven, I was into plumbing, electronics books, and maybe Barney. When we went to libraries, I would get books on the local jurisdictions sewage system, or how to rewire your house. I was happy that my parents let me take the occasional thing apart. But they never really guided any of it. I remember at around 12 the Comcast repairman told me "the real money is in software". I thought - software, what's that? Then I probably went to work on our garden or something. I didn't start coding until around 16, and that was because I had old computers that I wanted to use, and didn't really know about pirating windows, so begins using Linux, running PHP webservers ETC. Point is - figure out what they enjoy and help them enjoy it. I couldn't even get friends that want to learn to learn, even when they are practically homeless. It's hard for some of us to fathom, but some people just don't have the drive to do this kind of thing. You also can't force it, all you can do is give context.
sharieskenas 6y ago
I recently released this C programming book that is good for kids called A Day in Code: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08LG7DW4C https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08LG7DW4C It's a picture book that tells a story with C programs that represent real-life situations. It teaches C programming with the code examples that make up the story. It has full-page illustrations like a normal picture book! I'm writing a Python version now: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/914595512/a-day-in-code-python https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/914595512/a-day-in-code... I hope these are fun ways for kids to get started in programming. :)
Ewigkeit 6y ago
My daughter has been "coding" since she was three and my son since he was two. They began with the code and go robot mouse, where you push arrows in the direction and order you want the mouse to go totally ignoring the course and just trying to get the mouse to the cheese on the floor. Next I bought Cubetto, which comes with a board with pieces that give instructions and you place on the board. Mostly one kid sits on the floor and the other will "program" Cubetto to come over to the them. Now my daughter is five and plays with Scratch Jr. She makes short clips of characters moving around, recording and timing the characters voices, allowing presents and balloons to magically appear, she's not tying in code but instead uses "graphical programming blocks". She also likes codeSpark. My kids do not distinguish programming from play. I intend to keep up programming = play which I will later transition to a more advanced version of, "I want to make a thing, writing a program will allow me make it." than what my daughter is currently doing. Make it fun, and don't do much in the way of suggestions/feedback, just let them know you'll answer any questions and let them make mistakes.
- weisbaum 6y ago
  The entire website for Cubetto is out of stock. Guess we'll have to stick with the Osmo for now...thanks for sharing your experiences.
taneq 6y ago
This is going back a long way but for myself, I never had any interest in programming until there was something I wanted to make (in my case, games on my calculator). That gave me the motivation to teach myself programming. Even now I always need a project with a goal in order to get excited about code.
MarcScott 6y ago
Microsoft have a block based language called Makecode, that is very similar to Scratch, and which you can use to mod Minecraft. You can also use it with Lego I think, and some other hardware like the micro:bit, if you'd like to do some robotics. https://minecraft.makecode.com/ https://minecraft.makecode.com/
lancefisher 6y ago
Okay, I was about to go to bed, but read this on my phone and thought I really should reply. My son is 13. We started Scratch when he was 5. It was very slow at first, and the key was helping him do what he wanted to quickly without having to mess around too much. He just needed a short feedback loop. His attention span was pretty small, but he was really into it. Scratch Junior on the iPad was a good way to start before moving to the computer with the mouse and keyboard. If he wanted to do something and I didn't know how right away, I'd figure it out later and then next time we sat down I could show him the easy way to do it. After a while he started learning more and more and eventually played with every block to see how it worked. I also showed him how to look at other projects in the community. When he got farther along, this really helped him. He could see how others built platformer engines and other things, and then adapt them to his own projects. I had the same idea as you with making a plan, writing it down on paper, and then going to the computer. This really didn't work. He just needed time to play and explore with the tools and get better and better with them until they became natural. Now, for more complicated things, he will write down notes on paper, but he still just goes at it on the computer for a lot of problems. Finding the next step after Scratch was a challenge. We did some JavaScript together. He would understand it if we walked through it side by side. He could modify some of the code, but it's really asking a lot to get up and running with HTML, CSS, and JS along with a console, and editor, and browser to debug. It's too many moving parts. So I worked on finding an all-in-one IDE tool for him. We tried Unity which was too complicated. PICO-8 which was close to being a fit, but a tough transition from block programming to typing out code. We tried Fuze4 on the Switch with a keyboard, but never went past the basics. Ultimately, we found GameMaker Studio from YoYo Games to be a great next step. It did take some effort, but they have block programming and some similar concepts to Scratch. It is more advanced and somewhere between Scratch and Unity, but it has stuck well. He is experimenting and building more and more complicated games. He is constantly asking for game ideas and wanting to share how he programmed one thing or another. I'll give him ideas by mixing together concepts from different games. Sometimes he'll just have fun re-implementing a game he saw a YouTuber play. Right now, he's building his own Snakebird. Listening to how he solved things really keeps him excited about it. A couple months ago he really impressed me. He wanted to make Minecraft mods so he searched for some tools, ended up finding MCreator (https://mcreator.net/ https://mcreator.net/), downloaded it, and got it running all on his own. I've looked into it a little since, and this is a really great next step if your kid wants to build Minecraft mods. It's like Scratch for Minecraft mods. Block programming etc. It's open source and looking for contributors. Check it out. He'll also get into anything that has a level editor. He loved the editor for the iPad game Badland. He is really into Mario Maker 2 now. Now that I think about it, the Badland editor probably helped quite a bit in the transition from Scratch to GameMaker. Another tip is make sure to set some time aside for creating. We used to do screen time and off-screen time, but my kids started to just watch their favorite YouTubers or play the same games (Minecraft and Terraria). So now we have screen time, creative time, and off-screen time. During creative time they can be on the computer or iPad, but only using a subset of programs that I've deemed "creative". For my 13yo, that's Gamemaker or MCreator. For my 7yo, that's using redstone in Minecraft or other educational type content. He has some music making apps he enjoys. My 7yo and 13yo are a quite a bit different with this. My older son got into all of it very early and really enjoyed it. The 7yo doesn't have the same interest - and that's okay. I'm not going to force it, but I will nudge every now and then to make sure we've at least tried different things.
zwm 6y ago
7: minecraft taught basic logic with red stone. 8: tinkered with available tools to hack eg. lego games. 9: godot programming via youtube video series. 10: ??? will see. If a kid is bored, they'll think anything is fun. Key is to have a video game schedule; before that, "technology" is off limits. But the loophole is to allow access to certain apps (blender, godot, krita, puzzles, etc) before tech schedule if it doesn't conflict with daily responsibilities such as homework. None of these were forced but encouraged indirectly. Again, if a kid doesn't get hook on instant gratification with passive consumption of entertainment, the change is big your child will turn to exploration when bored...programming might be the natural direction given light encouragement.
jtwaleson 6y ago
This holiday season I rebooted https://game.stackybird.com https://game.stackybird.com (try on desktop). It's a project I started years ago when my son was born to teach him the programming mindset. He's now 7 and it seems to be the right age. It teaches kids programming basics in a fun and gradual way. Right now there are only 6 levels, but I plan to have hundreds. Levels unlock instructions and with new instructions you can solve new levels, or old levels in a better way. I'm not good at design so I picked the bird from flappy bird and the colors from 2048. I will probably need to change that. Also I started the project in 2014 and bought the domain in 2018, but now there's a trademarked app with the same name in the app store. Will probably need to change the name too. Too bad this thread pops up now, next week the app would be more impressive ;)
veidr 6y ago
TL;DR for my family: - Scratch (https://scratch.mit.edu https://scratch.mit.edu) - Swift Playgrounds for iPad - Mario Maker (Nintendo Switch version) I haven't given my boys any pressure to code yet (they are only 8, 6, and 3) but the oldest one has a natural interest, it seems, and that seems to be making the middle one interested too. The oldest got his start with a local after-school class where they make robots out of lego-like blocks with motors and program simple behaviors like driving around, drawing pictures. Then his brother also wanted to. The older one has now graduated to writing 2D platformer games with Scratch at that class — one day I noticed they were just logging into the regular free Scratch, and he knew his login and password, so he now logs in from home after school to work on it sometimes. That class is still like "drag blocks around to make loops and conditionals" but he later found the Swift Playgrounds app on iPad and worked through those exercises. That is a lot more textual, and you learn basic constructs like variables, for loops, if/else, and functions. And he learned somehow very quick that there is a high success rate of postponing bedtime by saying, "OK, but wait, just let me debug this bug in my program a bit more." ;-) His 6-year-old brother seems to be following in his footsteps, not interested in Swift Playgrounds yet (if ever) but keenly interested in replicating and then improving on his older brother's Mario Maker levels, and he is interested in the games his older brother is making at the class (where he himself is still doing the robot making course) and he intends to do that same course next year. The 3-year-old's programming is still limited to standing in front of the TV and shouting "HEY SIRI TV OFFFFFF!!!!!" I'm a life-long software engineer and intend to keep doing that, so it is gratifying to see them doing this. As some other people have said in this thread, as a parent you can't (or shouldn't) try to "make them become software engineers" but at the same time, demanding basic competence in programming (e.g. being able to write a program to do some kind of calculations on a CVS credit card statement, and debug that in a graphical debugger) seems to me akin to, say, making sure your kids learn how to swim. My kids understand (well, the older two at least, the little one maybe later) that they will be expected to be able to swim competently, read rudimentary sheet music and be able to reproduce it on a piano keyboard, ride a bicycle, safely operate an automobile, and write software programs at a competent level for their age. They don't need to be spectacular at any of those, or pursue a career relating to them; they don't even need to be interested. But I think those are basic human competencies, and it is fine to require your kids to achieve them.
kabirgoel 6y ago
Give your kid a 3 year old Android phone. I’m 18, and my interest in programming started with rooting and custom ROMs. I learned a ton about shell scripting, file systems, and operating systems just from trying to get my lemon Android device to run a little faster. The best part was that since my motivation was fixing my phone, I didn’t need my dad to push me. Sometimes putting someone in a situation where they have to solve a complicated problem is the best way to get them to learn.
soferio 6y ago
I got a raspberry pi to boot up into Commodore 64 BASIC. My son got into it pretty quickly. We then moved to python and scratch. Scratch has been the most addictive so far.
jiux 6y ago
I have explained to my daughters programming is basically a tool-belt that helps one build something they want.. like how paint brushes are simply tools to help create a painting. For example, I was showing my 7 year old daughter the other night how she could automate her Roblox character with a simple AppleScript in order to move it every so often so that it could gain points while avoiding timeout from being idle, all while she could go and do other things around home. She smiled pretty big. In short, IME showing how programming helps achieve an outcome has worked best. A general interest may compliment.
catcontent 6y ago
maybe this is just an outlier experience, but I deny that teaching (like telling somebody how to do something) is a successful approach at all. a widely underestimated ressource is that the learner wants to learn it. so, the best you can do is to show your owh profit from programming. then wait for questions. and I mean wait. I have seen intelligent parents push their kids and really getting them annoyed and thus unwilling to learn stuff. very good for questions you can not answer yourself is https://zen.coderdojo.com/find https://zen.coderdojo.com/find here, kids can (but don't have to) work on their own projects, ask highly qualified experts and -- even more importantly -- watch other kids working on their projects. plus: I have seen 6 year old kids presenting their project to 150 people at the coderdojo without even realizing what skill they acquired. it boils down to 3 aspects: Mastery, Autonomy and Purpose from my "teaching experience" with adults, giving the responsability to the learner is the important part. I hold seminars starting with an empty document. then I ask people to ask questions, otherwise the seminar would be over within the next 10 minutes. people instantly wake up and start to take responsability.
erikbye 6y ago
I am teaching my thirteen-year-old nephew programming. We use Python to nail the basics of variables, conditions, loops, branching, functions, classes, etc. And Unity and C# to make games and learn some physics, vector math and matrices. The length of our sessions is two hours. The beginning of a session always starts with a recap of the previous. Asking some questions to make sure he has the correct understanding. He always types in everything. I never touch the keyboard/mouse.
blunte 6y ago
I used Python and taught my 10yo son by working with him to design a text adventure game. While we were doing it together, he was engaged and enjoying it. His ability to understand and learn was never a challenge. The challenge was that actually programming was apparently not his interest. He was more interested in story and puzzle design, and as he got older those interests expanded while programming just completely fell away. Most people could program if they wanted, assuming they had an adequate teacher. But if they do not have the desire and drive, then it's not going to happen. Edit - now I also recall that before the Python game effort, I got him started on Scratch, gave him a goal to make a simple Mario clone, and left him to it. A day later, he had made good progress but quickly lost interest and no longer wanted to work on it or talk about it.
jvvw 6y ago
I have a 7 year old and a 10 year old and have done lots and lots of volunteering teaching kids to code (via the Raspberry Pi Foundation's Code Club and CoderDojo schemes). My boys are very into building things with redstone in Minecraft and I've done quite a bit of programming with them. What I would say is that 7 is still very young - the important thing at this age is that they are enjoying it, which it sounds like your son is and with you as a mentor, I don't think you can go too far wrong. If you weren't a programmer, I might be pointing you in various directions but don't think I need to. I'm mostly thinking about resources that might be helpful. It's worth being aware that on the Raspberry Pi there is a Python API which might be a good way to introduce Python for a Minecraft fan. There are some articles about in old issues of Hello World magazine (PDFs available for free here: https://helloworld.raspberrypi.org/issues https://helloworld.raspberrypi.org/issues). You might find the magazine interesting generally. There's also a book Adventures in Minecraft by Martin O'Hanlan and David Whale. Typing ability is one of the big issues with python at that age though I find (that and the ability to make syntax errors which you don't get in Scratch!). In terms of Scratch, there's the Code Club curriculum https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/codeclub https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/codeclub which isn't perfect, but is fairly well road-tested. The BBC Microbit is also fun and not too expensive if you are looking for something a bit different and has a visual programming interface. I prefer that to lots of the robot kits etc. out there because it's so flexible and you can extend it into electronics if you want to. Having said that Lego Boost went done extremely well with our boys and is well thought through, but not cheap. But the important thing at this age is that they enjoy it, so I think there's an art in terms of following what interests them and encouraging them with that.
paublyrne 6y ago
Not a parent, but I was a child, and want to give my perspective from my memories learning my father's profession; writing. We always had computers typewriters around the house, and I was fascinated by the look, smell, and sound of my father writing. And I just began doing it myself, probably with a small amount of guidance from him around the mechanics. I ended up getting pretty good at prose by the time I was 9 or 10 and wrote a novella when I 14 (which was thankfully never published or distributed!). I don't write for a living but the skills stayed with me and of course have been very useful in all kinds of avenues. I think, though, that if I had been encouraged to do 90 minute learning sessions with my father, I wouldn't have been so interested. There was a joy in finding my own path into that world, and if/when I do have children of my own this is something I will keep in mind that there's a fine line between sparking interest, and trying to force an interest.
zelos 6y ago
Just to help set expectations: 1.5 hours a day is a lot for a 7 year old. That's probably not much less than a full school day of actually sitting down and learning. I have taught my oldest son programming via Scratch, Python, a Raspberry Pi robot and bits of Khan Academy and Code.org. He started about 7 I think, but I've always been really careful to ensure that the interest in it is coming from him and not from me. He asks me to teach him and I do. I think with all things like this, you have to ask what the opportunity cost is. What is he not learning because he's spending the time doing this?
thesauri 6y ago
Not a parent, but sharing my experiences as a kid. GameMaker (https://www.yoyogames.com/get https://www.yoyogames.com/get) was my gateway drug to programming. It's an environment for making games that covers everything from programming the game logic, to designing game "rooms", the sprites and sounds in one package. I was introduced to the software by my father at roughly the age of 9 to 11 and we did the introductory tutorial together. After that, I continued messing around mostly on my own. What in hindsight turned out to be quite brilliant, was that GameMaker supports both drag-and-drop programming and scripting. I was able to start off by using drag-and-drop, but quickly realized that scripting was the way to go for more complex logic. The combined environment made it a rather smooth transition, as I only had to add the scripting part to an otherwise familiar graphical environment. It seems like GameMaker is still around, so that can definitely be something to check out. Making games is fun and I remember having great times in the community, too.
tsp 6y ago
I’m not a parent, but I have some good memories of my father teaching me how to program the game «Snake» in basic as a kid (10 years old maybe). We started talking about what we want to build, and he showed me how to draw things to the screen. We then iterated and improved the game more and more (within a couple of hours). I had no prior experience with coding and very much enjoyed seeing how things progressed and how you can make the computer react to keyboard presses. While I was not able to write the game myself (or properly understand how to write simple applications) it helped me to get an idea how applications are made and a basic way of thinking. Also, for me this was really motivating and inspiring. In retrospect, I like the project-based approach—building something from start to finish in a couple of hours. If something sticks there is still enough time to go into detail and learn the basics, but learning the basics is so much easier if the motivation is high, which for me it was seeing that one can build a game oneself in a couple of hours.
herbst 6y ago
I dont have kids. But in case in wasnt mentioned already check linda luikas and her ruby children books
fsloth 6y ago
Son got through Scratch book and then got bored. Has not been interested at all in programming after that. Daughter did some scratch and some web programming and then got bored. Lego Mindstorms - son built through the robots that were included and then got bored. Hour of code (both) - did some basic exercises and then got bored. Both love to build stuff in Minecraft and enjoy making quite elaborate machines there (elaborate in the context of Minecraft). Both are doing fairly well in school. Programming just does not seem to be intrinsically interesting to them. And that's just fine. Basic language skills and math is far more important for professionals when they get to workforce rather than low level tinkering in the general context. If they don't show inbuilt desire to program I don't see any reason why I should push them there. I started programming only after turning 20 and have a pretty good career at it. If you love programming it's never too late to start :)
nutanc 6y ago
Got my 6 year old to write a python program. He was so excited the computer did the homework for him. This is a fun way to introduce programming. Example session: >>>number_of_passengers_travelling=672 >>>number_of_passengers_got_down=21 >>>total_remaining=number_of_passengers_travelling-number_of_passengers_got_down >>>print(total) His only question was, do I have to type so much and I said yes. There is no way I am letting my kid name variables v1 and v2 :)
- ramtatatam 6y ago
  Homework at the age of 6? Wow, I'm glad I did not have real homework until I was 8ish
FraKtus 6y ago
I tried several things but what got the interest of my daughter(10) is code.org She also uses it at school, and she regularly enjoys working with it on her own. Because she seems to go more toward the graphical creative side, I made her work on the logo of a personal project I work on at the moment, and she did enjoy it a lot. Sometimes I ask her to edit some c++ code I work on and see how the result is when running the code from Xcode; we have a lot of fun doing that!
demygale 6y ago
Didn’t work. I could tell from an early age that my son wasn’t interested in coding. But still I showed him what I did and the basics of programming. In high school when he had a class that required Java programming, I helped with the assignment. But it was always drudgery. Eventually I convinced him to look into engineering professions and he went for a year to a top engineering school in environmental engineering. But he never had an engineer’s mind. He switched schools, got a degree in biology and now works with animals. I knew he would most likely work with animals from the age of five. I just wanted him to see other options. He’s very, very happy in his profession and that’s rewarding to see.
36 6y ago
Use Khan Academy and told him to do self-teaching, for self-teaching is a must for any developers.lol
michalalbrycht 6y ago
For my kids (8 and 6) we started with "hour of code" from code.org. They especially liked the one with maze solving: https://studio.code.org/hoc/1 https://studio.code.org/hoc/1 of course we tried others later.Then we tried some ScrachJr - they really like creating short clips with all family members as characters. ScratchJr makes it easy to use face photographs on animated characters. They could easily spend 3 hours doing just that which proves that they must really like it (it's hard for my 6 year old son to concentrate on one thing only for that long). Now we are trying a programmable robot from Lego Boost (set 17101). They like to play with it for sure but we have it only since Christmas so that's not that long.
ramtatatam 6y ago
I remember when my addiction to computers started and I got there because of two things: 1. where I live they were very expensive at the time and so very rare 2. Primarily I wanted to play games on them (things like Heroes II on Intel 386) At some point I had enough of games and as a side effect I had to reinstall my system so many times (thanks to win-cih and other viruses) that I started thinking about building my own OS. Childish dreams :) but it got me to C programming and that's how it started for me. So now, decades later, I have my own children and I think how on Earth am I going to get them attracted to technology when it's sooo mainstream that it's not mysterious anymore. It does not feel like adventure to my children, it's their environment. So instead of thinking much I started with things I remember from my childhood - simple instruction-less lego bricks, or more modern geomag, whatever else that comes without ikea-type instruction so my children can just build stuff. I'm yet to think the step-two.
devinrhode2 6y ago
This whole thread makes me think that we should give our kids open source games, built and run locally.
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295 points by lmilcin 6y ago

