Kindergarten coders can program before they can read | Hacker News Reader

Kindergarten coders can program before they can read

newscientist.com

86 pointsdavidw34 comments

My eldest was already doing amazing things with his arduino when he was 7, well before his reading and writing skills caught up. I deliberately held back with help on certain things to force him to RTFM. His fierce desire to figure it out did wonders for motivation.

It is gratifying to hear an 8 year old correctly use "instantiate" in conversation. We did have to warn him about using "magic" words amongst his "muggle" friends.

> We did have to warn him about using "magic" words amongst his "muggle" friends.

Probably a good idea. I've on occasion realized that I was talking to someone about killing orphaned children in public within earshot of assorted people who are unlikely to understand the context, and having to hope that the mention of daemons and zombies in the same conversation makes it clear we're not actually planning murder.

Oh dear lord that's cute. Good on you for doing something right!

A kid near my house was being excessively naughty. So his mom asked him "how old are you?" to remind him to be a bit sober.

He had answered that question many times before, so this time he answered it a bit differently: "I am birthday number old". Mom says: "Huh? That doesn't make sense. What did you mean?"

He says: "I mean, I am as old as the number of birthdays I have celebrated".

It's disappointing that the environment mentioned does not appear to be generally available:

http://ase.tufts.edu/DevTech/ScratchJr/ScratchJrHome.asp#tec...

I would have loved to try it out with my daughter.

The original Scratch[1] is publicly available, although it does require basic reading and math skills. That said, very young kids have made some pretty amazing things with it over the years.

[1]http://scratch.mit.edu/

That screenshot gives me good memories about lego mindstorms, which is where I got my start programming. Some of that is just the similar "puzzle piece" nature of how the blocks fit together.

ScratchJr might not be available, but Scratch is: http://scratch.mit.edu/

http://toontalk.com/ has also seen success with preliterate children. (http://www.toontalk.com/English/papers.htm has some stuff on that, which I haven't read. I have read about the language design and thought it interesting.)

It is included in the default OS distribution for the raspberry PI.

I think that's just regular Scratch, not Scratch Jr.

Isn't learning to read and learning to program basically the same thing? You're putting direction to syntax to complete a statement in either case. I don't see what the big leap is. Am I missing something?

No, far from it. I continue to be bemused by many programmers' fetishization of text.

This is the sort of thing I like to work with: http://www.recordjob.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Reaktor5_...

This one is aimed somewhat more at roboticists, and has a Ruby interface: http://www.dsprobotics.com/flowstone.html

This is a flatter (non-nesting) system, but the one which I use most because it's so fast to prototype in (and these days I care more about composition than systemization): http://bagger288.com/goldenmaster/wp-content/uploads/2009/12...

This is the sort of thing I've worked with: http://img.thedailywtf.com/images/201104/labview.jpg

Get 5+ of those controlling a robot and you can have a terrific time debugging. I think it's scarred me for life; I'd rather use Java than write a program in a graphical language again.

That looks like a good time to me! I like to see the structure of what I'm working with, and that's something that gets lost with text. But I agree that it makes debugging more demanding, since you can't just set breakpoints and so in the normal way; synchronization problems can be a headache. I think it's got a lot more in common with breadboarding/circuit design/

I do recommend checking out Flowstone, or its earlier incarnation Synthmaker, which allows programming in C and assembler as well as blackboxing modules. This seems like the best of both worlds in many respects.

That's interesting, do you have a background in hardware? I find it much easier to build a mental model from text, but I guess its because I'm not very familiar with graphical tools.

I try to stay away from closed source development tools as a general rule, are there any open source graphical tools you would recommend?

I'm sorry that I can't suggest anything open source except for DSP hacking, and that would Miller Puckette Pure Data system - but like a lot of open-source tools, especially in this space, it's about as friendly as a leopard. Very powerful, but also hideously ugly. Most pro users use a commercial iteration of the concept called Max/MSP which also has a steep learning curve but is quite interoperable with other platforms such as Processing.

I'm largely focused on audio processing because I'm into synths, but also on sequencers which I find endlessfascinating in much the same way as wind-up toys :) The problem is increasing complexity on larger projects, of course; I tend to use the Nord Modular platform for preference because otherwise I could spend all my time building and never get around to making music.

One commercial application that you might find interesting is the IDA debugger. I found after I'd been doing this for a while that I developed a strange affection for assembler and low-level debugging.

I don't think Pure Data is as scary as people make it out to be. It's certainly quite plain looking– similar to writing code with no syntax highlighting– but once you settle in it's enormous fun and very straightforward. The help browser in Pd-extended has enough examples and tutorials to keep you interested. Considering how much similar applications cost, PD should get a hardy recommendation!

Well, fancy that. As a young child, I liked to play King's quest, but I couldn't quite read yet—so my mother wrote down the text commands on a sheet of paper, for my reference.

And before that, I got my computer time in by way of a baby sling in my father's lap. He said it seemed to calm me down and stop me from crying.

Start 'em young, I say!

Those games were brutal for a 12 year old that barely could read or understand english. One mistake and you lost days of work.

Getting started early on life's lessons.

I am going to be working with my small child (almost 3) to teach him how to read and program at the same time using:

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/658960/

Hopefully my "tests" will go well and will video document.

Be quiet.... a child of 3 is not fully ready for that.

Depends how it's done. It could be just play, and the child is learning at the same time.

Learning to read is intensely political, with fierce arguments around it. At the moment "synthetic phonics" is recommended.

An app that correctly teaches parents the sounds used would be great! (Also, apps that teach parents 'new math', eg chunking, would be handy.)

(I am being downvoted in my previous comment)

Yes, depends how it's done but one thing is to know programming and a very different one how to teach it. I expanded my approach in a new thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6112737

I think Scratch and Alice 3D are complex for a 3 years old. For that age I would recommend to move something real/a-physical-object like a car or a robot instead of watching exclusively the computer screen.

You're presumably being downvoted for the combination of "Be quiet" and making categorical statements without explaining your opinion.

Yes, they may be complex - my son was not really interested when he was 3 and I showed him Scratch. I'm frankly more inclined to go with pure text or my next try (he's 4 now; I started at 5; I'm not assuming he's guaranteed to show the same interest I did, but I'm certainly going to ensure he gets the opportunity).

Maybe it's possible to teach Kindergarteners ARM assembly, this way they could write super efficient ARM compilers before they are proficient in a human language.

Just kidding. I remember a story about a French Mathematician (Lagrange?) and while he was young someone saw his great talent. He recommended the mother not to give him a math book before he turns 17. Obviously because he feared that he would have done nothing else in life than math...

I wonder about kids who can read at that age, like I could. Would they be surpassing those who couldn't, or does the graphical layout really offer that much flexibility?

In addition, it seems like a wasted opportunity to not throw some text in to help teach kids to read at the same time.

What are the long term implications to how one thinks if they learn to program before they learn to read a language such as english?

Will the actual way they think be different? What will their thought processes be like when they are teen/adult?

FWIW, I learnt a couple of programming languages when I was very young, and immigrated to the US shortly thereafter. I find that I really struggle having a conversation with anybody who doesn't use very precise language, and I easily get caught up on little details of what someone says if it doesn't seem consistent. I blame the coding.

Interesting, makes sense though that that would be the case.

Going off anecdotal data here I wouldn't assume cause goes one way or the other. It's certainly possible TallGuyShort was able to/wanted to learn to program as a child because he enjoyed precise language.

There's a cool startup that's making a toy out of this concept. They're using physical blocks (connected to an iPad) to teach kids sequencing: http://digitaldreamlabs.com/

That's really cool!

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