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Thanks very much for this book reference. Our son (10yo) is learning to code and after quite a bit of research (and to my own huge surprise), I've pointed him t
by marttt 3y ago
Thanks very much for this book reference. Our son (10yo) is learning to code and after quite a bit of research (and to my own huge surprise), I've pointed him to QBASIC (via DosBOX).
I'm just a hobbyist, and approaching 40, so maybe this is pure nostalgia. But I do think text adventures (especially writing one yourself) are still a great way to teach coding -- and the whole keyboard-centric paradigm of computing. As a side note, being a non-native speaker, I learned quite a bit of English with the legendary adventure games by Sierra and Al Lowe. Great teacher, extra credits for his quirky and naughty, but yet so intelligent humor, of course. :)
Currently we're going through a QBASIC tutorial by Ted Felix: http://tedfelix.com/qbasic/ http://tedfelix.com/qbasic/
I think it is really well thought out and structured; looks like a great "more traditional" introduction to programmer's way of reasoning for kids around 10-12. I also like the empathetic language the author is using -- he has clearly put some thought into how to explain things so that a 10-or-so year-old kid would understand it while reading on their own.
I am actually in the process of translating this tutorial to my language (Estonian). Most of it is already done, and I can confirm that our son is doing really well reading it and trying out the examples entirely on his own. The QBASIC IDE is IMO still really good due to the instant feedback the child gets while messing around with it.
The same author Ted Felix also has a follow-up about creating sprites in QBASIC: http://tedfelix.com/qbasic/sprites.html http://tedfelix.com/qbasic/sprites.html
Another great BASIC-based environment for children appears to be LowResNX:
https://lowresnx.inutilis.com/ https://lowresnx.inutilis.com/
Haven't tested it out myself, but after we're done with the QBASIC book, we might move over to this one, actually. The manual looks great, might be quite accessible for a 10-12yo kid's self-study:
https://lowresnx.inutilis.com/docs/manual.html https://lowresnx.inutilis.com/docs/manual.html
It is definitely strange to reach for BASIC as a teaching language in 2023. But, this is an argument that has been echoed on HN as well, today's popular languages do seem somewhat overkill for a child's first independent explorations. But, again, I am just a hobbyist, no intention to grow a programmer out of our son. I would actually just like to teach im thinking skills, and a way to have some intellecual fun.
- tomcam 3y agoNot on topic but your English is perfect. Indistinguishable from a native, at least in written form.
- marttt 3y agoOh, I don't recall anybody ever explicitly saying something like this to me. Makes me happy for sure, especially considering that I actually did not learn the English language at school back in the day; we had German. Many thanks! Those Sierra adventures probably did have a considerable, even huge impact on my early encounters with the English language, though. Basically, it was "learning by typing" [1], so it must have greatly contributed to the grasp of grammar and spelling early on. This is actually a reason why I still consider text adventures a great learning tool for children. The child is playing a game (or coding their own), but because it is so text-heavy, they also improve their language and writing skills, without even noticing it. Leisure Suit Larry style jokes are not a compulsory part of this syllabus, though. :) 1: "Ken sent me"! :) https://invidious.protokolla.fi/watch?v=JWlTR29stts https://invidious.protokolla.fi/watch?v=JWlTR29stts
- accessvector 3y agoI started programming with QBASIC at about 10 years old, too, after randomly coming across a book called “Practise Your BASIC”. It’s a great book and Usborne recently released it for free: https://usborne.com/gb/books/computer-and-coding-books https://usborne.com/gb/books/computer-and-coding-books
- ThinkBeat 3y agoFor me TurboPascal set the standard for power and ease of learning. The IDE was fast and solid. It would work if you were a newbie and grow with you as you got more advanced. The language manuals were well written and in places quite funny. Compile time was ultra fast, and if you wanted to go deeper you could. (assembly). I dont know of any popular IDE right now that is as complete and easy to use.
- marttt 3y agoIs the FreePascal IDE essentially a clone of the TurboPascal IDE, or does it have any shortcomings?
- zozbot234 3y agoIt's a very close look-a-like and it works quite well in practice but the codebase is quite messy, with many things still being based on old MS-DOG and its quirks. Would need a ton of refactoring to make it more extensible on modern systems.
- zozbot234 3y agoThe QBASIC/QuickBASIC IDE was also quite good for its time. Either way, there's still nothing quite like it on modern systems. There are a few terminal text editors with intuitive TUI's and key bindings, but none of them provides the full IDE featureset and easy access to documentation that these tools had. (Hopefully we'll get there at some point. Perhaps by starting from the codebase of a modern GUI editor like lapce and providing a TUI frontend to expose the same features.)
- bitwize 3y agoThe Ted Felix tutorial reminds me of the beginner's guide I got with my VIC-20 -- easy enough for a five-year-old (me) to read and follow, and it got me thinking of the kinds of programs I could build on my own.
- marttt 3y agoThis is exactly what happened to our son (10yo) as he went through the chapters. He would start seeing everything around him (and, particularly, in his Minecraft environment) in if-else statements, etc. It was quite fun to observe.