Teaching kids to code
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My girlfriend's son is 7 and pretty good at maths, so I wanted to start teaching him the basics of coding. Now when I was a lad the school had a computer room with a ZX81, BBC B, Commodore Pet and 64, Vic 20 and we learned to program in BASIC, but these days a PC is too complex to learn the basics on. What do people recommend as a good teaching and learning language / package?
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My girlfriend's son is 7 and pretty good at maths, so I wanted to start teaching him the basics of coding. Now when I was a lad the school had a computer room with a ZX81, BBC B, Commodore Pet and 64, Vic 20 and we learned to program in BASIC, but these days a PC is too complex to learn the basics on. What do people recommend as a good teaching and learning language / package?
More money in stocks 'n' shares, work in London and by 25 you could be making 7 figure bonuses. -- modified at 5:20 Thursday 25th January, 2007 Sorry I'm having a bad day and wish I should of done something else worth while and makes more money. :sigh:
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. Steve Jobs
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My girlfriend's son is 7 and pretty good at maths, so I wanted to start teaching him the basics of coding. Now when I was a lad the school had a computer room with a ZX81, BBC B, Commodore Pet and 64, Vic 20 and we learned to program in BASIC, but these days a PC is too complex to learn the basics on. What do people recommend as a good teaching and learning language / package?
There are some infos going on the www.python.org website http://www.python.org/community/sigs/current/edu-sig/ Don't have any kids, so I've never tried it, but I suppose that python could be a pretty good way to start programming.
All the label says is that this stuff contains chemicals "... known to the State of California to cause cancer in rats and low-income test subjects."
Roger Wright
http://www.codeproject.com/lounge.asp?select=965687&exp=5&fr=1#xx965687xx -
My girlfriend's son is 7 and pretty good at maths, so I wanted to start teaching him the basics of coding. Now when I was a lad the school had a computer room with a ZX81, BBC B, Commodore Pet and 64, Vic 20 and we learned to program in BASIC, but these days a PC is too complex to learn the basics on. What do people recommend as a good teaching and learning language / package?
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More money in stocks 'n' shares, work in London and by 25 you could be making 7 figure bonuses. -- modified at 5:20 Thursday 25th January, 2007 Sorry I'm having a bad day and wish I should of done something else worth while and makes more money. :sigh:
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. Steve Jobs
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Excellent idea, Rage! It has a nice interface that could be understandable even for kids at the age of 7. My 5 for that! Later on they can always try to use LegOS and the C-libraries for Mindstorm. Modification... After a quick look at the web I found that it's not called LegOS any longer. It's now called brickOS and the website can be found here[^]. I've tried it when it was still called LegOS and had a blast!
"It's supposed to be hard, otherwise anybody could do it!" - selfquote
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My girlfriend's son is 7 and pretty good at maths, so I wanted to start teaching him the basics of coding. Now when I was a lad the school had a computer room with a ZX81, BBC B, Commodore Pet and 64, Vic 20 and we learned to program in BASIC, but these days a PC is too complex to learn the basics on. What do people recommend as a good teaching and learning language / package?
Try MicroWorlds, a kind of GUI-over-Logo (www.microworlds.com). Simple on the surface but you can do lot with it - loops, subroutines, branches. And without any code at all. For kids about 6 to 8 I think. Or you can try Kids Programming Language (www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com). KPL for short. Its a kind of simplified dot net language - it does way cool sprites and collision detection is simple-as. For smarter kids. My 8 year old had a lot fun with both of them. Maybe your girlfriends boy will too.
Robert from Melbourne
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Never said I wanted him to be a software engineer like me, but I reckon by the time he gets to the job market everyone from stockbrokers to milkmen will be getting on the coding wagon.
Stockbrokers have reasons to acquire elementary coding skills, such as advanced analysis spreadhsheets etc. so maybe they were a bad example. I think the days of everybody jumping on the coding bandwagon are over. With software factories you may find people semi-skilled at coding, but skilled in other areas such as business analysis, will jump on the software production bandwagon, but they won't be coding. I think more people will require more casual services from developers, so instead of always being hired for big projects, developers will be increasingly hired for customisations etc. and the development profession will become more a normal part of society, like other professions.