itronitron 6y ago

Each of my children started coding through Minecraft and Scratch, so I think that is a good path. I tend to let them pursue (or not) their own interests so I just make resources available to them. It's worth emphasizing to your child the distinction between 'technology exposure' tutorials, and creative work as children tend to care more about making stuff and can find some tutorials a bit tedious. Luckily there are some high quality tutorials out there now, the mid-range and lower quality tutorials will just frustrate them. Related to that, I would advise you to not let them enroll in any 'technology' classes in school as that will kill their interest since the educators will likely be underwhelming. Also, at a certain age, if you give them too much attention for their interests they will stop pursuing it, so enjoy the next few years :)

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
MyHypatia 6y ago
Can you provide links of some of the high quality tutorials you have found?
- itronitron 6y ago
  Arduino Starter Kit is very good. CodeHS is also good but expensive for families as they tend to sell to schools. YouTube is also a good resource for some things. We haven't found any good programming books yet although they did enjoy the 'Lauren Ipsum' book.
lmilcin 6y ago
Electronics is my hobby and I am fortunate to have decently equipped electronics lab all with a dedicated desk. So I was pretty worried when he came asking to get him signed up for a robotics class (3h every Saturday for couple of months). I already have some ideas how I want to introduce him to robotics but I am not going to intervene here. Just made sure he knows he can always come back and tell me he is no longer interested in the classes and we will just cut it. As to creative work, I figured out already it is better if I do most of figuring out how to solve some problems (and let him solve just enough to not get bored with it) and he is spending time figuring out what kind of features we want in the games, for example. We then discuss what is and what is not feasible and how things can be working and I still try to make sure he understands how the program works. I know he understands at least some of it because he can take educated guesses at how to modify the program to change it to do what he wants. This seems to be really fun for him so I plan for it to stay that way for some time.

etherio 6y ago

I'm not close to being a father, but I can provide the experience of having learned not that long ago At first my dad put me a bit on CodeAcademy [0] which taught me tons of basics but didn't really get me hooked. What really got me into coding was by thinking of a way I could use it to build something related to my interests or that would be useful for me. That seems to be what you're doing with the games by linking it to something he's interested in so that's nice. It can really be anything though, and you should try to show him the enormous area of things he can do with coding. In my case I wanted to do my english homework faster, so I tried building a very simplistic program that could find literary devices (metaphors, similes, alliteration) etc... in the literature texts I had to study. Also you should make sure you don't force it and that the passion and interest comes from him, which seems to be the case with the way he asked for books about coding. [0]: https://www.codecademy.com/ https://www.codecademy.com/

lmilcin 6y ago
Thanks for you point of view. I pretty much figured out not forcing anything is rule #0 for this project. I would rather be showing how we can have even more fun using programming. The scratch game we are working on has Minecraft graphics and sounds on it and some of the rules derived from Minecraft. Simple arcade game but suddenly much more interesting because it has Minecraft element to it. And instead of trying to force him to solve the problems I give him about 2s before I suggest the answer to the problem. I would rather want to spend time showing he can think of anything he wants and we can make it work (well... most of time).

SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago

Kind of different but I started learning programming while in primary school. I mostly messed around trying to learn how to make games in Unity. I didn't actually learn a whole lot of programming this way but it probably improved my interest in the subject and then I eventually discovered code academy which actually taught me how to program. In between unity and codeacademy I tried a bunch of books but none of them really got me to understand what was happening so I didn't learn much from them.

colinmhayes 6y ago

Your kid is 7. I'm pretty sure hat I was eating dirt when I was 7. If he has showed you he's interested in programming then go ahead, but make sure you're not projecting your own interests onto your kid. It'll lead to resentment in 7 or 8 years.

jgwil2 6y ago
1.5 hours a day seems like an immense amount of time for that age, but if the kid is pushing for it, good for them both.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Kids have a different relationship with time. As a kid who was intrinsically interested in programming, 1.5 hours was a joke and a non-starter. I didn't really feel comfortable doing any coding until I could secure 2-3 hours of time for it, and I would easily spend 8+ hours on the rare days when my parents were otherwise engaged and didn't call me away to do other things.
  - jgwil2 6y ago
    At age seven? Again, if the kid is up for it then great, but I think most kids that age have a hard time committing that amount of time to any single activity.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      It's not commitment if it's voluntary play.
- sjg007 6y ago
  My 7 years olds will spend 1.5 hours minimum playing roblox and minecraft. So... I think designing and building a game with them is a great idea!
  - jgwil2 6y ago

chasd00 6y ago

The most success i've had with my 8 year old is building games in Roblox and the LUA scripting that comes along with that. We also have written some MicroPython to drive a small rover. With kids, or my kids at least, you have to be able to show some tangible results quickly or else they get bored. ...kind of like dealing with your boss. another thing that my 8 year old is really into that surprised me is networks. Explaining how networks work and how he can start a minecraft server for him and his brother to play but his school friends can't because of the "firewall" has him on the edge of his seat hah. edit: i want to add that i don't bother with explaining programming concepts like object-oriented design or algorithms just very simple cause/effect. Then to simple if condition effect. I get excited and end up overcommunicating and then boring my kids, it's like trying to start a carbureted engine without flooding it. You have to do give them just enough info to get started and hope it catches.

leesalminen 6y ago
Networking was what really got me to do a deep dive into technology. Circa 2002, I really really wanted to LAN Party with my neighbor across the street remotely but neither of our 802.11b routers could reach. We spent so much time reading about how to do this and we ended up building a pair of Pringles can antennas on WiFi extenders, and long ethernet cables running through our yards into our bedroom windows, which ended up working great. Fun memories. Networks are cool.
brianush1 6y ago
> LUA Not that it really matters that much, but just for future reference: Lua is a proper noun, not an acronym.
reubens 6y ago
"You have to do give them just enough info to get started and hope it catches." That's an important mantra, I think. If you cast the net wide enough, you'll find something they like, and want to follow... but it might not be programming.
jugg1es 6y ago
Interesting! Networking is what really caught my attention as a young teenager. My personal epiphany moment early on was chatting on an AOL chatroom with someone in Japan when I was 10 and realizing what computers could actually do

ceautery 6y ago

https://appsbykids.org/ https://appsbykids.org/ is a hastily thrown together site showing some of my work with kids. I've been running volunteer computer clubs at schools my daughters attend, pre-covid anyway. I've also run a summer immersion program for basic software design principles using the Scratch language for Girls Who Code. We've played with Adafruit Circuit Playground dev boards, written a "choose your own adventure" engine with Python, and added pixel graphics to some simple Javascript games, where the kids drew animation frames in a barely functional editor I wrote. The first thing I'd call out is that 7 is really young. 5th grade is the point where kids can start to "get it" beyond basic maze problem solving things (e.g., code.org's Minecraft puzzle - hop Alex around the creeper and into the house). Since you're a dev, and he's enthused about it already, he can probably flex those muscles a little early. Beyond age, the complexity of what you're doing matters a lot. Kids want to see something get on the screen right away, and they want to make a code change that changes what it does. Building a program from scratch is a chore, and something as simple to us as nested if statements will throw them for a loop. The most success I had was building a simple program without them, and letting them experiment with changing values. That may sound like cheating, but it gets the gears turning, and before too long they're able to follow along with making a broader logic change, and soon enough even following along with you adding a new feature. I was in a classroom setting with a bunch of kids, and they tended to like being in small groups and comparing notes, or play each others games. Sideways thinking is important. For example, the main draw of Circuit Playground is making the LEDs do things, but they also have an accelerometer. A good exercise was figuring out how to read the tilt position, and figure out which light was lowest, and light up just that one. Instant fidget spinner. Building on that, I threw them for a loop by using the same principle where the tilt was input to a computer program. Suddenly the thing they were programming before to flash lights was now a game controller. Keep it fun, let him screw around too long on things he builds instead of learning software engineering at an "acceptable" rate. He can learn fast, but complexity will probably be a struggle, so growing slowly is just fine. Encourage him to explore concepts from different angles. Hope that helps.

lmilcin 6y ago
Yes, tinkering with existing program is really fun. I did this with his first ever project (which was a robot programmed in block language that is even simpler that Scratch) and made entire program for him, with him sitting by me and discussing how I am adding new steps to the program and what they are changing, each time running the program on the robot with another step implemented. Then he got his turn to have fun with the program. We stopped with that robot after couple of sessions when he was able to program some functionality up to my specification. For example, there was no sensor that would say the arm was closed, so to preserve the worm drive I asked him to change all places in program where the arm is getting opened to instead close it first and then open for an exact amount of time so that it does not hit the limit, which he was able to do on the first try, which gave me confidence he more or less understands what the idea is. Now, the games we do are getting a little bit complex (a lot of messages flying around), so what I do is basically write most of the code and shape the structure of the program and figure how do to some stuff so he doesn't get lost managing complexity. I make sure he understands what the things are doing and he modifies whatever he wants (and then we discuss what happened or how he can get what he wants). I am now unsure whether I want to stick to some more complex projects or whether it is better to have more small but wide variety ones. For now what I plan to do is to throw a bunch of ideas and see which ones he is most excited about.

skinner_ 6y ago

I recommend Scratch and editor.p5js.org My kid is 7. He can't really code alone, but he can do nontrivial modifications to Scratch programs based on trial and error, he can create very simple but visually interesting p5js apps like this: https://editor.p5js.org/skinner/sketches/xjUwFm1pF https://editor.p5js.org/skinner/sketches/xjUwFm1pF , and he enjoys a lot being the product designer when we create more complex p5js apps like this: https://editor.p5js.org/skinner/sketches/bPh8JRHrV https://editor.p5js.org/skinner/sketches/bPh8JRHrV .

ObsoleteNerd 6y ago

My girl first got interested when she was 5, when she was already a pretty solid MC Survival player, so I got her into Scratch to mod her MC creative world and automate some agents. From there she was more interested in making stand-alone little animations/games in Scratch itself, and now (almost 2 years later) is mostly obsessed with making objects in Blender and has started doing physical electronics using various kits. I basically let her follow her own path, I show her how I do something then if she’s keen to try it I stick her in front of the keyboard and she does it herself with me verbally guiding (but never reaching over to take control, something I personally think is important). She loves hanging out in my workshop and watching me prototype electronics or work on my own game dev or tinker on other hardware/software projects, and she knows at any time she can have a go (and she does, regularly).

lmilcin 6y ago
Ah, how I wish I was game dev instead of working mostly on Java backends for large financial institutions (and actually spending most of the time in meetings). I am pretty interested in the modding Minecraft with Scratch part. I have found some abandoned projects. Can you point me to what you have used that worked for you? Happy it worked for your girl and little scared she started at 5. I have two boys, one is 7 and the other is 4. The younger one is inseparable from the older so I wonder how it is going to be different for him. I have been thinking about who gets to actually program. For now I am happy that mixed routine where we regularly switch works for him (he seems to be happy and engaged) and so I think I will continue this way for some time before I experiment with it. I see that the best results we got were when he actually himself figured some stuff and made it by himself. His first machine -- ugly chest to destroy unnecessary items with a noisy clock that runs constantly whether there are items or not -- is still occupying middle of main room of our hobbit hole but I don't think I will touch it, because he was so happy when he got it to work.
- ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
  For what it’s worth, I’m not actually a game dev it’s just something I’ve been playing with in the last few years as a side hobby. My primary career is infosec/red team, something she’s not playing with (yet) but she’s already picked up a few cheeky habits. My general rule with all this stuff is just to expose them to as many things as possible and if they show ANY hint of interest in something then give them support and unlimited resources towards exploring that topic. Even if it means I’m staying up all night learning some new sport/software/etc so I can give them a solid go at it. This is what my dad did with me and I’ve grown to appreciate how instrumental that was in me finding my passions early and building both a career I love + passionate hobbies from it.

