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Comment by uniclaude | Hacker News Reader

This reads like the author really wants his kid to learn programming, and the article shows more interest from the parent than from the child.

That's obviously anecdotical but I'm very glad nobody steered me into programming. It was my private garden, and I enjoyed every single second of the freedom it gave me. Writing my Delphi programs was funnier to me than programming books.

I think my point here is that I'm not sure it is in the best interest of children to push them into our passions. Then again I'm not a parent, so my opinion doesn't hold much weight!

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Author here. Thanks for the feedback.

My son's experience has generally been self-driven via Scratch. I introduced him to Scratch at around age 7 through CoderDojo and he really enjoyed it (I'm a big fan of Scratch for kids--it's the perfect balance of art, creativity and logic with programming concepts mixed in.

I introduced Python, then Javascript, after he asked me about what I do (I was excited that he actually asked, so I ordered the book). I'm more of a web designer/developer, not a software engineer, so I showed him to the tools I know (trying to keep things at his level) and set him on his way. The thought of being able to write his own video game keeps him motivated. He plays with the examples on phaser.io/examples and sees it as something he might be able to do after working through the lessons.

My biggest concern is pushing him into something that he doesn't want for himself. It should never feel like work. He likes the CodeSchool videos, jingles and exercises, so he does it. He got tired of the books, so he stopped. There are many long gaps, diversions and pivots, which is totally fine. If he just wants to play outside, build with Legos, read, watch a movie or do nothing, I don't bother him. Programming is not his job, it's just a skill that I think will be useful for him and is something I can actually help him with.

Side Note: I originally had a section in the post about how in the past it was more common to pass knowledge and skills down to your children in the form of trades (farming, sewing, blacksmithing, etc.) and is "computer programming" something worthy of passing down. I thought it digressed a bit too much, so I removed it.

Don't overthink it. Just introduce him to something basic. Hell, why not even BASIC hehe ;) I remember when I was 9, my father enrolled me into some "bootcamp", I don't know what it was called back then, but it was some comp programing class for kids, about 3 hours a day for 2 weeks. I remember a teacher, she would just write little BASIC programs on the blackboard and we would just copy them into QBASIC. I remember that I understood very little and the other kids weren't interested much too, we were just eagerly waiting for recess, so we could play Prince of Persia 1 for 15 minutes.At the end of this BASIC "bootcamp", I didn't even touch programing again, I just went home and continued with my mastery of pp and prehistoric 1 & 2 games. But it looks like it planted a seed in my head, because in high school i started wondering what we did 5 years ago in those classes and I somehow found a book on basic and now here I am, writing GOTO statements for profit ;) Just kidding on that last part :) The moral of the story is - Kids can also develop interest much later from the time of exposure to new things.

Yes, BASIC was all the rage, 30 years ago. Today everything is Web and Cloud. I liked computers because I could make them do things which were cool then. Now I would probably want to do things which are cool now.

As long as the kid is fine with JS I see no problem. If GOTOs haven't rotten our minds (or have they? omg!) maybe NaNNaNNaN Batman! won't mess up his...

This guy installed QBasic through DOSBOX and used it to successfully get his son into programming:

http://www.nicolasbize.com/blog/30-years-later-qbasic-is-sti...

Hacker News discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11636383

awesome guy ! thanks for posting.

I will add to his anecdote with my own. I have been teaching my nieces (10 and 16) how to program and I approached it the same way. My 16 y/o niece was told Python was the way to go, but I resisted teaching her that. I'm an iOS developer that learned the 3 bears of web, JS/Ruby/Python, when I started teaching myself. While there were many things to appreciate about all three, the most useful to me was ability to open up a website and see its contents. To build 'hello world' in three smalls files and load into a browser without the internet (kind of a big deal when your niece loses the internet - and electricity - from time to time. Cause: poverty) is eye-opening at that age.

Showing someone you are passionate about something and teaching that - passion... THAT is the best thing you can do for a young mind. The worst outcome is that they are not interested long-term but harness what they learned from you into something else. The best outcome is that they love it and eclipse you at some point earlier in their own careers.

I'm not a parent either, but even if my nieces choose other fields (odds are they will), they will be better off for having some technical training before doing so: they will dig far deeper than what's required because they were trained to think that way. One of my nieces is an artist. She could draw better than I could as an adult at 12 and I had formal training in industrial design! Showing her that code is just a lower level of artistic expression is something I wish someone would have told me at her age. Doesn't matter to me if she goes into ID, UX, SD, or CG. I don't believe you can have too much directed exposure.

> "That's obviously anecdotical but I'm very glad nobody steered me into programming."

Same. When I was growing up, we had a Commodore 64 and a small collection of programming books. (For the youngens in the crowd: Back in the day, software would sometimes be distributed in print form and you had to type it all in). As I learned to read, I also learned to type code (starting around age 5 or so). Likely one of the first chapter books I really spent time with was the C64 manual: http://www.commodore.ca/commodore-manuals/commodore-64-users...

I also didn't know how to fix errors, so any time I made a mistake I would have to retype it all. By default, on a C64 you can just start typing a Basic program and then type RUN to run it. So you'd enter something like:

   10 POKE 53280,2
   20 POKE 53281,5
   30 PRINT "CHRISTMAS!"

Then type RUN and it would run the commands. In the case of the above code, it would set the border of the screen to red, the background to green, and print CHRISTMAS! on the screen.

> "I think my point here is that I'm not sure it is in the best interest of children to push them into our passions. Then again I'm not a parent, so my opinion doesn't hold much weight!"

I think this is correct. My son has spent a fair amount of type with the faux-programming stuff they have for kids these days (Tynker, code.org, etc) and has enjoyed it, but I've been struggling to find a way to transition him to something more real without it feeling forced.

If he has some homework that could be programmed away maybe suggest he automate it? I understand there would be concern that he wouldn't "really" learn whatever the underlying task was but I've always come away from an automation task with a much deeper understanding of the underlying problem than I got from just doing it repeatedly.

Your point is good, parent or not. That said, sometimes it's... hard. My 10-year-old son recently decided he was going to REALLY learn how to program, so he started a 2-hour a day deep dive, and got REALLY good.

At Windows Batch files.

let him at it, until he reaches the limit...

Then introduce Ruby, it seems to have a pretty good binding for Windows stuff

That's what I did.

I started with a really small BASIC for learning, after a bit I started messing with bash (my father used Linux, so I used Linux), and made some godawful scripts.

I was around 11 at that point, so most of my work was in a "choose your own adventure" text game where I also experimented with making a UI in the terminal with text. Then when I couldn't get it to run fast enough, started messing with C which I heard was faster, then picked up Java because I wanted to make a real UI (not a single one of the books on programming talked about any ways of getting a UI with C or C++), and from there to web languages because I wanted to build a website, and that launched my career.

Each step I hit a wall and struggled on my own for a while, and I think that was the most important part. I needed a solution, and that drove my will to learn. My dad only ever stepped in when I specifically asked, and even then he'd only get me a book/resource or give me some hints or very light help.

I found programming myself on the family computer. Although, I'm not quite sure how I found 'QBASIC.EXE' when all I had were Apple II and Commodore 64 BASIC books in the school library.

What I needed back then was someone to give direction and help. If I ever have children my plan would be to make them aware of programming, and if they try it, good for them. I'll just mentor them along the way.

theres nothing wrong giving your kid motivation. If your kid wants something theres nothing wrong pushing him in the right direction. Both inner and outer motivation works equally well.

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