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How are HN parents teaching their kids to code? I've got a 6 yo who I think might be ready to start learning and am curious how you've done it. What age is a go

How are HN parents teaching their kids to code? I've got a 6 yo who I think might be ready to start learning and am curious how you've done it. What age is a good age to start? How do kids age out of languages/runtimes into other languages/runtimes?

rahimnathwani 4y ago
My son turned 6 recently. You might find this doc helpful: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18qNHqaZ9CdVwQsh4sEslf3GGOTEMZbONEbqGJ-UhMwY/edit?usp=drivesdk https://docs.google.com/document/d/18qNHqaZ9CdVwQsh4sEslf3GG... The things my son has used or is using: * Osmo Coding Awbie (requires Osmo hardware) * Osmo Coding Jam (requires Osmo hardware) * Scratch Jr. To use Scratch Jr effectively, it’s good to have a book or a guide. I chose this set of example exercises: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1593278993 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1593278993 * Code.org (Course A or Course C)
- cgarvis 4y ago
  +1 for osmo
otoburb 4y ago
Depends on the child, but started with Scratch with mine for the visuals. I've heard good things about Swift Playgrounds recently too but it was rougher a few years ago. One thing that I'm not doing is pushing this too heavily as there are so many other potential interests they could develop and (I believe that) the set of STEM options are wider these days -- excepting chemistry kits which all seem to have been neutered.
jhot 4y ago
My kids aren't old enough yet, but I started my nephew out with a raspberry pi Kano kit (wouldn't recommend Kano anymore as they went all in on crypto instead of education). But it had a couple things that he somewhat understood. Some nice Scratch tutorials to build games that he found fun. There's also bashcrawl which turns basic unix commands into an adventure game. At 9 his reading comprehension wasn't quite there to grasp it without a lot of help from me. I think I'll focus on talking through decision making logic with my kids until they can read decently and then we can try some Scratch and other simple programming concepts.
sudobash1 4y ago
When I was that age in the early 00's, my father set me up with an emulated Tandy Color Computer 2. He figured that he had learned on it, so why not his son. Later on he bought me a real one (and some cassette tapes that he had used with his. They still worked). There is a real magic, interacting with a computer like that. It had almost no functionality outside of what I could program on it. It had simple graphics, sound, and tons of hidden functionality that was just a POKE away. (For instance POKE 65495,0 would increase the clock speed). Going from BASIC to my first "real" programing language was a mind bend. It took a lot of experimentation for me to wrap my mind around variable scoping.
- ilaksh 4y ago
  Awesome. I learned a lot of stuff on a real CoCo 2. The book that came with it is pretty great because it really walks you through everything down to the key press and shows a lot of examples. https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Manuals/Hardware/Getting%20Started%20With%20Extended%20Color%20Basic%20(Tandy).pdf https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Manuals/Hard...
- xen2xen1 4y ago
  Spent years on a coco 2. Loved it.
soferio 4y ago
I set up a raspberry pi to auto boot into Commodore 64 mode with a BASIC command line. It was a fantastic start, there is something magical about that experience. The boy then shifted to scratch and also uses REPLIT.
- feiss 4y ago
  Nice. One side project I'm thinking of is to build a simplified msdos environment for the Raspberry, with basic shell commands like cd, dir, md, etc and a set of basic programs inside the same environment to do productivity/office things, with some basic internet tools (email, wikipedia..) but also with a pico8 like game creation tool.. Like an msdos without the unrelevant parts (system files, configuration,..) with a good enough/interesting set of apps tailored for 5-10yo children In my mind the idea makes sense at least :_D
obrajesse 4y ago
We've started with Codespark Academy for our pre-literate kiddo. At first he said "I don't like this, it's boring." And 20 minutes later came back with "Daddy, can you help me? This program is in a loop and it will run forever" Flash-forward a few months and he bursts into the bathroom while I'm showering to show me the game he made in their side-scrolling platformer authoring environment: "You need to grab the jetpack, then you can fly over the wall of fire to get the coin and win."
- lifty 4y ago
  Lovely. How old is he?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jawngee 4y ago
A mix of Scratch on the laptop and Game Builder Garage on the Switch.
- M_bara 4y ago
  Code monkey is brilliant. I have a kid starting out on sequencing in code while another one is designing a game in the app (sprites, loops, events..)
criddell 4y ago
Have you considered Lego Mindstorms? I think it was recently discontinued but you can probably still find them.
peppertree 4y ago
I have tried a number of coding games with my daughter since she was 7: lego mindstorm. swift playground. minecraft. godot. She probably got the furthest with swift playground, but the end of day if her friends are not into it it's very hard to make it stick. Now she's 11 I found more success doing challenging math problems with her. There's a book series called "art of problem solving" which focuses on competitive level math. I can see her eyes light up after solving a hard problem and she enjoys sharing them with her friends.
orbital-decay 4y ago
I designed a custom embedded board (really simple, comparable to a 80s home computer) with 64KB SRAM, video output, and LEDs in key locations illustrating the inner workings. We started at 7, playing with Forth and assembler, drawing sprites on paper and trying to make a simple platformer game. The key point here was a physical machine that does as little magic under the hood as possible, and is super slow so you can intuitively get the limitations; I also implemented step-by-step debugging and ultra slow clock mode. Then we switched to RPi, writing simple games in Python, then we made a raytracer in plain C (easy to explain and write, huge interest spike as you get magical results), then a voxel Minecraft-like prototype. Now he's 15, mostly interested in ML and graphics. As others said, it's harder to suggest something interesting for kids to make than to actually teach them. They want shiny things immediately, so you have to make sure that each step looks somewhat closer to the target. CGI and game development is a classic attraction that still seems to work. Don't worry about dumbing everything down too much; kids easily develop superficial understanding of what you're talking about, it comes handy later in the form of easier understanding of the details. And keep in mind that at 9-10 (YMMV) there's a severe shift from goal-less play towards attempts to make something practical. Which can leave the kid disappointed and disinterested if something goes wrong or the goal is too ambitious.

