Ask HN: Are you teaching your kids to code? (and how)

Re:Ask HN: Are you teaching your kids to code? (and how) by gus_massa on Thursday March 14, 2024 @03:20PM (#39707908)

With my older daughter I used Clasic Visual Basic 6. It's very easy to make small programs with a silly UI that does something. And also make some graphics. I liked Logo when I was a child. If your favorite program haas a turtle odule, I recomend to use it. (Later she switched to C, Python, a litle of R, C#.)

Probably Python is a good first language. I think it has a turtle module, but I'm not sure. https://docs.python.org/3/library/turtle.html looks good.

In may cases, I gave her a simple working program and made het tweak it, until she could write her ow programs.

(I also recomend to teach Excel. Used correctly, it's very powerful for simple math task.)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Are you teaching your kids to code? (and how) by actfrench on Friday March 15, 2024 @03:47AM (#39713049)

Fantastic! I hadn't heard of Clasic Visual Basic 6. Really appreciate the tip. Also, excel is a wonderful tip. Thank you!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Are you teaching your kids to code? (and how) by gus_massa on Friday March 15, 2024 @07:38AM (#39714398)

Clasic Visual Basic 6 is very old, like 30 years old!!! I still have the CD stored somewhere. It's geting harder and harder to install because it ask for Java 4 (exactly) and has a 16 bit installer. I don't recomend it for newcomers. (There is an "unoficial" installer that fix all the problems, but I never tried it.) Also, people make fun of you because it has "basic" in the name and they remember the old unestructured version of "basic". Anyway, for small apps that look nice enough and have two buttons and everyone can use, I still love VB6.

(Now I'm using mostly Racket, but the syntax is too strange if the parent doesn't use it. I recomend to start with Python and save a few parenthesis for later when the kid get enlighted.)

[ Parent | on HN ]