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I think you nailed it my friend. That's exactly what was going through my mind as I saw myself trying to teach her what a variable is. My boys were playing with

I think you nailed it my friend. That's exactly what was going through my mind as I saw myself trying to teach her what a variable is. My boys were playing with Legos and I was drinking coffee so I'm like alright, let's try that. We went through other analogies that I didn't blog about but one of them was how the whole IDE window (XCode) is like a table that you draw on and how a program is like a drawing you make in art class. So the purpose of coding is to use an IDE to create programs just like in art class you draw on a table and create art work. Also, just like you need pencils, colors, etc, in coding you need variables, methods, etc. Kids get stuff like this really fast.

jonalmeida 13y ago
I'd be interested to see some more examples you come up with if you continue to teach your kids. I'm re-learning basic trig right now for drawing OpenGL stuff, and I was trying to think what I could have told younger-me on why I should be paying attention in high school for this topic. When I was in high school, it would have made me more attentive if people said, "Hey, this stuff that finds circle arcs and radius, you can use this in real life if you decide to get into gaming, graphics, .. (and other cool topics that would excite me)."
- idancali 13y ago
  Yeah it'd be interesting for me too to explore this further. Stay in touch via my twitter @idancali and I'll post stuff as soon as I get a chance. Until then, check out this post I wrote recently: http://dancali.io/blog/you-too-can-become-a-computer-programmer-heres-your-first-and-most-important-lesson-in-computer-programming http://dancali.io/blog/you-too-can-become-a-computer-program... It's about how I decided to pursue coding as a career when I was in high-school. I think the main thing is to tell younger kids that coding is an art just like drawing and that there is no right or wrong way of doing stuff. They should not be afraid to break things and experiment and they should absolutely have fun building things, seeing things come to life. That's what got me into coding in the first place and I think that's what makes a world of difference. The rest, the variables and things like that are secondary.

jonalmeida 13y ago

I'd be interested to see some more examples you come up with if you continue to teach your kids. I'm re-learning basic trig right now for drawing OpenGL stuff, and I was trying to think what I could have told younger-me on why I should be paying attention in high school for this topic. When I was in high school, it would have made me more attentive if people said, "Hey, this stuff that finds circle arcs and radius, you can use this in real life if you decide to get into gaming, graphics, .. (and other cool topics that would excite me)."

idancali 13y ago
Yeah it'd be interesting for me too to explore this further. Stay in touch via my twitter @idancali and I'll post stuff as soon as I get a chance. Until then, check out this post I wrote recently: http://dancali.io/blog/you-too-can-become-a-computer-programmer-heres-your-first-and-most-important-lesson-in-computer-programming http://dancali.io/blog/you-too-can-become-a-computer-program... It's about how I decided to pursue coding as a career when I was in high-school. I think the main thing is to tell younger kids that coding is an art just like drawing and that there is no right or wrong way of doing stuff. They should not be afraid to break things and experiment and they should absolutely have fun building things, seeing things come to life. That's what got me into coding in the first place and I think that's what makes a world of difference. The rest, the variables and things like that are secondary.