Re:Ask HN: How can I make a “kid's computer” today as good a...
by openknot on Friday February 04, 2022 @09:53AM
(#30207455)
To add to the value of Scratch: it's taught at the start of Harvard's CS50 course for introductory programming. It's a drag-and-drop block-based code editor, which is good for learning about if statements and loops while getting an immediate result. (e.g. the instructions cause an animated character moves in a certain way). The immediate reward can help motivate programming, as it skips the time needed to memorize function names or syntax before understanding what you can do with programming.
Re:Ask HN: How can I make a “kid's computer” today as good a...
by singhrac on Friday February 04, 2022 @10:14PM
(#30216777)
I will chime in that I program professionally and first learned in the 7th grade in Scratch.
The most incredible moment for me was that for CS50 I found a game I had uploaded to scratch.mit.edu maybe 6 years earlier and submitted it (it was my own work, after all). Great platform, I remember fondly learning how to program a platformer on there without a camera system.
Re:Ask HN: How can I make a “kid's computer” today as good a...
by novaleaf on Saturday February 05, 2022 @10:01AM
(#30221702)
For older kids, the Microsoft MakeCode platform is great.
They have a microbit IDE, including emulator: https://makecode.microbit.org/
And a dedicated gaming device like a gameboy, including emulator: https://arcade.makecode.com/
Can code in Blocks, Javascript, or Python.
Re:Ask HN: How can I make a “kid's computer” today as good a...
by throwawayrev3 on Friday February 04, 2022 @07:11PM
(#30215427)
There's also Snap.
And more importantly (to the kids), it’s got tons of fun content that other kids have made using those tools. This helps spread ideas and inspiration. They can see something cool and then “look inside it” to see how it was built.
Kids want to be doing what other kids today are doing. Hearing “I loved this as a kid” from a parent can doom something right from the start. Kids want their own experiences, especially as they get older. The technologies you have fond memories of were contemporary at the time you enjoyed them. Your kids also want contemporary experiences.
But most importantly, kids are unique, and often different from their parents. They might not like the same things we did as kids, even if we could exactly recreate them.