rahimnathwani 4y ago

My son turned 6 recently. You might find this doc helpful: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18qNHqaZ9CdVwQsh4sEslf3GGOTEMZbONEbqGJ-UhMwY/edit?usp=drivesdk https://docs.google.com/document/d/18qNHqaZ9CdVwQsh4sEslf3GG... The things my son has used or is using: * Osmo Coding Awbie (requires Osmo hardware) * Osmo Coding Jam (requires Osmo hardware) * Scratch Jr. To use Scratch Jr effectively, it’s good to have a book or a guide. I chose this set of example exercises: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1593278993 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1593278993 * Code.org (Course A or Course C)

cgarvis 4y ago
+1 for osmo

otoburb 4y ago

Depends on the child, but started with Scratch with mine for the visuals. I've heard good things about Swift Playgrounds recently too but it was rougher a few years ago. One thing that I'm not doing is pushing this too heavily as there are so many other potential interests they could develop and (I believe that) the set of STEM options are wider these days -- excepting chemistry kits which all seem to have been neutered.

jhot 4y ago

My kids aren't old enough yet, but I started my nephew out with a raspberry pi Kano kit (wouldn't recommend Kano anymore as they went all in on crypto instead of education). But it had a couple things that he somewhat understood. Some nice Scratch tutorials to build games that he found fun. There's also bashcrawl which turns basic unix commands into an adventure game. At 9 his reading comprehension wasn't quite there to grasp it without a lot of help from me. I think I'll focus on talking through decision making logic with my kids until they can read decently and then we can try some Scratch and other simple programming concepts.

