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> At my age I can barely read the article's thin, small, low-contrast font, but I believe that I agree with the author.

It's not your age, it's bad design.

Original:

font: 14px/1.5 Lato, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; color: #777; font-weight: 300;

Suggested:

font: 16px/1.5 Lato, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; color: #212121; font-weight: 400;

See the difference:

http://imgur.com/a/GJpqA

Lato Regular is easy to read, Lato Light is not great for body-text.

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Lato?query=lato

Thank you for your suggestions, very much appreciated. I've updated my styles.css file.

Sorry for the inconvenience. I'm an embedded developer and know nothing about web design. The jekyll theme was copy-pasted from one of the default styles provided by github.

Next step: Learn some css to make the design acceptable.

Good article, this was a great line! I think that's a great concept to get through to parents.

> the question should not be “how make a programmer out of a kid?”, but instead “how make the kid a maker?”

IMHO, this is much more legible:

https://github.com/dannas/dannas.github.com/blob/master/_pos...

Interesting...

From a social sharing and SEO perspective I think this page (http://dannas.github.io/2016/08/27/review-of-seymor-paperts-...) is better than (https://github.com/dannas/dannas.github.com/blob/master/_pos...) -- but I think one or the other needs to have a canonical tag or at least a NoIndex. I haven't played with GitHub as a blogging platform -- may have to do some more research.

A fancy CNAME and Jekyll layout might make your "blog" look professional and polished but that is subjective to the readers, and they won't add much to the content.

A simple github repo + README.md is quick, flexible and easy to maintain for years in the future. We can leave the style to GitHub guys. :-)

Here is an example:

https://github.com/steam-maker/steam-maker-forum/tree/master...

As the author of content, I want my content to utilize best practices and publication standards so that it has the best chance of getting read and distributed.

A "simple" GitHub repo ReadMe isn't going to have any of the right tools for sharing or distributing content, it won't allow you to capture signups, or A/B/n test; doesn't even allow you to put in analytics to see if people are reading your content, you can't build domain authority for your other work... It's pretty much the modern equivalent of stapling your flyer to a telephone pole.

You'd be better off with a properly configured WordPress, or other CMS-based, site.

There have been a bunch of posts today about scanning content, but here's a great pre-launch checklist. Do as many of these as you can, as fast as you can. Ha.

* Web Developer Checklist || http://webdevchecklist.com/

I agree with you 100% from a publisher's point of view.

You read it here; #212121 is the new #000.

:)

I believe you are looking at this the wrong way.

Just as you most probably wouldn't be against a child learning a second language or learning to play music I see no reason why one would be against them learning programming.

Learning to program is like learning a language. The language spoken by most feedback mechanisms in the world, more than any individual national language.

The point is not to turn them into programmers but to make them comfortable and familiar with the construct of computer syntax.

Just like you don't need to learn Chinese you don't need to learn computer programming but just like learning chinese or playing an instrument will affect your thinking so will learning to program even if you don't end up a programmer.

We can't compare this with our own upbringing even though it's tempting just like our parents couldn't compare our upbringing with theirs.

> Just as you most probably wouldn't be against a child learning a second language or learning to play music

There is an obvious reason to oppose such things: opportunity cost. learning anything takes time, and the curriculum is full. If you want to teach a new topic, you will have to remove something else. This might not be worth it.

(That said, I still support basic programming and basic computational reasoning at school. I propose we take away some of the math away, though I don't know which math exactly.)

Time and workload is certainly necessary to consider. However, removing parts of existing curriculum may not be the best way.

Considering the fact that computers have pervaded across domains, we could try integrating computational thinking with these domains. For example, you could teach Chemistry using simulations and modeling. It would deepen learning and, if the curriculum is well-structured, provide students the opportunity to learn computational thinking (within the context).

Integrating computational thinking in the existing curriculum has several benefits: 1. Deepen learning of the subject content: Enables active learning and knowledge construction 2. Learn programming concepts in the context: This is especially beneficial for students who have no prior programming experiences. 3. Not increase additional workload: Computational thinking (or as DiSessa puts it: "computational literacy") is a literacy skill like reading and writing. Here, we are proposing to use computers as a tool to think with.

This requires a lot of effort including providing professional development for teachers, restructuring curriculum, and supporting stakeholders through flexible implementation opportunities.

> There is an obvious reason to oppose such things: opportunity cost. learning anything takes time, and the curriculum is full.

The way I see it the bigger bottleneck is not time but motivation. You can fill a whole day with studies that a student isn't interested in and end up getting nowhere, or you can spend an hour on a topic that is able to hold a student's fascination--I would pick the latter any day. Engagement is simply a prerequisite for meaningful learning at scale; without it progress is slow and uneven at best.

This really depends on how old the child is.

Up to a certain age, the mental models just aren't there yet to make it worthwhile. It's not that useful trying to teach a child programming when they are only learning to make out different letters or numbers or their concept of time (or any abstract thought for that matter) is very rudimentary.

That leaves you only able to teach them very basic things, which end up looking more like a game than something that you would regard as programming.

By the time a child is say 10, things start to change. At that point though, their personality and the general direction of their interests is going to drive itself.

Better to get them interested in building things, tinkering, abstract thought and games, etc. and help them develop mental models which make it easy to pick up programming later.

I think you are missing what Papers writing is about (or maybe I am misunderstanding you)

Sure it depends on age I never said it wouldn't. Just like they need to be able to handle an instrument to learn to play it children of course needs to be able to have some basic skills to do programming.

