Advice on how to help an 11 year old start programming...
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Start him out with C. That's truly the best way to get the kid ready for real programming.
Nah, C# - it hides the nasty bits quite nicely and if you ignore interfaces and so forth it looks pretty simple to start out with. You can build on it (and with it). The Express edition is free, too.
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Yea x86 is very hairy :) How about z80? It's pretty clean but still related (like a cousin) to x86 (so the jump isn't that hard when he makes it) And there would probably be a z80 in his graphical calculator when he gets one (TI 83/84 etc have z80) so it has an "obvious use" Or ARM? A bit harder than z80 but his cellphone probably has an ARM processor.. edit: there is a nice homebrew IDE for z80 (geared towards TI's a bit - ships with a TI 83+ emulator/debugger) with syntax highlighting and all called Latenite[^]
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I am using the most modern one there is[^] and have no intention of installing additional ones.
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
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I am using the most modern one there is[^] and have no intention of installing additional ones.
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The gameboy has a funny z80 though, actually it's more of a 8080 with some stuff added to it (like auto incrementing indirect load), it doesn't have index or shadow regs..
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Hmm, ok. I never worked with it myself, one of my brothers got a kick out of writing for it though. I think he's moved on though. :)
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Basic stamp kit[^] from Radio Shack. 11 might be a bit young for this but if he's motivated and thinks he may be in to robotics it just the ticket. You get a load of stuff for the money -- led display, blinky lights, sensors, switches and dials... I think you can also get it direct from Parallax via the web. The programming is plain Basic and the book it comes with it is really well done. After the first chapter you'll have a set of blinking diodes amongst a rats nest of wires and chips. Real mad scientist stuff. The initial setup will need some assistance to get the software installed and the com port set up (you will need a USB to serial adaptor if there isn't a serial port on his PC), but after that it is completely self contained. You should get one for yourself too :)
a bit young? Heck, once upon a time, at age 11 youngsters would be given away to learn a trade!
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
What about Lego Mindstorm ? it combines robots, and programming in a nice package.
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
Well, I started out on coding in assembler on a Z80 - we didn't have fancy computers with BASIC installed. OK, none of my programs worked because I didn't have a bloody clue what I was doing but I don't think I turned out too warped.
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
Pascal – there are tons of books created for educational purposes which are using Pascal.
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Well, I started out on coding in assembler on a Z80 - we didn't have fancy computers with BASIC installed. OK, none of my programs worked because I didn't have a bloody clue what I was doing but I don't think I turned out too warped.
"WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith
As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.
Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
OK, none of my programs worked because I didn't have a bloody clue what I was doing but I don't think I turned out too warped.
Absolutly! You didn't warp at all. In fact you've remained utterly consistent ;)
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
Take a look at Phrogram[^], a spin-off of KPL (Kids Programming Language)[^]. I don't know much about it, but I've been thinking about trying it out on my 7 year old son. :-D
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
I'd go for this little puppy (after you try it yourself of course) SmallBasic[^] The author's goal is to have a modern QBasic equivalent, and to me it looks pretty neat! Here is a small example Asteroids![^] in only 400 lines.
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
ALICE Alice is a modern programming environment designed to be a student's first exposure to object-oriented programming. It allows students to learn basic computer science while creating animated movies, simple video games, where students control the behavior of 3D objects and characters in a virtual world. Sorry if anyone already mentioned this, I didn't read all the responses.
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I was talking to my sons soccer coach last night before their game and my vocation came up. She said that her 11 year old son wants to learn to program computers, and asked if I had any advice to help him get started. What would you have said? He has an interest in robotics and games. To my knowledge he has zero programming experience or training. Something cross platform and very inexpensive (free) would be best. Instant gratification with a simple 'install' process. (I may be underestimating his abilities. I think he's pretty smart.) Ideally, my involvement in this wouldn't extend past the initial push in the 'right' direction. Thanks for the advice!
SCRATCH! I have both an 11 and 8 year old "playing" with it. Great language to start with, 100% graphical. scratch.mit.edu is the address for all of the stuff you need. I would never write a professional project in it, but for learning it is the greatest thing since I taught with Logo in the 80's :-D
