Ask HN: Are you teaching your kids programming? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are you teaching your kids programming?

9 pointsnoobie17 comments

Depends on the kid's personality (currently sub-one year old).

I don't want to force programming/engineering/etc down their throat if they aren't that way inclined. I'm going to wait and see what they're interested in and encourage that rather than trying to force my interests on them.

Sure, programming is a useful skill, but so are a lot of things. If they show an interest or just want to try what daddy does, then sure, I'll be all over that.

Ultimately it is a very thin line between pushing something on them and giving them useful life skills. But one person's opinion on what a key life skill is entirely different from another, for example some people believe a kid needs to know how to kill, gut, and cook a fish, but I don't.

I will, if given the choice, send them to a school with Computer Science-like classes in particular in their teens. Since being basically computer literate and being able to manipulate something as useful as Excel (or actually programming) might help them no matter their career.

I first tried programming in the second grade, not because of my parents but because the school happened to have a "class" in it. I was immediately interested since, for whatever reason, I was better at it than all the other kids in my class. It was like I was the only one who actually understood what was happening. Thinking back now, however, something tells me that if my parents had tried to push me into programming, I might have become less interested in it than I actually did. An important factor when growing up is a sense of discovery -- that you have found something for you -- rather than doing something just because people want you to. Even as a kid, you have a sense that your parents want you to do things not for you but for them to show off to other parents. A smart kid may recognise this conflict of interest.

I am, but I let them come to me about it before I started "teaching" them anything. I never pushed it on them nor did I hide it from them, but I just figured if they ever showed curiosity I would show them.

My son is finishing a technology program in his high school and going to graduate heading off for an engineering degree this year. My daughter is about 7 years younger and is now wanting to learn how to do some basic programming, so I am showing her the basics now. She is fascinated by minecraft which creating a mod is what really peaked her interest, so that's awesome in my book.

Not yet, but I was thinking about starting with the robot turtles board game. I might also do some bread board and some basic logic chips with LEDs at some point to. I remember those cool little DIY manuals from radio shack. I still have the learning electronics one in my book collection.

The way I would approach this is to kindle their imagination to build stuff. If in the process of building that thing, they need to use software then have them learn programming. If it requires them to use hardware, introduce them to Legos, hardware kits. If your kid wants to use colors and a canvas to bring alive their imagination, so be it. Be the enabler.

Yes, teaching VHDL/FPGA.

Is your kid a college student? I didn't run into this stuff until university.

That's rather advanced. What hardware are you programming with the VHDL?

Not yet. But I think I will when they are old enough.

Genuinely curious what you would consider "old enough" and how you would determine that.

You know, first get the basics done. Like being able to use a toilet or operate a fork. Leave programming for the early school years.

There are some (very private, very exclusive) preschools that start teaching kids C++ at 3 years old.

I'm not sure how much success they have, or if it's just a vanity thing, but there you go.

C++ makes no sense to me. Considering how much underpinning you need to have to write bad C++ (C, ASM, x86 memory model, basic programming concept, OO concepts, the libraries, etc).

A language like BASIC seems much more rational, or some specific educational language (inc. visual programming language).

To be frank I'm a little skeptical any pre-school does this (C++) no matter how private or exclusive. Seems like the kids wouldn't even understand what it is they're doing in C++ without years of pre-knowledge.

Heck most adult programmers cannot really write C++...

Ok, I looked it up and apparently it was an April Fool's Day joke:

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/01/149804404/n-y-preschool-starts...

I've assumed this was true for the last 3+ years. I'm not sure if I'm gullible, or if they should care more about journalistic standards?

It seemed plausible to me because that's about the age I'd start teaching a kid to program. C++ is obviously the wrong choice, but I think a 3-year-old could start learning Python.

3 year olds haven't even started pre-school yet. And some 3 year olds barely talk. Some are not even potty trained yet.

I'm starting my kids when they are 12. I don't want them glued to the computer screen just yet.

How on earth can 3 year old kids do this? You need to know how object oriented concepts work. Heck, you need to know how opening and closing braces work.

IMO C++ is the worst first language to learn by quite some distance. It's super complex, with a lot of the complexity being non-obvious (like slicing an object, default allocators, and other things that don't have a big text footprint.) Getting thing to compile can be hard, too. Library issues occur all the time.

I would have thought something like Python would make more sense. It more or less just works out of the box, you get a REPL so you can examine things as you code, libraries are easy to import.

Please name one of these schools! I would love to see their "value proposition".

Programming on young kids should be fan and with e a minimum friction that can frustrate or stop them from learning. I found ScratchJR and Alice 3D as good ways to start programming together with a parent.

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