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My girlfriend's son is 7 and pretty good at maths, so I wanted to start teaching him the basics of coding. Now when I was a lad the school had a computer room with a ZX81, BBC B, Commodore Pet and 64, Vic 20 and we learned to program in BASIC, but these days a PC is too complex to learn the basics on. What do people recommend as a good teaching and learning language / package?
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Never said I wanted him to be a software engineer like me, but I reckon by the time he gets to the job market everyone from stockbrokers to milkmen will be getting on the coding wagon.
That I agree, programming will easier and salaries will be low, like I said get into stock brokering, my youngest brother in law is learning the ropes at the moment it's where I would of like to at his age. No doubt he'll be retiring by 30:~ Bio mechanics/medicine are probably better than programming in the future.
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. Steve Jobs
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I would say C++ would be a very good way to start him off.
Brad Australian - Christian Graus on "Best books for VBscript" A big thick one, so you can whack yourself on the head with it.
At the age of 7? :omg:
________________________________________________ Personal Blog [ITA] - Tech Blog [ENG] - My Photos Developing ScrewTurn Wiki 2.0 (2.0 Beta is out)
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I would say C++ would be a very good way to start him off.
Brad Australian - Christian Graus on "Best books for VBscript" A big thick one, so you can whack yourself on the head with it.
Bradml wrote:
I would say C++ would be a very good way to start him off.
LOL!, yeah great for a 7 year old to cut his teeth, better still assembler. Nah forget it, get him to do something worthwhile, where the money is going to pay better, and that certainly won't be in the world of IT.
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. Steve Jobs
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At the age of 7? :omg:
________________________________________________ Personal Blog [ITA] - Tech Blog [ENG] - My Photos Developing ScrewTurn Wiki 2.0 (2.0 Beta is out)
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My girlfriend's son is 7 and pretty good at maths, so I wanted to start teaching him the basics of coding. Now when I was a lad the school had a computer room with a ZX81, BBC B, Commodore Pet and 64, Vic 20 and we learned to program in BASIC, but these days a PC is too complex to learn the basics on. What do people recommend as a good teaching and learning language / package?
I'd start him on the Lego Mindstorms first (I still play with it many years down the line). Then show him that you can program stuff using the simple SDK. At least with the version I had the commands were identical to the stuff in the custom Mindstorm programming thingy so that you can get up to speed very easily.
I have no idea what I just said. But my intentions were sincere.
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My girlfriend's son is 7 and pretty good at maths, so I wanted to start teaching him the basics of coding. Now when I was a lad the school had a computer room with a ZX81, BBC B, Commodore Pet and 64, Vic 20 and we learned to program in BASIC, but these days a PC is too complex to learn the basics on. What do people recommend as a good teaching and learning language / package?
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Bradml wrote:
I would say C++ would be a very good way to start him off.
LOL!, yeah great for a 7 year old to cut his teeth, better still assembler. Nah forget it, get him to do something worthwhile, where the money is going to pay better, and that certainly won't be in the world of IT.
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. Steve Jobs
norm .net wrote:
Nah forget it, get him to do something worthwhile, where the money is going to pay better, and that certainly won't be in the world of IT.
That is not what he is doing, this isn't a career move thing (from what he has said). And yes C++ is perfect for this. A simple cin and cout would be very simple task.
Brad Australian - Christian Graus on "Best books for VBscript" A big thick one, so you can whack yourself on the head with it.
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My girlfriend's son is 7 and pretty good at maths, so I wanted to start teaching him the basics of coding. Now when I was a lad the school had a computer room with a ZX81, BBC B, Commodore Pet and 64, Vic 20 and we learned to program in BASIC, but these days a PC is too complex to learn the basics on. What do people recommend as a good teaching and learning language / package?
Well, I started my son off with java and some simple "put a dot on the screen", ok now a line, ok now a little catapillar (an array of little circles), ok now click where the catapillar starts, etc, etc, etc... But he just wasn't interested. Still isn't :(( Prepare for the same if the kid is 7 ;P Stick with reading to him for now. That's one of my fondest memories of that time. ...Steve