Simulacra 6y ago

My father tried to introduce me to programing when I was 12, BASIC, but it didn't go well, nor did it go well when I tried to learn every subsequent language. Being ADHD I needed instant gratification with minimal effort, to pull me deeper in so I wouldn't bounce to the next thing. Programing was chaotic, hard to keep straight, and frustrating because my ego wouldn't let me say "hey, you don't have all the answers, let's go figure out what we're missing." So my advice: Help him to understand that when an answer to a problem is not visible, it doesn't mean he's dumb, etc. It means he doesn't have the right puzzle piece of information, and needs to find it first. (i.e. a formula, code block, etc.) Be ok with not knowing the answer, and be ok that he will need to learn in order to apply knowledge (like puzzle pieces) to the problem.

jgwil2 6y ago
I think it's a problem for a lot of kids that it's hard for them not to be instantly good at something. Learning patience is part of growing up and gaining experience.

sherlockx 6y ago

BBC micro:bit V2 - Will be able to get tangible results very quickly. Start with the simple stuff: https://microbit.org/projects/make-it-code-it/ https://microbit.org/projects/make-it-code-it/ I find games in scratch are complex and require too much programming knowledge to really get something interesting up and running. The micro:bit on the other hand can do interesting lights, sounds, etc with just the drag and drop of a few lines.

lmilcin 6y ago
I didn't know micro:bit works with Scratch, thanks a lot!!! I had plans to make some kind of board with STM32 that could be programmed with Scratch but maybe I will put that project off and use micro:bit instead.
- sherlockx 6y ago
  No prob. I'm going through the same process as you at the moment, have been looking at all the options for a while. Micro:bit seems to be the best fit for young learners.

jgwil2 6y ago

Relevant blog post for a slightly older kid: https://stopa.io/post/246 https://stopa.io/post/246

snaveen 6y ago

I have 2 kids 14 and 12. My 14 year old has started solving medium level leetcode problems (which I am happy about). Talk to them often about code, technology etc.One thing that helped IMHO spending a lot of time in solving math problems (AOPS) , which made think through hard problems and had to grind through solutions which took time. My kids love Big Bang Theory and anything that is geeky. I talk to them about the latest things that are happening in tech like the recent hack and the malware. I recently read this book https://www.amazon.com/But-How-Know-Principles-Computers-ebook/dp/B00F25LEVC https://www.amazon.com/But-How-Know-Principles-Computers-ebo... and sat and drew with my kids and,or , xor and nand gates.Building Mindcraft MOD can be another fun project. Be patient and it helps a lot IMO. Good luck :)

snaveen 6y ago
I have got my kids hooked on vim https://vim-adventures.com/ https://vim-adventures.com/
- boogies 6y ago
  I used the gratis demo of that site to introduce a 7 year old to vi, and hoped I just might have been an accomplice to a world record when he successfully completed vimtutor afterwards. He now uses the skills to do his schoolwork in HedgeDoc (last week I taught him to make macros, which he uses for markdown headings and checklists).

ketanmaheshwari 6y ago

I taught my 15 year old python programming over summer. We used the material provided by this course [1]. It worked out very well for us. We took a little detour at one point and I taught her basic skills to navigate around Linux terminal. Files, directories, editors, basic operational stuff. Then I took another little detour and showed her ropes on git and github. Then we got back to the python course and now I encouraged her to push everything she practices on her github account which she has been doing since. Now that the course is over, we have started working on a project that aims to manage personal income tax. I chose that project because it could start simple and can evolve to be as complex as you want it to be. However, ultimately it is all simple arithmetic. The project is going very well so far. We are discovering new things about taxation almost every single day. We are at a stage where learning vim would really help her so we plan to take another detour next week and start with a vim tutorial until she gets comfortable. [1] https://help.uis.cam.ac.uk/service/support/training/downloads/course-files/programming-student-files/python-courses/pythonab https://help.uis.cam.ac.uk/service/support/training/download...

dharmab 6y ago
On the one hand, taxes are boring. On the other hand, pretty much everyone I know wishes they had learned more about how taxes work in high school beyond the very high-level concepts of progressive taxes....
- ketanmaheshwari 6y ago
  That is what I figured when choosing tax as a project. She will learn programming but also doing tax which is going to be useful to her and perhaps others who will come in her contact over time. And who knows, if the tax project takes off, it could be a revenue generating side hustle for her.

lhorie 6y ago

My kid was playing Lightbot at 6yo. Most programming toys I've seen have similar mechanics. I put together a cardboard version myself to help him practice some concepts (e.g. procedures), with the difference that it uses actual directions (up, down, left, right) instead of the usual forward, turn left, turn right commands, which in my observation was more intuitive. He didn't seem to take much more interest in programming after mastering that, but he did eventually take interest in chess. The reason is that we borrowed a bunch of chess books from the library and he would go read them whenever he was bored, and he would play with his grandpa to try to apply the tricks he was reading about. Point being that having self-study and tight feedback loops seem to help in acquiring proficiency in a skill. Personally, after the most beginner level, I'd start to move away from using game development as a motivator for learning programming simply because after some threshold, the math requirements ramp up substantially (e.g. implementing jumping in a side-scroller requires middle school level math at a very bare minimum). In my own journey, I've found that web development (using only the most vanilla subset of technologies) was a relatively gentle way to get into programming. The syntax is relatively forgiving, the building blocks are high level enough to allow easy creation of interesting interactive things, the built-in tooling in browsers nowadays are amazing and the tight feedback loop is there. YMMV

tannhaeuser 6y ago

Had very good experience using Python as first programming language for 8-9 year-olds; professionally, I don't like it, though. And even though I prefer it over Python as a language, I had disastrous results teaching Javascript to 12-14 year-olds for light browser games. My intent was to bring kids with signs of early stage addiction to mobiles "onto the other side", by looking at games professionally and with creativity (as much as I could, anyway). Turned out fiddling with async and rAF is really a bad fit for learning basics.

ro_bit 6y ago

> We plan to do some more complicated robots and also make our own fun mods for Minecraft (as soon as I figure out how to hook up Scratch to recent version of it). You can't quite hook up Scratch itself to Minecraft (not that I know of, at least), but if you want to use Minecraft as a backbone for this kind of education, you might be interested in Pneumaticcraft, which includes little programmable drones that are programmed using a simple mockup of scratch (https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/pneumaticcraft-repressurized https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/pneumaticcraft-...) or ComputerCraft, which tries to emulate shell scripting and lua in particular (https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/cc-tweaked https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/cc-tweaked). In the future, if you wanted to teach him Java, you could have him develop mods himself through the Spigot, Forge, or Fabric modding APIs.

lmilcin 6y ago
There is a mod that allows running Scratch on Minecraft server but it was not ported beyond 1.8 or something. I plan to see how it works and maybe port it or do something like that for recent Minecraft version. I like the idea of Pneumaticcraft. He already knows absolutely everything about Minecraft (can tell the version the map was generated in by looking at it). One Christmas wish was for Santa to help Mojang release 1.17 faster... So I am pretty confident he would like to be able to have some new game mechanics to play with.

GraffitiTim 6y ago

My daughter (who just turned 4) seemed like she might like programming, so I started out having her "program" a stuffed walrus, by telling it whether to go forward, backward, left, or right to get to a piece of food. Her natural inclination was to point to where it should go, so I first taught her that the walrus doesn't understand pointing or the word "here", just the directions. Then we started "programming each other" by telling each other where to go, and I introduced doing multiple steps at once (like "step forward 5 times"). My goal wasn't literally to teach her to program, but just to introduce that way of thinking, which is pretty different from how we normally think in day-to-day life. She was excited about it, so I got her the Osmo programming kit for iPad. You program a little monster walking around, using physical, scratch-style code blocks. She's been excited about programming the monster every day, and is able to (sometimes) do some short programs of a couple blocks. If she learns a bit more, my plan is to show her how to program a simple lego robot with scratch, like one that spins a flag when it sees something pink. I love that idea because with 2 lines of code you can make something really happen in the world, plus she'll be able to come up with new ideas for the robot on her own, and learn about the constraints, sensors, and eventually more basic programming logic.

lmilcin 6y ago
I bought this for my 4yo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlnP-8SczF0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlnP-8SczF0 Sorry the vid is in Polish but I think you can get the idea. It is a talking robot that does "missions" where you have to program it to go forward, backward or turn, take objects from the map, etc.
- rahimnathwani 6y ago
  You reminded me of a robot I had as a kid in the early eighties. It had some rubber keys on the top (similar texture to the rubber buttons on a Sinclair Spectrum, but smaller). You could program it with a sequence of moves (IIRC forward, turn right, turn left, pause). The robot you linked looks great, with the addition of the missions. But I'm not sure whether it's available in the US, so I ordered this one instead: https://www.amazon.com/Fisher-Price-Code-n-Learn-Kinderbot/dp/B07MFRD29W https://www.amazon.com/Fisher-Price-Code-n-Learn-Kinderbot/d...

throwaway201103 6y ago

I got into programming at around middle-school age, with no particular guidance from my parents beyond general encouragement. I have three kids and none of them are interested in programming. It's fine to support and encourage something your kids are interested in, and to give them opportunities to try things and discover those interests. But be careful you're not pushing them into something just because you like it. Your kids are independent human beings and may be interested in very different things than you are, or than their siblings are.

benibela 6y ago

I learned programming when I was 8 years old from books and experimenting Mostly helpful was that I had a 386, QBASIC and GORILLA.BAS, but not much else. No games and no internet

lmilcin 6y ago
I also learned from books (and no actual computer for many years). But I don't think that's a good goal for today's world. There is absolutely no way books are going to compete with shining rectangles so one must find a way to integrate new technology to get kids hooked on something more productive.

shireboy 6y ago

I'm in exactly the same boat, and doing very similar to you. My son is 11 and daughter 8. Both do Code.org and/or Scratch fairly regularly. Son wants to get into modding Minecraft, but honestly I'm a little annoyed with how shady and complicated that process is. Or maybe I'm just too old to "get it". I don't discourage him from it, but haven't been able to teach him that as much. Son also recently bought with his own money a Arduino starter kid off amazon. You can get an arduino, LCD, servo, LEDs, etc. for 30-40$. We've taken it a step at a time and go through various concepts, etc. For example, I talked to him about 'rubber duck debugging' (ie explain the program to a rubber duck or plus toy line by line), semicolons, code blocks, etc. This has been great for learning real C and tinkering with electronics. I plan to start them on basic web stuff on glitch.me sometime. That should let them build simple websites etc. for free.

geomark 6y ago
Have you seen the book "Adventures in Minecraft [1]? Modding Minecraft with Python. I'm working through it with my 10 year old at the moment. Pretty good so far. Nothing "shady" (not sure what you meant by that) and not complicated. [1] https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Adventures+in+Minecraft%2C+2nd+Edition-p-9781119439585 https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Adventures+in+Minecraft%2C+2nd+E...
- shireboy 6y ago
  Thanks will check it out. By shady I meant the sites filled with ads that you go to to download mods, and the mod installers that I worry about what else they might be installing on my machine. Am I doing it wrong?
  - geomark 6y ago
    Oh yeah, that. This is a book so you don't have a lot of that shady stuff. But you do need to download and install their server code so you can run a Minecraft 1.12 server on localhost. Seems safe and no malware.
lancefisher 6y ago

theelous3 6y ago

I taught in a coderdojo for a while. As a mentor; unless the kid wants to go, please don't come :) So many uninterested kids from helicopter parents. Kids as young as 6 just absolutely clueless and learning nothing. If you want your kid to program, just buy them an actual computer system with files and a terminal, not some ipad shit, and let them at it. If they code they code. If they don't, you can try teaching them when they're like 13-14 and actually have a bit of brain wattage to back up what you're throwing at them.

bigmattystyles 6y ago
>> As a mentor; unless the kid wants to go, please don't come :) This so much. There is no quicker way to turn them off of it permanently whereas they might just not be ready to come to it yet. Alternatively, wait for the kid to be hungry for a snack then have her program an Arduino controlled can opener to open a can of beans. /s
- TeaDrunk 6y ago
  Places where I didn't expect to see bean dad spicy takes
stolenmerch 6y ago
I taught one as well. Always felt horrible because I gave most of my time to the couple of kids who were naturally jazzed about it. It felt like I could have done more to inspire the other kids who didn't seem to care, but maybe I did more good helping the ones who did.
- theelous3 6y ago
  I didn't waste my time. Of all the kids that came one actually cared. We've kept it touch and I now consider him a friend. He just started comp sci in my country's most prodigious uni, which while it was obviously his own doing - I'm a little proud of :) Then and now, I'm glad I focused on the ones that cared. The investment in them and subsequent payoff for them is extremely valuable. With the others, it wasn't even clear if you were doing more harm than good. I was probably more cutthroat than most because I was the only mentor who showed up week after week, so I had to have strong boundaries.

x87678r 6y ago

I learned to program in middle school and I loved it, you couldn't tear me away from the school Commodore Pet. My kid we played with scratch for a bit and she had fun making some games but it fizzled out after a few weeks. No real love. I gave up. Maybe I'll try again in a few years. There are coding classes and they're all very popular but to me it seems pushy parents signing up their children, none of them seem to enjoy it.