sudobash1 4y ago

When I was that age in the early 00's, my father set me up with an emulated Tandy Color Computer 2. He figured that he had learned on it, so why not his son. Later on he bought me a real one (and some cassette tapes that he had used with his. They still worked). There is a real magic, interacting with a computer like that. It had almost no functionality outside of what I could program on it. It had simple graphics, sound, and tons of hidden functionality that was just a POKE away. (For instance POKE 65495,0 would increase the clock speed). Going from BASIC to my first "real" programing language was a mind bend. It took a lot of experimentation for me to wrap my mind around variable scoping.

ilaksh 4y ago
Awesome. I learned a lot of stuff on a real CoCo 2. The book that came with it is pretty great because it really walks you through everything down to the key press and shows a lot of examples. https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Manuals/Hardware/Getting%20Started%20With%20Extended%20Color%20Basic%20(Tandy).pdf https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Manuals/Hard...
xen2xen1 4y ago
Spent years on a coco 2. Loved it.

soferio 4y ago

I set up a raspberry pi to auto boot into Commodore 64 mode with a BASIC command line. It was a fantastic start, there is something magical about that experience. The boy then shifted to scratch and also uses REPLIT.

feiss 4y ago
Nice. One side project I'm thinking of is to build a simplified msdos environment for the Raspberry, with basic shell commands like cd, dir, md, etc and a set of basic programs inside the same environment to do productivity/office things, with some basic internet tools (email, wikipedia..) but also with a pico8 like game creation tool.. Like an msdos without the unrelevant parts (system files, configuration,..) with a good enough/interesting set of apps tailored for 5-10yo children In my mind the idea makes sense at least :_D

obrajesse 4y ago

We've started with Codespark Academy for our pre-literate kiddo. At first he said "I don't like this, it's boring." And 20 minutes later came back with "Daddy, can you help me? This program is in a loop and it will run forever" Flash-forward a few months and he bursts into the bathroom while I'm showering to show me the game he made in their side-scrolling platformer authoring environment: "You need to grab the jetpack, then you can fly over the wall of fire to get the coin and win."

lifty 4y ago
Lovely. How old is he?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jawngee 4y ago

A mix of Scratch on the laptop and Game Builder Garage on the Switch.

M_bara 4y ago
Code monkey is brilliant. I have a kid starting out on sequencing in code while another one is designing a game in the app (sprites, loops, events..)

criddell 4y ago

Have you considered Lego Mindstorms? I think it was recently discontinued but you can probably still find them.

peppertree 4y ago

I have tried a number of coding games with my daughter since she was 7: lego mindstorm. swift playground. minecraft. godot. She probably got the furthest with swift playground, but the end of day if her friends are not into it it's very hard to make it stick. Now she's 11 I found more success doing challenging math problems with her. There's a book series called "art of problem solving" which focuses on competitive level math. I can see her eyes light up after solving a hard problem and she enjoys sharing them with her friends.

orbital-decay 4y ago

I designed a custom embedded board (really simple, comparable to a 80s home computer) with 64KB SRAM, video output, and LEDs in key locations illustrating the inner workings. We started at 7, playing with Forth and assembler, drawing sprites on paper and trying to make a simple platformer game. The key point here was a physical machine that does as little magic under the hood as possible, and is super slow so you can intuitively get the limitations; I also implemented step-by-step debugging and ultra slow clock mode. Then we switched to RPi, writing simple games in Python, then we made a raytracer in plain C (easy to explain and write, huge interest spike as you get magical results), then a voxel Minecraft-like prototype. Now he's 15, mostly interested in ML and graphics. As others said, it's harder to suggest something interesting for kids to make than to actually teach them. They want shiny things immediately, so you have to make sure that each step looks somewhat closer to the target. CGI and game development is a classic attraction that still seems to work. Don't worry about dumbing everything down too much; kids easily develop superficial understanding of what you're talking about, it comes handy later in the form of easier understanding of the details. And keep in mind that at 9-10 (YMMV) there's a severe shift from goal-less play towards attempts to make something practical. Which can leave the kid disappointed and disinterested if something goes wrong or the goal is too ambitious.