Teach our kids to code

Re:Teach our kids to code by robertskmiles on Monday September 12, 2011 @08:32AM (#2986948)

> What we don't need is to teach a specific language. Any language will do.

Except BASIC. Anything but BASIC.

If I had to pick a language to teach 9-10 year olds, I'd probably go with Python. Of the 'real languages' (by which I mean languages substantially used in industry/academia for real applications), I think python has the least overhead to get your head around before you can write functioning code.

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Re:Teach our kids to code by ErrantX on Monday September 12, 2011 @08:37AM (#2986973)

Python sure. Moving into... Ruby possibly, or potentially PHP (if you combine it with one of the better/easier frameworks) and then HTML.

The latter ones because you can start to get them to deploy/work on websites. Being able to write websites is a generally useful skill nowadays (even if you don't go into programming.. all my family need/want websites, for example).

I teach an after school IT club and a project to maintain/develop a site on the school intranet has consistently been the favourite :) Because it's something functional and visible!

(and also a good opportunity to teach about security issues what with the trial-by-fire environment a school brings :D)

EDIT: the other good thing about web-dev is that it needs a few different skills - design, back-end coding, infrastructure/sysops and databases which a) gives them a taster of all the career opportunities and b) lets different people "shine" in different areas, and contribute their strongest skill to the final project.

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Re:Teach our kids to code by tuukkah on Monday September 12, 2011 @11:36AM (#2987661)

When you get to know Python, you don't need to "move into" Ruby or (shudder) PHP. It's much easier to learn a web programming framework in Python and how to deploy it, rather than to learn how your second programming language differs from Python.

The sad state of client-side programming is that you need to learn a lot about the messy world of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Come to think of it, CoffeeScript might be a good language to start with today?

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Re:Teach our kids to code by ErrantX on Monday September 12, 2011 @11:48AM (#2987717)

shrug

In my experience PHP or Ruby is generally a better/easier web programming experience (I tried Python but it never really clicked with the kids).

Python is a good general purpose language though.

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Re:Teach our kids to code by Tichy on Monday September 12, 2011 @09:59AM (#2987284)

While I prefer Ruby to Python, Ruby has horrible documentation and therefore is quite painful to learn. You pretty much need to buy a couple of books.

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Re:Teach our kids to code by mibbit on Monday September 12, 2011 @10:52AM (#2987484)

BASIC worked just fine as a first language for most people who grew up in the 80s.

But as I said earlier in the thread. We shouldn't teach them programming, or specific languages. We should teach them general problem solving.

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Re:Teach our kids to code by wvenable on Monday September 12, 2011 @12:09PM (#2987794)

You know what's fun, programming. You know what's not fun, general problem solving. You've got it all backwards. I learned to program when I was 8 years old reading books and modifying games in BASIC. It was a great time. I never considering it work.

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Re:Teach our kids to code by robertskmiles on Monday September 12, 2011 @08:36PM (#2989465)

I was the same (well it wasn't BASIC, I was 8 in 1998). Programming is fun, and I never considered it work, but I don't think you and I were typical 8 year olds. Not sure if general problem solving is more fun, but you're implying 'programming is fun for 8 year olds', which may not hold true for all 8 year olds.

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Re:Teach our kids to code by wvenable on Tuesday September 13, 2011 @01:11AM (#2990043)

I was blessed to have a very good highschool computing science teacher -- the class was a good mix of boys and girls and those experienced and inexperienced and in the end everyone produced some really neat games and had a great time.

I've taught my daughter a little bit of programming when she was younger -- I tried her with Visual Basic and we built a app that did some computation -- and she really enjoyed it. It gave her an appreciation for what I do.

So I really think that programming is generally an enjoyable experience. That's not to say we aren't exceptional, but there are exceptional people in all sorts of pursuits.

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