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The Little Coder's Predicament
- bbgm 18y agoAt OSCON, Nat Torkington gave a great talk about teaching kids programming with Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/ http://scratch.mit.edu/), which looks like a great environment to get kids into programming at a fairly young age. In a world where kids have so many distractions and a computer is not novel and exciting (like the Commodore was), you need to keep their attention by keeping them engaged somehow.
- paulgb 18y agoA used computer from the late 90s can be found for as little as $5-$10 if you know where to look. A computer-literate kid should be able to install Ubuntu these days without much trouble. With Aptitude, the kid now has access to dozens of great programming languages. The internet is a resource for new programmers that was unmatched in the Commodore 64 days. Kids today aren't at a disadvantage, but I'm guessing many kids just don't get the exposure.
- shaunxcode 18y agoI think text editor+canvas+javascript is all anyone really needs now to start making cool "wow look at the sprites move, scroll and scale!" apps that kids thrive on! (I'm actually having a renaissance of fun/explorative graphical programming on that tip myself). The browser is THE platform as they can email an html file or stick it on their school hosting (no server side stuff required) account or maybe even whack it into a facebook/myspace/xanga account somehow. Also it's free to get an MS xna account and the software required which lets you develop games for the zune, xbox360 and windows. Blatantly not mac/linux friendly but that's not what the article is driving at anyway.