It's gradual (starts easy but limited, then with progress through levels gets more precise and powerful), and I read that it gets to full blown Python programming.
Theres an excellent talk on the approach by the author:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fmF7HpU_-9k
Edit: +Hedy is designed with kids in mind, as opposed to adults, which I believe future coder and others are more targeted to.
Yes, Future Coder is clearly aimed at adults or older teenagers, and looks really good for them. That was mostly the point of my question about user created tutorials. Using the current tutorial as a basis, but simplifying the language and some of the conceptual stuff would make something that could work for younger kids.
This might work to an extent, but I think it makes more sense to choose a resource that's actually targeted at kids so that it's holistically and fundamentally designed to be the best thing possible for kids. That means features like simplifying the language itself (like Hedy or Scratch) or a game like https://codecombat.com/ to make it fun.
I really hope some kind of GUI to do that can exist one day, but it's definitely a complicated feature that I'd need help from contributors to build. Same for graphical output.
> (It looks like we can do single questions)
I think you're talking about the question wizard. That's for helping people to write good quality questions about their own struggles to post on StackOverflow and similar sites. It's not for making 'challenges' for others to solve.
> Incredibly generous of you to make it open source!
Thank you! I'm really trying to improve the state of education and make the world a better place. I hope that in addition to directly helping users, I can inspire other educators, raise the bar, and help them build similar products. To this end, futurecoder is powered by many open source libraries that I've created which are designed to also be useful in their own right:
Debuggers: these are integrated in the site but also usable in any environment:
- https://github.com/alexmojaki/birdseye
- https://github.com/alexmojaki/snoop
- https://github.com/alexmojaki/cheap_repr (not a debugger, but used by the above two as well as directly by futurecoder)
Tracebacks:
- https://github.com/alexmojaki/stack_data (this is also what powers the new IPython tracebacks)
- https://github.com/alexmojaki/executing (allows highlighting the exact spot where the error occurred, but also enables loads of other magical applications)
- https://github.com/alexmojaki/pure_eval
You can see a nicer presentation (with pictures) of the above as well as other projects of mine on my profile https://github.com/alexmojaki
Libraries which I specifically extracted from futurecoder to help build another similar educational site https://papyros.dodona.be/?locale=en (which does have a canvas output, at least for matplotlib):
- https://github.com/alexmojaki/sync-message (allows synchronous communication with web workers to make input() work properly)
- https://github.com/alexmojaki/comsync
But this is just codemirror + pyodide, I'm still building the rest of it.
Also looked at codesters. quobit/awesome-python-in-education: https://github.com/quobit/awesome-python-in-education
Looks like `Ctrl-Enter` works, just like jupyter/vscode.
iodide-project/iodide > "Compatibility with 'percent' notebook format" which works with VScode, Spyder, pycharm, https://github.com/iodide-project/iodide/issues/2942:
# %%
import sympy as sy
import numpy as np
import scipy as sp
import pandas as pd
# %%
print("hello")
# %%
print("world")
This is one of the things I regret with how math is taught in France: it stresses way too much the formal part and this is terrifying for children (and teens and everyone except mathematicians).
We have a religious reverence to maths in France. It is better now but used to be simply ridiculous. Unfortunately it still means that some more advanced topics such as derivatives are introduced through definitions (the chapter starts with "be a function f(x) with x in the domain of real numbers, a derivative is a function such that f'(x) = lim h→0 ...").
My son came to me with a WTF? I told him about average velocity transitioning to instant velocity by reducing dt, or about acceleration - and finish by showing that a derivative is a function factory (a function gets in, a completely different, unrelated function goes out). He was then ready for the definition.
Same with physics which is tainted by chemistry, with terminally boring topics introduced first. No wonder that we have less and less STEM students.
I love maths myself but I've made a strong effort to avoid maths in examples/exercises so that the course is approachable to students who don't like maths. The first page is a special exception as it lets users immediately try something familiar (like 1+2) without needing to introduce strings or any other new concepts.
It was an unrelated comment that popped up in my head when reading "my 8 years old daughter is learning to code". And it was a "yay!" - because programming helps with math concepts afterward.
I am not a mathematician (PhD in physics, long time forgotten) so I see maths as a useful toolbox to solve problems I can describe. Some of the tools are wonderful and I dream of them at night (analysis, mostly), and some are blobs I poke with a stick when I have to (algebra, geometry mostly).
The 'NSI' option in high school is a new one, and one of the modern ones. It is useful later (no matter where you actaully study) so I am glad that someone at the ministry is using futurecoder as a reference. When Python was introduced a few years ago, it was done in the typical "let's put some boring theory first to make them hate us" fashion and it is wonderful this is changing.
Thank you! I don't think you were unclear and I didn't read any criticism in your comment, I'm not sure why you thought I did. I was just sharing and adding to the conversation.
I told my children this is something you put data in , it does some magic, and your get some data out. I started with some built-in functions (or functions I wrote and hide) so that they understand the mechanics.
Then they finally asked "can I do my own function?" and, bam, there we were :)
Removing the ceremonial of mathematical correctness helped a lot.
This is also the reason I am sad we do not give children half- (or 3/4-) lies: we tell them something more or less correct so that they can play with it (making sure they do not stumble upon edge cases) and then refine their knowledge.
This is what my math prof on my 3rd year of physics did: he said "I will give you a neat trick I will not explain because it will be super useful to you now. Next year, when you understand it, it won't be of any practical use anymore". I was not traumatized.
It’s frame based editing (draggable statements, free form expressions), and you can do turtle graphics and chatbots. I have 4 free tutorials online, if you want more you can email me, my address is in my bio on here
Its not technically "writing" actual code but given the fact your Shortcut is almost a program or at least a high-level function and that you can combine them to execute more complex tasks, its fantastic for promoting algorithmic thinking and does so in a visually-compelling colorful way.
I'm introducing my 8yo daughter to programming at the moment, she is beginning to play around with Scratch. I'm keeping my eye out some something closer to proper coding though. I think this may be a little too far at the moment, but I may try her out on it with me sitting next to her and see how she gets on!
Is there any way for users to construct their own multiple stage tutorials? (It looks like we can do single questions)
Currently you have the console output, have you considered having a canvas/bitmap output that could be targeted with the various Python drawing and image manipulation apis?
Incredibly generous of you to make it open source!