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Comment by detectiveninja | Hacker News Reader

I am in the process of teaching my kid (10) how to code, we tried all kinds of things, from programmable robots to scratch and nothing worked.

I dont think there is uniform process for every child.

In the end I just started spending 30 minutes every day with her and just coding, explaining and making small useful things.

here I am logging the process:

https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids

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Ten is too young, I think. I also don't think it's something you can push externally, unless you want to stigmatize the activity and ensure that it is treated as a chore; like piano practice, or ballet dancing.

I think programming is equivalent to literacy. So treating it like piano or math school is fine by me.

BTW now that she is beyond the initial wall, after about 3-4 months 30 minutes per day, she is enjoying making games and coming up with her own ideas. It is amazing how much you can do with just lists :)

Are you just gonna stick to python or expand into other languages too? I'd think other paradigms (OOP, FP, Erlang, etc...) could be interesting to her too.

Altough, maybe not yet.

we will see how it goes in a year or so, i think the sooner we go to c and then into lisp the better

Disagree. Me and a lot of my friends started at 10-12, self-teaching.

It seems to depend. Some kids can have the abstract logic abilities at 10 (I did), but most brains don't start to develop those skills until closer to 12-14.

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