deleted 6y ago

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turtlebits 6y ago

Unpopular opinion, but I am of the mind that my kid (now 8 yo) needs to get a full experience of learning with writing/drawing/reading on paper before I "shortcut" him to doing it on a computer. Same goes for self-entertainment.

forbiddenvoid 6y ago
I think this is important. A lot of programming classes or teaching focuses just on the tools, but not really on the goals of what you want to use those tools to do. My daughter is really into Minecraft and has learned that there are mods out there. So, now there is something she actually wants to be able to DO. That's a big part of what drives programming motivation for kids.
- matt_j 6y ago
  Making a mod is a really good driver for learning development. That's how I got started. It's good that the goal is so unreachable at the start. There's an awful lot to learn and you need to boostrap yourself, somehow, into doing something remotely productive. I never finished my mod, but I spent 2 years learning C++, Photoshop, 3DS Max, Worldcraft, and all manner of other tools on the way. It was great exposure and it never felt tedious because my goal wasn't learning how to program, it was learning how to make a homing missile, or a texture for my fort. :) I wasn't really interested, at the time, in learning how to write a simple bank that could process transactions, or a task list.

contingencies 6y ago

6.5 year old. Cultivating an interest in electronic components through toy disassembly and repair (actually thinking about doing a video channel analyzing low end electronics for fun), no actual circuit design as yet. After achieving literacy and exposure to minecraft, currently having success with co-op puzzle platformers which require multi-step solutions to puzzles (Putty Pals, Koala Kids, Ibb and Obb, Shift Happens, etc.), Crypt of the Necrodancer (turn-based dance pad rhythm game requiring comprehension of algorithms), a short JRPG (A Short Hike) and in terms of actual programming a Steam robot programming game called SMIB. Lots of board games, currently Puerto Rico ("Age: 13+"). Also recommend Sleeping Queens (card game requiring creative deployment of simple equations). Endgame: Shenzhen IO.

arctic_bean 6y ago

I would be cautious about trying to make a child enjoy something you found interesting in your childhood. The world has changed so much, and what interests children today may be significantly different. Get them on the cool high level concepts of today (mobile apps, web apps, machine learning) and over time, they might gain an appreciation of the stuff technology has abstracted away. Some things are just not as important anymore. I'm not a parent (I just graduated) and have not tested my thoughts above. It's also not a direct response at OP, more of something I will definitely keep at the back of my mind. Empathy.

lordnacho 6y ago

I got my kid doing some minecraft python coding, but I wrote out the programs and walked him through it, and then let him change some constants. Those are the most obvious things that you can change with no experience. I also gave him a first mental model of how it works. You have a genie, he sees you want to make a label called "height" and put a integer, 5, in it. He decrements it by 1, places a tower of the height, walks over, etc... until you have a 5,4,3,2,1 triangle. But I don't try to push it too much. I think it's good at age 7 or 8 to be exposed slightly, but unless your kid is a prodigy it ain't gonna click for a while. We just want to marinate them gently for a bit until it hits them. MC is good because he plays it a lot and occasionally it comes up that you want to be able to do something quickly instead of placing hundreds of blocks. Or you want to copy something you built. The MC Python code allows you to write a script that does this.

jennyyang 6y ago

My son picked up Scratch programming over lockdown by taking an Outschool course, and then he joined John Hopkins CTY online courses and has been programming on his own since then purely for pleasure. He has made videos and animations and I'm most shocked by his ability to debug his programs so well. I will give him tips every now and then, especially if he runs into problems, but I largely just let him do whatever he wants. I never forced this on him, it's something he enjoys immensely. I myself didn't learn how to program until after graduating from college, so I know how little value learning programming at an early age is, except as a form of enjoyment. He asked to learn Python but I refused, since I find it weird that he would be learning the same language that I myself am using to earn a living! But the upside is I can always outsource my work to him while I relax. Seriously though, I will teach him when he's ready but right now there's no use case for him to learn.

brutus1213 6y ago

Check out FIRST Robotics. I mentored there and it was great. My own kid .. I have been using snapcircuits and littlebits to spark an interest (they are younger than 5 at the moment). Seems to get them interested.

jazzyjackson 6y ago

When I was a kid I was totally self directed with a bunch of LEGO mindstorms motors and sensors. I would build little carnival games that had all kinds of conditional branches, plus rovers and walking robots with complicated gear trains. I think playing with gears set my mind up for building programs more than dragging the block based if statements on the screen. I can also recommend the classic book "Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas" by Seymour Papert, it talks about the LOGO turtle and has some really powerful ideas about empathy in general, with a special case for thinking from the perspective of a machine.

Aeolun 6y ago

So far I’ve given my two year old a duplo train that you can ‘program’ by putting specific tiles on the track, but the only one he’s shown much interest in is the one that stops the train. It’s early days yet ;)

spacemanmatt 6y ago

They're more interested in math than programming. I'm rolling with it.

herodoturtle 6y ago

Hey man, incredible piece. Your deeply thought out discipline and equally well balanced enthusiasm is a model that instantly resonates with me. Thanks for sharing. I'll share my thoughts, at your invitation, with a disclaimer: My fathering strategy is based largely on my lived experience - because it's what worked for me - and I'm hoping to repeat it with my daughters. For context: I have 25 years of programming experience. Started when I was 11. My folks didn't even know how to turn a computer on, let alone enforce an educational playtime environment. But in my disk-hunting solace, I discovered that DOS 6.22 came pre-installed with this game called Gorillas, and I soon reverse engineered GORILLA.BAS in the pursuit of red bananas. Next thing I knew, I was implementing NeHe's OpenGL tuts, and by age 21, I was building database integration layers for a bunch of local companies - which over time evolved into the company I now run, which has provided my wife and I with a stable source of freedom-providing income for many years. How is any of this relevant!? We all want to be successful, and we all have personal definitions of success. I'm happy to be enjoying mine. And yeah, I'm a dad, so I want my girls to have that same level of success. Which in turn guides my fathering strategy. When I first began reflecting on how to best raise them, I thought about my lived experience as a kid. I was lucky to discover my passion (Zero Cool had something to do with it), but what is important is that I discovered a passion. And then what is equally important is that I had tons of time to pursue my passion at my own pace. My folks were always right there - so I felt safe - but they never interrupted me. Then sometime in my teens I had a vision for a software company and the rest is history. Being exposed to successful and inspirational uncles from a young age helped form my world view extensively. So back to your boy, and how I raise my girls (3 and 6): On a daily basis I expose them to as many different experiences as possible - be they arts, crafts, puzzles, and outdoor fitness - and crucially, I give them space - complete freedom - to pursue knowledge of the world around them at their own pace, based on wherever their interest leads them. In other words my sole job is to create this safe, free, curiosity-breeding environment, and to guide them only when they have questions - ultimately allowing them the freedom to lead and teach themselves. Oh and none of this disciplined routine stuff. This is all day. Every day. My wife and I take turns (mostly to give each other space to pursue our respective careers - she's a healthcare worker - 2020 was rough). We believe that our taking turns has the benefit that our girls get two completely different styles of parenting, which we think will help teach them to adapt. Of course we parent them together too - bath time is the most fun, and my rendition of Let it Snow is the stuff of legends. So far we have learnt that our 3 year old is very peaceful. She's quite serious too - which I absolutely love (I've always been accused of looking too serious). She takes in her local environment with an exploration of every one of her senses, intently. Lately I've been exposing her to an abacus, which is proving to be a recurring interest. As for my 6 year old, she isn't as smart as her sister, but hearing her belt the lyrics to Frozen when I return home from my early morning row puts a joy in my step for the rest of the day that I suspect only other dads will understand. Does this mean performing is her passion? I reckon it's still too early to tell - but perhaps it is, so I take delight in listening to her sing in the car, and she takes delight in singing out the window as we drive past our eternally patient neighbours. So may I ask you - how did you figure out that your boy's passion lies in programming? Or perhaps it would be more fair to ask, so that I may better understand your point of view - what is your goal with your parenting strategy? If programming is indeed your boy's authentic passion, great! If not, well, you're obviously brilliant, so I have no doubt that you'll figure out his passion(s) one day. But I do think his having the freedom to play independently is critical. With my girls, I often have to fight the urges I have to steer their learning in an effort to optimise their pursuit of each potential passion. But over time, I've become somewhat of a zen master at it. I now relish in the opportunity I have to witness them as they find themselves. Heck, I hope it works! Good luck with your boy. He does sound brilliant. I deeply respect the responsibility you mindfully bear.

peterburkimsher 6y ago

I live with a family who have two daughters, age 7 and 9. I was able to rescue some laptops from office trash, running Windows XP. We had a lot of time during lockdowns and in evenings to play - whether that was on computers or with magnet toys, dolls, etc. I first learned programming when I was 7, drawing a cube in Logo on a Mac Plus. I taught myself programming when I was 11, writing AppleScript to rip music from an iPod and download the Bible and Shakespeare books, and turn them into 1000-character Notes so I could share my book with classmates who forgot theirs. Yes, I used eBooks in school in 2003. These notes are just a messy summary, which I'd like to turn into a real curriculum. Some of them were surprisingly fun for all of us (Escargot MSN messenger, binary morse code to send a smiley face using flashing lights, and drawing the result on squared paper). Now they watch a lot of YouTube, but the need to search for things on Google is motivating the 7 year old that reading/writing/typing is actually important. Done: Google Chrome. Bookmarks. Save image. Age of Empires. Worms. Mahjong, Solitaire, eSheep, Asteroid, Alien Force, Bejeweled, stressreducers. Satellites, rocket ships, Lego. Rummikub. Connect 4. Slime, unicorn poo cleaning game. Dancing robot. YouTube Tayo, Miniforce, PJ masks, watchcar, Kaycee and Rachel. Google Images. Escargot MSN messenger server to teach typing. Anna discovered backgrounds, emoticons, nudges, fonts by herself. Your/you're. World map on paper. Maths homework +-*/, >,<,=. Roman numerals. Binary. Additive and subtractive colour mixing. Google doodle for Mother's Day. North Korea: Crossing, friends. Old photos of me, rocket designs, ex-girlfriends. NASA. Kid Pix. Birthdays, contact phone numbers in paper book. Narwhals song. Nyan cat. The Japanese Tradition sushi. Princess Bride. How To Train Your Dragon. Copyright (Charlieissocoollike magic mars bars). TPB, rar. Writing letters, making cards. Drawing stegosaurus. English jokes. External mouse. USB drive. External screen. Headphones. Power bank, USB phone charging. How networks send messages to servers (big computer, bigger than a rocket ship). Wires in walls, under roads, WiFi to space to talk to satellites. My work is building servers. Minecraft. Printing, scanning. Line rider. Pacman, snake, breakout, pinball Webtoons Custom icon design. MS Office, PS Reading on laptop screen: Comics, Bible. Chatterbox Difference between battery and power supply. Jokes emails, short jokes Reddit. FML? TED. Weebl. Minesweeper. Pic slider with photo of me. Bluestacks. Teach Kid Pix again with printer, Paint, PhotoShop to make line drawings for colouring. Teach Logo. Play with it. Google maps for navigation, Google Earth for satellite pictures. Wikipedia about Harry Potter. Web server. Run Pingtype. Teach basic HTML. Then Wordpress.org. Perhaps PHPBB? Field trip to server farm, observatory. Rocket Lab? Build flashing red and blue lights with LEDs and put them on toys. Computer hardware repair? Fit Win7 ultimate IDE disk to desktop PC. YouTube ripping. Music in iTunes. Movies in Kodi? Or VLC? Music creation? Copying photos from phone. Organising photos on computer. KMart, eBay, Craigslist, Amazon online shops. Writing programs beyond Logo. Some JavaScript game; Python web scraping. Charities: WWF, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, UNHCR, UNICEF. Google Drive, Dropbox only after having an email account. Outlook calendar, contacts? For all Anna's animals: Reirei, Titi, Snowy, Bunbun, Koaly, baby koaly, Annabelle, Kang Karen, Liky, Kitty, Uni. Writing documents in Word and printing them. Making graphs in Excel. PowerPoint presentations: lyrics, slides, photos. Typing Chinese, Korean. Lightbulb, power sockets, adaptors. Veggietales, Sesame Street Advanced: not just "good with computers" but actually a dev. Windows: reinstalling, drivers, certificates. Linux: ssh, nano, cat, echo, mv, cp, chmod, tar, sudo. Mac: Time Machine, AppleScript Networking: dd-wrt, ipconfig, DNS, hosts file. TCP sockets. Hardware: common voltages: 1.5, 5, 12, 220. Electroboom. Soldering. Finding V+ and GND. Tracing faults. Virtual machines. Jailbreaking, rooting. XKCD, Hacker News. IRC. YouTube uploads, live streaming. OBS. Audio feedback. Imagemagick, ffmpeg. Tableau, PowerBI These kinds of things can be used for interviews, not only education. Bitmap graphics A1, D1, ... smiley face Code.org is logo Morse code, binary Numberblocks YouTube Babybus super panda youtube Toca Life for Android. Among Us on Android. WeChat. Mathletics.

