Advice on how to help an 11 year old start programming...
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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.
"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.
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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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All I get when I click that link is a message "SORRY" :~
Do you have JavaScript turned off? NoScript caused me to have the Sorry message, until I told it to allow the page.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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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
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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 was teaching how to program to my 7 years old nephew after he saw me playing a video game that is used to teach kids to program and is really fun you can get an evalatuation version that doesn't have the most advanced levels but it suits very well to your needs. http://www.ceebot.com/ceebot/family-e.php By the way I also think that c is the best language to start learnig when he reach a more advanced level he will have the power to do what ever he wants. Good luck.
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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.
Warped would be nice... I remember the good old days of z-80, TRS-80, and 6502 assembler. Flat addressing, only 64K to deal with and you could ignore DOS, no one could afford floppy drives! Just load up your cassette and listen for the start of the program... Now the wimps want GUIs and MICE and all this other namby pamby stuff. No wonder it is all so bloated and slow. I wonder how Wordstar would run ported to a text only 2 Ghz proc?
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That's like teaching your kid target shooting with a bazooka.
Software Zen:
delete this;
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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 was programming in Basic on the Vic20 when i was 11, and got into it without any coaching from grown-ups. However i think it will take more than just a push in the right direction for most youngsters. I would download a free version of Delphi, and work with the child building a simple app that bounces a ball around the form or something, explaining the basic concepts involved. Then let them explore, answering questions as they come up.
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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!
Lego Mindstorms [^] teachs engineering and logic with "drag and drop programming" while building cool robots :thumbsup:
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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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That's like teaching your kid target shooting with a bazooka.
Software Zen:
delete this;
Fold With Us![^] -
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!
Ok, people are going to shoot this down, but... a. It's free (he already has it) b. There is an instant gratification with it c. its flexible/different Its the very fact that it doesn't enforce oo style development, or rigid structures that make it good... Too many developers are blinded by OO that it limits their imagination as to whats possible... And besides, learning from a less structured language first, helps one appreciate the benefits of structure when you move to that.... All that said, the interest in robotics/games isn't catered for in this suggestion obviously...