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Love the Socrates quote. I would take the opposite approach if I had kids. Build a really baddass PC with KDE Plasma, great monitor, just a perfect workstation

Love the Socrates quote. I would take the opposite approach if I had kids. Build a really baddass PC with KDE Plasma, great monitor, just a perfect workstation then tell the kid they can't use it. This is what grownups use to build Youtube and all the apps you love, you aren't old enough to use this. Build the most simple youtube search app with vanilla js/html/css and then act like the code is almost pornographic and they can't even look at it. Finally at some point give in to them begging to see what is going on. Emulating basic on an Apple IIe is like forcing the kid to learn trombone and play Count Basie tunes because that was what was cool back in the day. They will despise trombone by the time they are teenagers.

warrenm 5y ago
>Emulating basic on an Apple IIe is like forcing the kid to learn trombone and play Count Basie tunes because that was what was cool back in the day. They will despise trombone by the time they are teenagers. Exactly! Forcing kids to learn what you did the way you did is not smart - unless they actually want to learn what you did (the way you did) I worked at a non-profit in my early 20s, and had the chance to teach kids from middle school to early college how to build web pages (among many other things). When I would teach the workshop, they were building actual, live XHTML 1.0, CSS3 (I think it was 3?) compliant pages and sites in about an hour or so When others would teach the workshop, they'd be in there for two hours just seeing all the ways we used to do it that we don't anymore (except, you know, when you really need to (using tables to format, etc (all those 'fun' geocities hacks folks making "complex" sites in the 90s had to do before CSS was a thing and widely supported))), and only then get to the 45-60 minutes of how to do it now. There are some things that can more-or-less "only" be taught one way (like, say, using a table saw). But everything else? Teach it in a way that engages your student(s). Want to write games? Get some books on the topic, and write games. A handful of fundamentals need to be known first, but without goals that connect with the learners, they'll never really learn it. And if it turns out they hate programming? That's OK, too - there's a whole world of alternatives, an being so myopic as to think the only way to "have fun" or "learn" is the way you did it as a kid is kinda dumb :)

warrenm 5y ago

>Emulating basic on an Apple IIe is like forcing the kid to learn trombone and play Count Basie tunes because that was what was cool back in the day. They will despise trombone by the time they are teenagers. Exactly! Forcing kids to learn what you did the way you did is not smart - unless they actually want to learn what you did (the way you did) I worked at a non-profit in my early 20s, and had the chance to teach kids from middle school to early college how to build web pages (among many other things). When I would teach the workshop, they were building actual, live XHTML 1.0, CSS3 (I think it was 3?) compliant pages and sites in about an hour or so When others would teach the workshop, they'd be in there for two hours just seeing all the ways we used to do it that we don't anymore (except, you know, when you really need to (using tables to format, etc (all those 'fun' geocities hacks folks making "complex" sites in the 90s had to do before CSS was a thing and widely supported))), and only then get to the 45-60 minutes of how to do it now. There are some things that can more-or-less "only" be taught one way (like, say, using a table saw). But everything else? Teach it in a way that engages your student(s). Want to write games? Get some books on the topic, and write games. A handful of fundamentals need to be known first, but without goals that connect with the learners, they'll never really learn it. And if it turns out they hate programming? That's OK, too - there's a whole world of alternatives, an being so myopic as to think the only way to "have fun" or "learn" is the way you did it as a kid is kinda dumb :)