dscokween 6y ago

There are some great resources with arduino devices and arduino.cc - though it might be a little tricky for 7. I suppose it depends on the kid. Getting some light kits from adafruit and some prebuilt scripts can help, though. Wearable LED tags are a pretty clout-earning trinket for the 7-year-old set. Thonny http://thonny.org http://thonny.org is fun browser based tool for learning things as simple as turtle graphics (anyone else start with LOGO?) or even up to more fully developed programs. My kid and some of her friends did some video game design using the "Bloxels" game, but the (free) app makes the actual box of color pixels mostly irrelevant. I think this is a great way to think of tile based gaming structure and layout in a GUI format without the burden of command line. It's the same sort of appeal as Minecraft target audiences.

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02020202 6y ago

Frankly, you should teach your kids how to socialize. Programming can be picked up whenever one wants but social skills must be developed in the early age.

murgindrag 6y ago

Path for an eight year old (who started at 5): 1) Hour of Code and Blockly, as well as some Blockly Games, age 5-7 2) Khan Academy JavaScript and processing.js at age 7. He's pretty awesome at JavaScript now. The programming courses on Khan Academy are great. I will mention your child needs to be ready for it. At that age, a few months one way or the other is huge, as is having the mechanics of typing and mousing. Next step from there is the book "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software (Developer Best Practices) " and Nandgame, as well as Micro:bit. I recommend against Scratch. It's a rabbithole that goes in the wrong direction. You get stuck in a local minimum, where it's really hard to move onto real programming, and within Scratch, there are a lot of local minima (move to random position).

PebblesRox 6y ago

My kids aren't quite old enough, but I recently enjoyed the following stories: "Haaarg, world!" (writing a vampire-themed number-guessing game with a six-year-old): http://davidbau.com/archives/2005/07/29/haaarg_world.html http://davidbau.com/archives/2005/07/29/haaarg_world.html Madlibs with a 13-Year-Old: https://nedbatchelder.com/text/madlibs.html https://nedbatchelder.com/text/madlibs.html

aantix 6y ago

If he’d like to make a Minecraft mod, a Roblox game or a comprehensive game in Scratch, check out Codakid. Their video walkthroughs explain everything step-by-step. They keep it very basic and assume no prior knowledge. Our 7 year old had a really basic Roblox obby (obstacle course) set up in no time. We played the videos on the iPad, the Roblox dev environment running on my Macbook Pro. That way he could easily go back through the video if he missed something. The courses are worth the money. https://codakid.com/ https://codakid.com/

codyjones 6y ago

One of my kids learned Scratch at home. He tried some local classes, hoping they would teach more advanced material, but they were introductory and he spent his time tutoring the other kids (not a bad lesson in itself!) We briefly tried GameMaker Studio 2, however we had no prior experience and finding out what functions were needed or called made it a high friction experience. He has been playing Minecraft since a young age, and creates elaborate redstone mechanisms. I like how this mixes creativity, spatial planning, and boolean logic, and doesn't require learning a new UI or language. Most recently we tried creating a Minecraft mod in Java using Forge. I cannot state strongly enough: do not do this. The Forge architecture is fundamentally broken, whereby it adds some functionality but otherwise forces you to code directly against decompiled Java classes. Most tutorials only work with a specific version of Forge/Minecraft. There are no release notes or documentation, because there is no API. (To be fair, the Forge aspect is documented, though I only found it useful once I already knew what it was trying to explain.) So what started out as an exciting father-son project became something I dreaded.

mxyzpt1k 6y ago

My kids and I played Warcraft 3 together quite a bit. It came with an editor that let you create custom maps, including the creeps. From about the age of 10 my oldest loved making worlds for the rest of the family to explore. It was enough of a hook that he eventually wanted more than the map editor could offer.

eitland 6y ago

When I have taught kids programming I feel I have been most successful by when I could give a glimpse into the high level workings. Most of the time I don't have many hours so what I try is to inspire by creating something in a few lines and show what it is all about: input, output, calculations, loops and branching and how we can have fun with it. I've used the tools at hand: 20 years ago I used VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) and made a Caesar Cipher, ran it in a debugger. When I taught teenagers in school I mostly used autohotkey. Later I've used Go or Java, even with JSF(!) when that was what I was using at the time. Mostly I try to get as fast as possible to the point were something works, then set a breakpoint and single step through it. One favourite of mine is the good old guessing game that hasn't changed that much since BASIC on C64: > Write a number from 1 to 100: 64 > My number is lower, Try again. > Write a number from 1 to 100: 37 > My number is higher, Try again. > Write a number from 1 to 100: ... etc etc ... You gueesed it! This introduces output, input, loops and if-statements, and you can let the kids have fun with the debugger, looking at the secret number in memory to guess it correctly at first try etc. It can also be done easily in most mainstream languages and frameworks that you have a working environment for, from VBA through WinForms through Java or Python console apps to serverside or frontend web applications. Also FWIW: Kids around here (Norway) often have some programming at school it seems - even before grade 7. It is mostly scratch variants I think, but I'm also happy to see that at least some teachers have shown them how to open the console in the browser (Inspect Element) and have fun by "hacking" the html and css.

ropable 6y ago

If you'd like to reinforce some of the same mental muscles used during programming, you might consider certain tabletop games as a good way to do so during play. There is a game out there called Robo Rally which is excellent for the purpose, where you "program" your robot via a series of cards. It's not just for kids, being enjoyable by adults as well.

zmmmmm 6y ago

It's interesting I have had little success in garnering enthusiasm for coding with my kids. I have taken the route of giving them exposure to it and occasional incentives to go a bit further, but never pushing it much beyond that. I wonder if technology these days is just so advanced that they do not see the link between the basics that programming starts out with and the apps they use day to day. For me, at 10 I could write a program myself in basic that was within range of the actual games and professional applications that were being made at the time. That is just so far from possible these days.

RocketSyntax 6y ago

Just make sure that is not all that you do together. Balance.

daniellarusso 6y ago

This made my day. Thank you for sharing this. I had a Tomy Tutor computer that I made my mom enter BASIC programs into, but she did not have any development experience. I really like your to-do list to keep track of accomplishments and stay within scope.

ajfjrbfbf 6y ago

Make sure they're bored out of their mind all the time. No Fortnite, no YouTube, no tablet. (steers them clear of ADHD too) Either they go play outside with their friends or they hack what they can on some outdated/underpowered device you give them (Arduino, TI84, Arch linux boot screen, etc). Read them technical books before bed.

djeiasbsbo 6y ago
> "steers them clear of ADHD too" Could you elaborate on that a bit more? I have ADHD and am very interested in anything about it but have never heard anything like that.
- splintercell 6y ago
  Not OP, but I kinda know what he's talking about, here's a shortened version of how it works: - Stop drinking coffee - Get rid of Social media notifications and stuff - Actively aim to bore yourself when the day starts, don't look at the phone. - Then suddenly you'll notice that your brain is dying to do something interesting, so much that you'll start reading toothpaste's label while brushing your teeth. Start building up stories about how that label came to be (and all that is ok, as long as it isn't jumping around). - Then open your computer and the task you want to do, and find yourself be VERY INTERESTED in doing that.
  - djeiasbsbo 6y ago
    I see.. but that's something else. These are strategies to not get distracted, actually a big part of ADHD is having these strategies, otherwise there would be no productivity whatsoever. However, the OP is talking about distractions which cause ADHD to be present, something I have not heard about.

unemphysbro 6y ago

My brother is 11 and he's more of a hands-on type of person (he's built some furniture, wooden stencils and functional crossbow; terrifying for our parents) and doesn't like to sit in-front of a computer for more time then school necessitates. Because of this I figured I wouldn't force him to learn programming, rather nudge him towards it. I bought him a Tynker membership and he seems to enjoy that. It seems like a fun, gentle introduction into programming. https://www.tynker.com/ https://www.tynker.com/

SteveNuts 6y ago

Haven't seen it mentioned here but maybe graduate him to Factorio. Has a lot of "complex systems" thinking and also has the combinators to play with.

generalcalm 6y ago

It is awesome that you are having fun with your son, and actively curating a path to fun with programming. It is very likely he will look back at the time you spent with him in this area with great fondness. If he wants to continue to program later or not, this quality time is the most important. Kids want to spend time with their dads.

markc 6y ago

Didn't work: - BASIC, Ruby, Python, Java setups + intros, tutorials. - LEGO Mindstorms - Scratch, Squeak - Coding classes / camps Note that I "made these things "available" but never pushed. I'd set up the environment, show him to to edit and run the code, and pointed him to tutorials. After some time went by I'd show him the next thing. Rinse and repeat. Worked: A Texas Instruments programmable calculator. He read the manual, played with it a bit, then found out he could automate some of his homework. Then found out he could make simple games. Then fairly impressive games. After that, he did a bunch of Minecraft programming and loved it. Fast forward a decade and he smokes through Advent of Code without breaking a sweat, and is a co-founder and CTO. I.e. all my efforts to pique interest didn't have any effect that I could see. He had to find his own way to it.

compscistd 6y ago
A classmate of mine in HS always played with his TI in class and I had a similar calculator (TI-84 plus silver edition). I asked him what he was doing and he introduced me to basic logical operators to make math class easier. That’s how it all began for me. Will, if you’re reading this, I owe you my career!
mywittyname 6y ago
> A Texas Instruments programmable calculator. He read the manual, played with it a bit, then found out he could automate some of his homework. Then found out he could make simple games. Then fairly impressive games. Some thing never change. This is literally how I started programming too. "Hey, I can automate my homework" -> "Wait, I can write a program to play poker with all the time I saved by not doing homework."
- jacobkg 6y ago
  Same here. Twenty years ago my dad gave me a TI-85 and told me I could program it. I remember being stuck for a while until I learned that “string” meant text. The first game I built was hangman, using “split mode” where you could show half the screen as a graph and half as text

chondl 6y ago

I've started working with my third child who is 10 years old. The older two weren't interested, but my youngest is really interested. We first tried to use Scratch and some of the online learning sites, but they all drove me crazy because things would break or wouldn't work like the videos. We switched to Python using Pygame Zero which is going MUCH better. Definitely recommend Python: using whitespace for blocks is very understandable and easier than balancing {}. At 10 my child is able to exclusively drive the keyboard and make many of the changes he wants. We've been doing this for about 6 weeks spending 1-2 hours on Sat and Sun. My older son is much more interested in mechanical engineering so I'm mentoring his robotics team for programming.

asicsp 6y ago

Not personal experience, but I've been listening to Teaching Python podcast [0] They talk about setting up the environment, making it exciting for the kids to come and play, creating expectations, letting kids figure out instead of always answering every question, etc. [0] https://www.teachingpython.fm/ https://www.teachingpython.fm/

beamatronic 6y ago

They mastered it and then lost interest.