Papers writing isn't about infants learning to program it's not even about toddlers. It's about children in school and how they can use programming as a tool for creating, tinkering and thinking by using the computer as a simulator to simulate things that they internalized (like playing ball, running down hill, throwing stones).

It's not about creating production ready code.

My oldest son who is now 7 has been doing something called number stories in math for some years it's not far from computer program construction. Last year he did some basic programming in the way of number solving.

I simply don't understand this weird obsession with keeping kids from being exposed to programming I don't see what it's based on.

I don't think we are disagreeing. I was referencing pure text-based programming. I think if you extend programming to being things like specialized puzzles, etc. it is applicable to a much wider group of people and ages.

> At my age I can barely read the article's thin, small, low-contrast font

I am 28 years old and find it hard to read as well. People who choose small font sizes and low contrast degrade usability a lot. Here is an article about the numerous failure modes of low-contrast designs: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/low-contrast/

I agree, but isn't bright #FFF white against black or near #000 the highest contrast possible in a monitor?

I blame the thin font, not the low contrast, for the readability problem.

Well when I was 13 I was creating video games and faux operating systems in Turbo Pascal. And I was also drawing and building model planes and thinking about how to best get girls' phone numbers on IRC then never dare call them.

It's not about not having computers, it's about how you use them.

I totally agree with this. Schools should train our kids for real life, slowly and gradually. It much more important how tools are used than what tools are used for training purposes. Later when they specialise then what tools are used will matter.

Perhaps it's time for another occasional comment about the hacky utility of bookmarklets. When I'm on the computer, as opposed to mobile device, I still use a few to compensate for such things.

The following site's been around "forever", and still provides a quick starting point. Note that web design has changed a lot; nonetheless, some of these still beat the majority of pages into a better appearance.

Yeah, I should be all "Read-a-page-ability-in-your-pocket" in my approach, and use some optimized, cloudified, designified nirvana.

Instead, I just leave some bookmarklets parked in my bookmarks bar, one click away.

https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/

E.g. (apologies for the ugliness):

    zap colors - background #E4E3CB
    
    javascript:(function(){var%20newSS,%20styles='*%20{%20background:%20#E4E3CB%20!%20important;%20color:%20black%20!important%20}%20:link,%20:link%20*%20{%20color:%20#0000EE%20!important%20}%20:visited,%20:visited%20*%20{%20color:%20#551A8B%20!important%20}';%20if(document.createStyleSheet)%20{%20document.createStyleSheet("javascript:'"+styles+"'");%20}%20else%20{%20newSS=document.createElement('link');%20newSS.rel='stylesheet';%20newSS.href='data:text/css,'+escape(styles);%20document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(newSS);%20}%20})();

    Georgia
    
    javascript:(function(){var%20newSSGeorgia,%20styles='*%20{%20font-family:%20Georgia%20!%20important%20}';%20if(document.createStyleSheet)%20{%20document.createStyleSheet("javascript:'"+styles+"'");%20}%20else%20{%20newSSGeorgia=document.createElement('link');%20newSSGeorgia.rel='stylesheet';%20newSSGeorgia.href='data:text/css,'+escape(styles);%20document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(newSSGeorgia);%20}%20})();

Read it here:

https://www.readability.com/articles/zgl0rbkx

If you are using Firefox, you can also just remove the styling by going to

     view > pagestyle > No style

That link doesn't actually work that way. It just redirects to the site. If you're in Firefox, Safari, or Edge, they already have Readability modes. It's a little book icon at the end of the address bar.

Distraction is the right word. Focus on harder to measure notions of systematic, analytic or creative thinking are happily exchanged for measurable educational innovations like iPads. If there are two schools: one where they use iPads and another where they build some weird touch device from technological scrap parts - which school would you rather send your child to?

It was added with JavaScript rather than in the CSS. NoScript fixes it or just good 'ol Alt-+++.

Perhaps the false dichotomy of electrical/paper is obscuring the very real one of video games/not video games.

Playing XBox is a waste of time in any generation.

I think you're right. I didn't mean to make the implication that the problem was electrical vs paper. I eventually did get old enough to go to the hardware store to buy bell wire, knife switches and bulbs for my early experiments. I wish my kids had grow up more interested in building things. I feel like I failed in this.

With respect to using paper and pencil for math there is still no contest between doing math on paper and doing it with your finger on an iPad.

That's too easy. Think of a game like Civilization. Granted, it's limited what you can learn from reading the in-game Civopedia, but probably thousands of kids have more awareness and interest in the historical progression of human civilization from playing that game.

And even if it is superficial awareness, those kinds of games exercise the fantasy-making faculties that make history itself interesting to learn about, even later as an adult.

Another example. There was this flop of a game in the early 90s, called SimEarth, that I have very fond memories of. It taught me about the Gaia hypothesis and the carbon cycle and stuff. Gameplay was pretty wacky though.

I remember SimEarth a modern version could be very educational, but not Gaia, isn't it a wacky theory?

Hehe, yeah. Worse, it's a wrong theory. But still kinda interesting, no harm learning about it.

Agree a modern SimEarth would be awesome.

The kids who enjoy Civilisation already understand history - that's why they enjoy Civilisation. The game isn't bringing history to anyone new.

What about a game like Age of Empires? I know lots of people who grew up playing that game, just as a game, and learned history along the way.