3 ms·

What's your advice on how to teach programming to my kid? Curious to hear what another young person thinks. Kid is 11, has all the basics, knows how to type, kn

What's your advice on how to teach programming to my kid? Curious to hear what another young person thinks. Kid is 11, has all the basics, knows how to type, knows how to open a terminal. What things did you think were important to learn, what kinds of things motivated you most? What did you do when you got stuck?

archmaster 3y ago
I taught myself everything — my parents are not technical and sorta disliked computers (which I'm sure helped motivate me lol). So what helped me most was just experimenting a lot, banging my head against a wall repeatedly. When I got stuck I just had to keep trying. Knowing I could Google problems was really helpful, but I also had to learn how to Google. I was motivated by the amazing feeling of finishing something I built, and also the fun of learning and then applying that knowledge. It's hard to remember my tiny self so I wish I could give better advice. I most of all wish that I had a mentor figure, someone I could ask for questions or who could show me where to look, or even just be a role model. Getting into open source and talking to people online was amazing, although I didn't start that until I was ~12. It took me a really long time to get where I am. There are probably more efficient ways to do so other than banging my head against things. But it does work! So just encourage them to keep going, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, FOLLOW THEIR INTERESTS!
ethbr0 3y ago
Not author, but I've always wanted to approach programming from an algorithms-first perspective with younger kids. Not called algorithms, of course. If they can create/combine algorithms to solve a problem... that's most of programming. I'd start with the "robot" problem: have them write a set of steps to complete a simple task, and then have them (or better, someone else) go through the steps precisely (no cheating and assuming they meant something they didn't write!). Then iterate and add/remove steps until the task is actually doable. (Disclaimer: idea cribbed from someone else) That gets them to grok the "everything needs to be in a program, and a program is only everything that's in it" idea. The traveling salesman problem (recast in whatever form would be most interesting to the kids) and graph theory problems are also especially visual and explorable.
- archmaster 3y ago
  Interesting! I've always been most interested in conveying information to people — human-computer interactions, interface and app design, educational writing like this article. Before I got into programming I was OBSESSED with this amazing circuit-building thing called Snap Circuits as a kid (highly recommend, definitely get a starter set for your kid if you haven't already), but even with that I just wanted to build fun systems — intercoms, doorbells, security systems, robots. From that I did more advanced electronics stuff with Arduino, and that's how I got introduced to real programming.
  - ethbr0 3y ago
    Snap Circuits looks awesome! LEGO + breadboarding To date myself, for me it was the computer game The Incredible Machine, which was a Rube Goldberg physics puzzle game... in 1993 on DOS. ;) Critically, the failure-iteration loop was tight, which really impressed "if at first you don't succeed, try try again" on my younger self. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pTbSMKGQ_rU&t=27s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pTbSMKGQ_rU&t=27s
freedomben 3y ago
IME the key is to give them a problem they are excited about, and have them solve it. Much easier said than done :-)

archmaster 3y ago

I taught myself everything — my parents are not technical and sorta disliked computers (which I'm sure helped motivate me lol). So what helped me most was just experimenting a lot, banging my head against a wall repeatedly. When I got stuck I just had to keep trying. Knowing I could Google problems was really helpful, but I also had to learn how to Google. I was motivated by the amazing feeling of finishing something I built, and also the fun of learning and then applying that knowledge. It's hard to remember my tiny self so I wish I could give better advice. I most of all wish that I had a mentor figure, someone I could ask for questions or who could show me where to look, or even just be a role model. Getting into open source and talking to people online was amazing, although I didn't start that until I was ~12. It took me a really long time to get where I am. There are probably more efficient ways to do so other than banging my head against things. But it does work! So just encourage them to keep going, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, FOLLOW THEIR INTERESTS!

ethbr0 3y ago

Not author, but I've always wanted to approach programming from an algorithms-first perspective with younger kids. Not called algorithms, of course. If they can create/combine algorithms to solve a problem... that's most of programming. I'd start with the "robot" problem: have them write a set of steps to complete a simple task, and then have them (or better, someone else) go through the steps precisely (no cheating and assuming they meant something they didn't write!). Then iterate and add/remove steps until the task is actually doable. (Disclaimer: idea cribbed from someone else) That gets them to grok the "everything needs to be in a program, and a program is only everything that's in it" idea. The traveling salesman problem (recast in whatever form would be most interesting to the kids) and graph theory problems are also especially visual and explorable.

archmaster 3y ago
Interesting! I've always been most interested in conveying information to people — human-computer interactions, interface and app design, educational writing like this article. Before I got into programming I was OBSESSED with this amazing circuit-building thing called Snap Circuits as a kid (highly recommend, definitely get a starter set for your kid if you haven't already), but even with that I just wanted to build fun systems — intercoms, doorbells, security systems, robots. From that I did more advanced electronics stuff with Arduino, and that's how I got introduced to real programming.
- ethbr0 3y ago
  Snap Circuits looks awesome! LEGO + breadboarding To date myself, for me it was the computer game The Incredible Machine, which was a Rube Goldberg physics puzzle game... in 1993 on DOS. ;) Critically, the failure-iteration loop was tight, which really impressed "if at first you don't succeed, try try again" on my younger self. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pTbSMKGQ_rU&t=27s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pTbSMKGQ_rU&t=27s

freedomben 3y ago

IME the key is to give them a problem they are excited about, and have them solve it. Much easier said than done :-)