_ouml_ 6y ago

Two months ago I bought a starter kit with some electronics: breadboards, LEDs, cables, transistors, resistors, etc... My 8/9yo daughter really got hooked, and since then I've bought all kinds of logic gates, switches, timers, flipflops etc... I use the videos from Ben Eater as inspiration but I haven't told my daughter that you can build a programmable CPU using this stuff. I don't want to spoil the surprise. After learning binary numbers, I asked her if she could build a circuit to add two digits. She designed her own version of a full adder, chained 4 of them together, and now has her own 4-bit calculator. The cool thing is that she will explain it in detail to anybody who wants to listen. But she is also quickly discovering that modt people don't know binary... What I like most about this is that she is now hacking independently, and having here own ideas. At some point I might teach her some formulas, but she hasn't shown interest there. And the occasional LED burning up isn't going to make me bankrupt (-; Tl;dr: breadboard electronics is cool, worked with my 9yo daughter

winrid 6y ago

When I was seven, I was into plumbing, electronics books, and maybe Barney. When we went to libraries, I would get books on the local jurisdictions sewage system, or how to rewire your house. I was happy that my parents let me take the occasional thing apart. But they never really guided any of it. I remember at around 12 the Comcast repairman told me "the real money is in software". I thought - software, what's that? Then I probably went to work on our garden or something. I didn't start coding until around 16, and that was because I had old computers that I wanted to use, and didn't really know about pirating windows, so begins using Linux, running PHP webservers ETC. Point is - figure out what they enjoy and help them enjoy it. I couldn't even get friends that want to learn to learn, even when they are practically homeless. It's hard for some of us to fathom, but some people just don't have the drive to do this kind of thing. You also can't force it, all you can do is give context.

sharieskenas 6y ago

I recently released this C programming book that is good for kids called A Day in Code: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08LG7DW4C https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08LG7DW4C It's a picture book that tells a story with C programs that represent real-life situations. It teaches C programming with the code examples that make up the story. It has full-page illustrations like a normal picture book! I'm writing a Python version now: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/914595512/a-day-in-code-python https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/914595512/a-day-in-code... I hope these are fun ways for kids to get started in programming. :)

Ewigkeit 6y ago

My daughter has been "coding" since she was three and my son since he was two. They began with the code and go robot mouse, where you push arrows in the direction and order you want the mouse to go totally ignoring the course and just trying to get the mouse to the cheese on the floor. Next I bought Cubetto, which comes with a board with pieces that give instructions and you place on the board. Mostly one kid sits on the floor and the other will "program" Cubetto to come over to the them. Now my daughter is five and plays with Scratch Jr. She makes short clips of characters moving around, recording and timing the characters voices, allowing presents and balloons to magically appear, she's not tying in code but instead uses "graphical programming blocks". She also likes codeSpark. My kids do not distinguish programming from play. I intend to keep up programming = play which I will later transition to a more advanced version of, "I want to make a thing, writing a program will allow me make it." than what my daughter is currently doing. Make it fun, and don't do much in the way of suggestions/feedback, just let them know you'll answer any questions and let them make mistakes.

weisbaum 6y ago
The entire website for Cubetto is out of stock. Guess we'll have to stick with the Osmo for now...thanks for sharing your experiences.

taneq 6y ago

This is going back a long way but for myself, I never had any interest in programming until there was something I wanted to make (in my case, games on my calculator). That gave me the motivation to teach myself programming. Even now I always need a project with a goal in order to get excited about code.

MarcScott 6y ago

Microsoft have a block based language called Makecode, that is very similar to Scratch, and which you can use to mod Minecraft. You can also use it with Lego I think, and some other hardware like the micro:bit, if you'd like to do some robotics. https://minecraft.makecode.com/ https://minecraft.makecode.com/

lancefisher 6y ago

Okay, I was about to go to bed, but read this on my phone and thought I really should reply. My son is 13. We started Scratch when he was 5. It was very slow at first, and the key was helping him do what he wanted to quickly without having to mess around too much. He just needed a short feedback loop. His attention span was pretty small, but he was really into it. Scratch Junior on the iPad was a good way to start before moving to the computer with the mouse and keyboard. If he wanted to do something and I didn't know how right away, I'd figure it out later and then next time we sat down I could show him the easy way to do it. After a while he started learning more and more and eventually played with every block to see how it worked. I also showed him how to look at other projects in the community. When he got farther along, this really helped him. He could see how others built platformer engines and other things, and then adapt them to his own projects. I had the same idea as you with making a plan, writing it down on paper, and then going to the computer. This really didn't work. He just needed time to play and explore with the tools and get better and better with them until they became natural. Now, for more complicated things, he will write down notes on paper, but he still just goes at it on the computer for a lot of problems. Finding the next step after Scratch was a challenge. We did some JavaScript together. He would understand it if we walked through it side by side. He could modify some of the code, but it's really asking a lot to get up and running with HTML, CSS, and JS along with a console, and editor, and browser to debug. It's too many moving parts. So I worked on finding an all-in-one IDE tool for him. We tried Unity which was too complicated. PICO-8 which was close to being a fit, but a tough transition from block programming to typing out code. We tried Fuze4 on the Switch with a keyboard, but never went past the basics. Ultimately, we found GameMaker Studio from YoYo Games to be a great next step. It did take some effort, but they have block programming and some similar concepts to Scratch. It is more advanced and somewhere between Scratch and Unity, but it has stuck well. He is experimenting and building more and more complicated games. He is constantly asking for game ideas and wanting to share how he programmed one thing or another. I'll give him ideas by mixing together concepts from different games. Sometimes he'll just have fun re-implementing a game he saw a YouTuber play. Right now, he's building his own Snakebird. Listening to how he solved things really keeps him excited about it. A couple months ago he really impressed me. He wanted to make Minecraft mods so he searched for some tools, ended up finding MCreator (https://mcreator.net/ https://mcreator.net/), downloaded it, and got it running all on his own. I've looked into it a little since, and this is a really great next step if your kid wants to build Minecraft mods. It's like Scratch for Minecraft mods. Block programming etc. It's open source and looking for contributors. Check it out. He'll also get into anything that has a level editor. He loved the editor for the iPad game Badland. He is really into Mario Maker 2 now. Now that I think about it, the Badland editor probably helped quite a bit in the transition from Scratch to GameMaker. Another tip is make sure to set some time aside for creating. We used to do screen time and off-screen time, but my kids started to just watch their favorite YouTubers or play the same games (Minecraft and Terraria). So now we have screen time, creative time, and off-screen time. During creative time they can be on the computer or iPad, but only using a subset of programs that I've deemed "creative". For my 13yo, that's Gamemaker or MCreator. For my 7yo, that's using redstone in Minecraft or other educational type content. He has some music making apps he enjoys. My 7yo and 13yo are a quite a bit different with this. My older son got into all of it very early and really enjoyed it. The 7yo doesn't have the same interest - and that's okay. I'm not going to force it, but I will nudge every now and then to make sure we've at least tried different things.

zwm 6y ago

7: minecraft taught basic logic with red stone. 8: tinkered with available tools to hack eg. lego games. 9: godot programming via youtube video series. 10: ??? will see. If a kid is bored, they'll think anything is fun. Key is to have a video game schedule; before that, "technology" is off limits. But the loophole is to allow access to certain apps (blender, godot, krita, puzzles, etc) before tech schedule if it doesn't conflict with daily responsibilities such as homework. None of these were forced but encouraged indirectly. Again, if a kid doesn't get hook on instant gratification with passive consumption of entertainment, the change is big your child will turn to exploration when bored...programming might be the natural direction given light encouragement.

jtwaleson 6y ago

This holiday season I rebooted https://game.stackybird.com https://game.stackybird.com (try on desktop). It's a project I started years ago when my son was born to teach him the programming mindset. He's now 7 and it seems to be the right age. It teaches kids programming basics in a fun and gradual way. Right now there are only 6 levels, but I plan to have hundreds. Levels unlock instructions and with new instructions you can solve new levels, or old levels in a better way. I'm not good at design so I picked the bird from flappy bird and the colors from 2048. I will probably need to change that. Also I started the project in 2014 and bought the domain in 2018, but now there's a trademarked app with the same name in the app store. Will probably need to change the name too. Too bad this thread pops up now, next week the app would be more impressive ;)

veidr 6y ago

TL;DR for my family: - Scratch (https://scratch.mit.edu https://scratch.mit.edu) - Swift Playgrounds for iPad - Mario Maker (Nintendo Switch version) I haven't given my boys any pressure to code yet (they are only 8, 6, and 3) but the oldest one has a natural interest, it seems, and that seems to be making the middle one interested too. The oldest got his start with a local after-school class where they make robots out of lego-like blocks with motors and program simple behaviors like driving around, drawing pictures. Then his brother also wanted to. The older one has now graduated to writing 2D platformer games with Scratch at that class — one day I noticed they were just logging into the regular free Scratch, and he knew his login and password, so he now logs in from home after school to work on it sometimes. That class is still like "drag blocks around to make loops and conditionals" but he later found the Swift Playgrounds app on iPad and worked through those exercises. That is a lot more textual, and you learn basic constructs like variables, for loops, if/else, and functions. And he learned somehow very quick that there is a high success rate of postponing bedtime by saying, "OK, but wait, just let me debug this bug in my program a bit more." ;-) His 6-year-old brother seems to be following in his footsteps, not interested in Swift Playgrounds yet (if ever) but keenly interested in replicating and then improving on his older brother's Mario Maker levels, and he is interested in the games his older brother is making at the class (where he himself is still doing the robot making course) and he intends to do that same course next year. The 3-year-old's programming is still limited to standing in front of the TV and shouting "HEY SIRI TV OFFFFFF!!!!!" I'm a life-long software engineer and intend to keep doing that, so it is gratifying to see them doing this. As some other people have said in this thread, as a parent you can't (or shouldn't) try to "make them become software engineers" but at the same time, demanding basic competence in programming (e.g. being able to write a program to do some kind of calculations on a CVS credit card statement, and debug that in a graphical debugger) seems to me akin to, say, making sure your kids learn how to swim. My kids understand (well, the older two at least, the little one maybe later) that they will be expected to be able to swim competently, read rudimentary sheet music and be able to reproduce it on a piano keyboard, ride a bicycle, safely operate an automobile, and write software programs at a competent level for their age. They don't need to be spectacular at any of those, or pursue a career relating to them; they don't even need to be interested. But I think those are basic human competencies, and it is fine to require your kids to achieve them.

kabirgoel 6y ago

Give your kid a 3 year old Android phone. I’m 18, and my interest in programming started with rooting and custom ROMs. I learned a ton about shell scripting, file systems, and operating systems just from trying to get my lemon Android device to run a little faster. The best part was that since my motivation was fixing my phone, I didn’t need my dad to push me. Sometimes putting someone in a situation where they have to solve a complicated problem is the best way to get them to learn.

soferio 6y ago

I got a raspberry pi to boot up into Commodore 64 BASIC. My son got into it pretty quickly. We then moved to python and scratch. Scratch has been the most addictive so far.

jiux 6y ago

I have explained to my daughters programming is basically a tool-belt that helps one build something they want.. like how paint brushes are simply tools to help create a painting. For example, I was showing my 7 year old daughter the other night how she could automate her Roblox character with a simple AppleScript in order to move it every so often so that it could gain points while avoiding timeout from being idle, all while she could go and do other things around home. She smiled pretty big. In short, IME showing how programming helps achieve an outcome has worked best. A general interest may compliment.

catcontent 6y ago

maybe this is just an outlier experience, but I deny that teaching (like telling somebody how to do something) is a successful approach at all. a widely underestimated ressource is that the learner wants to learn it. so, the best you can do is to show your owh profit from programming. then wait for questions. and I mean wait. I have seen intelligent parents push their kids and really getting them annoyed and thus unwilling to learn stuff. very good for questions you can not answer yourself is https://zen.coderdojo.com/find https://zen.coderdojo.com/find here, kids can (but don't have to) work on their own projects, ask highly qualified experts and -- even more importantly -- watch other kids working on their projects. plus: I have seen 6 year old kids presenting their project to 150 people at the coderdojo without even realizing what skill they acquired. it boils down to 3 aspects: Mastery, Autonomy and Purpose from my "teaching experience" with adults, giving the responsability to the learner is the important part. I hold seminars starting with an empty document. then I ask people to ask questions, otherwise the seminar would be over within the next 10 minutes. people instantly wake up and start to take responsability.

erikbye 6y ago

I am teaching my thirteen-year-old nephew programming. We use Python to nail the basics of variables, conditions, loops, branching, functions, classes, etc. And Unity and C# to make games and learn some physics, vector math and matrices. The length of our sessions is two hours. The beginning of a session always starts with a recap of the previous. Asking some questions to make sure he has the correct understanding. He always types in everything. I never touch the keyboard/mouse.

blunte 6y ago

I used Python and taught my 10yo son by working with him to design a text adventure game. While we were doing it together, he was engaged and enjoying it. His ability to understand and learn was never a challenge. The challenge was that actually programming was apparently not his interest. He was more interested in story and puzzle design, and as he got older those interests expanded while programming just completely fell away. Most people could program if they wanted, assuming they had an adequate teacher. But if they do not have the desire and drive, then it's not going to happen. Edit - now I also recall that before the Python game effort, I got him started on Scratch, gave him a goal to make a simple Mario clone, and left him to it. A day later, he had made good progress but quickly lost interest and no longer wanted to work on it or talk about it.

jvvw 6y ago

I have a 7 year old and a 10 year old and have done lots and lots of volunteering teaching kids to code (via the Raspberry Pi Foundation's Code Club and CoderDojo schemes). My boys are very into building things with redstone in Minecraft and I've done quite a bit of programming with them. What I would say is that 7 is still very young - the important thing at this age is that they are enjoying it, which it sounds like your son is and with you as a mentor, I don't think you can go too far wrong. If you weren't a programmer, I might be pointing you in various directions but don't think I need to. I'm mostly thinking about resources that might be helpful. It's worth being aware that on the Raspberry Pi there is a Python API which might be a good way to introduce Python for a Minecraft fan. There are some articles about in old issues of Hello World magazine (PDFs available for free here: https://helloworld.raspberrypi.org/issues https://helloworld.raspberrypi.org/issues). You might find the magazine interesting generally. There's also a book Adventures in Minecraft by Martin O'Hanlan and David Whale. Typing ability is one of the big issues with python at that age though I find (that and the ability to make syntax errors which you don't get in Scratch!). In terms of Scratch, there's the Code Club curriculum https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/codeclub https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/codeclub which isn't perfect, but is fairly well road-tested. The BBC Microbit is also fun and not too expensive if you are looking for something a bit different and has a visual programming interface. I prefer that to lots of the robot kits etc. out there because it's so flexible and you can extend it into electronics if you want to. Having said that Lego Boost went done extremely well with our boys and is well thought through, but not cheap. But the important thing at this age is that they enjoy it, so I think there's an art in terms of following what interests them and encouraging them with that.

paublyrne 6y ago

Not a parent, but I was a child, and want to give my perspective from my memories learning my father's profession; writing. We always had computers typewriters around the house, and I was fascinated by the look, smell, and sound of my father writing. And I just began doing it myself, probably with a small amount of guidance from him around the mechanics. I ended up getting pretty good at prose by the time I was 9 or 10 and wrote a novella when I 14 (which was thankfully never published or distributed!). I don't write for a living but the skills stayed with me and of course have been very useful in all kinds of avenues. I think, though, that if I had been encouraged to do 90 minute learning sessions with my father, I wouldn't have been so interested. There was a joy in finding my own path into that world, and if/when I do have children of my own this is something I will keep in mind that there's a fine line between sparking interest, and trying to force an interest.

zelos 6y ago

Just to help set expectations: 1.5 hours a day is a lot for a 7 year old. That's probably not much less than a full school day of actually sitting down and learning. I have taught my oldest son programming via Scratch, Python, a Raspberry Pi robot and bits of Khan Academy and Code.org. He started about 7 I think, but I've always been really careful to ensure that the interest in it is coming from him and not from me. He asks me to teach him and I do. I think with all things like this, you have to ask what the opportunity cost is. What is he not learning because he's spending the time doing this?

thesauri 6y ago

Not a parent, but sharing my experiences as a kid. GameMaker (https://www.yoyogames.com/get https://www.yoyogames.com/get) was my gateway drug to programming. It's an environment for making games that covers everything from programming the game logic, to designing game "rooms", the sprites and sounds in one package. I was introduced to the software by my father at roughly the age of 9 to 11 and we did the introductory tutorial together. After that, I continued messing around mostly on my own. What in hindsight turned out to be quite brilliant, was that GameMaker supports both drag-and-drop programming and scripting. I was able to start off by using drag-and-drop, but quickly realized that scripting was the way to go for more complex logic. The combined environment made it a rather smooth transition, as I only had to add the scripting part to an otherwise familiar graphical environment. It seems like GameMaker is still around, so that can definitely be something to check out. Making games is fun and I remember having great times in the community, too.

tsp 6y ago

I’m not a parent, but I have some good memories of my father teaching me how to program the game «Snake» in basic as a kid (10 years old maybe). We started talking about what we want to build, and he showed me how to draw things to the screen. We then iterated and improved the game more and more (within a couple of hours). I had no prior experience with coding and very much enjoyed seeing how things progressed and how you can make the computer react to keyboard presses. While I was not able to write the game myself (or properly understand how to write simple applications) it helped me to get an idea how applications are made and a basic way of thinking. Also, for me this was really motivating and inspiring. In retrospect, I like the project-based approach—building something from start to finish in a couple of hours. If something sticks there is still enough time to go into detail and learn the basics, but learning the basics is so much easier if the motivation is high, which for me it was seeing that one can build a game oneself in a couple of hours.

herbst 6y ago

I dont have kids. But in case in wasnt mentioned already check linda luikas and her ruby children books

fsloth 6y ago

Son got through Scratch book and then got bored. Has not been interested at all in programming after that. Daughter did some scratch and some web programming and then got bored. Lego Mindstorms - son built through the robots that were included and then got bored. Hour of code (both) - did some basic exercises and then got bored. Both love to build stuff in Minecraft and enjoy making quite elaborate machines there (elaborate in the context of Minecraft). Both are doing fairly well in school. Programming just does not seem to be intrinsically interesting to them. And that's just fine. Basic language skills and math is far more important for professionals when they get to workforce rather than low level tinkering in the general context. If they don't show inbuilt desire to program I don't see any reason why I should push them there. I started programming only after turning 20 and have a pretty good career at it. If you love programming it's never too late to start :)

nutanc 6y ago

Got my 6 year old to write a python program. He was so excited the computer did the homework for him. This is a fun way to introduce programming. Example session: >>>number_of_passengers_travelling=672 >>>number_of_passengers_got_down=21 >>>total_remaining=number_of_passengers_travelling-number_of_passengers_got_down >>>print(total) His only question was, do I have to type so much and I said yes. There is no way I am letting my kid name variables v1 and v2 :)

ramtatatam 6y ago
Homework at the age of 6? Wow, I'm glad I did not have real homework until I was 8ish

FraKtus 6y ago

I tried several things but what got the interest of my daughter(10) is code.org She also uses it at school, and she regularly enjoys working with it on her own. Because she seems to go more toward the graphical creative side, I made her work on the logo of a personal project I work on at the moment, and she did enjoy it a lot. Sometimes I ask her to edit some c++ code I work on and see how the result is when running the code from Xcode; we have a lot of fun doing that!

demygale 6y ago

Didn’t work. I could tell from an early age that my son wasn’t interested in coding. But still I showed him what I did and the basics of programming. In high school when he had a class that required Java programming, I helped with the assignment. But it was always drudgery. Eventually I convinced him to look into engineering professions and he went for a year to a top engineering school in environmental engineering. But he never had an engineer’s mind. He switched schools, got a degree in biology and now works with animals. I knew he would most likely work with animals from the age of five. I just wanted him to see other options. He’s very, very happy in his profession and that’s rewarding to see.

36 6y ago

Use Khan Academy and told him to do self-teaching, for self-teaching is a must for any developers.lol

michalalbrycht 6y ago

For my kids (8 and 6) we started with "hour of code" from code.org. They especially liked the one with maze solving: https://studio.code.org/hoc/1 https://studio.code.org/hoc/1 of course we tried others later.Then we tried some ScrachJr - they really like creating short clips with all family members as characters. ScratchJr makes it easy to use face photographs on animated characters. They could easily spend 3 hours doing just that which proves that they must really like it (it's hard for my 6 year old son to concentrate on one thing only for that long). Now we are trying a programmable robot from Lego Boost (set 17101). They like to play with it for sure but we have it only since Christmas so that's not that long.

ramtatatam 6y ago

I remember when my addiction to computers started and I got there because of two things: 1. where I live they were very expensive at the time and so very rare 2. Primarily I wanted to play games on them (things like Heroes II on Intel 386) At some point I had enough of games and as a side effect I had to reinstall my system so many times (thanks to win-cih and other viruses) that I started thinking about building my own OS. Childish dreams :) but it got me to C programming and that's how it started for me. So now, decades later, I have my own children and I think how on Earth am I going to get them attracted to technology when it's sooo mainstream that it's not mysterious anymore. It does not feel like adventure to my children, it's their environment. So instead of thinking much I started with things I remember from my childhood - simple instruction-less lego bricks, or more modern geomag, whatever else that comes without ikea-type instruction so my children can just build stuff. I'm yet to think the step-two.

devinrhode2 6y ago

This whole thread makes me think that we should give our kids open source games, built and run locally.

yeukduws 6y ago

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