Robots for children to program | Hacker News Reader

Robots for children to program

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30 pointsjunelin11 comments

This looks really neat, but as a parent, I have no desire to introduce technology to my son at the age of the kids in these videos. I think that physical and social skills are much more important to develop earlier. The part of the video with the boy sitting by himself with an iPad at a playground while children run around him made me feel sad.

Perhaps this could be good to introduce a little at a time. Like musical instruments (drum kits) or building blocks (legos). As a parent, I agree, that surrounding children with technology all the time can distract them from learning more important social skills. At the same time, I know my son is going to be asking me all the time "How does this work? How does that work? etc." And, unlike a software program, this provides a tactile experience which I think he'll be able to relate to when I say "Self driving cars work like your little robot".

It's not really scientific to suggest that complex social skills should develop first or should be the primary focus of parents.

Where did I say "complex"? And what the fuck are you talking about? I have a two year old. We're working on sharing and not hitting other children. Is that complex?

Go on. Tell me what should the scientifically minded parent do.

Scientifically minded parents should make decisions based on science. But telling a child "hitting is wrong" is easy for you to understand and apply (since you're bigger), but to suggest that common social skills are not complex because they are common is a bit naive.

Of course, since I'm not a parent, I wouldn't know anything about it, you have a kid so you are the authority here. I don't know why we have scientists at all, we should just hire parents who've managed to reproduce and ask them what their desires are and how certain behaviors make them feel.

Your sarcasm is wasted here. There are more life situations than scientific studies.

Furthermore, since this is real life, you can't run control groups and you have a sample size of one (the child). You're clearly not a parent since your type of condescension is one of the first things a person sheds after becoming a parent and realizing that it is much harder than one imagined.

Also, screw you. First you say I shouldn't be teaching my child complex social skills, and then when I say that I'm mostly teaching him not to hit, you say that I'm naive to say that "hitting is wrong" is not complex. This makes no sense. The problem here is that he is at the exact age where I need to teach him not to hit. Your logic is completely flawed. So why don't you tell me about science some more.

Maybe they should have shown a bunch of children around the iPad brainstorming enthusiastically on how the next move to program on the robot?

That'd work better for me.

This looks awesome - when I got my sifteo blocks the first thing I wanted was to make them capable of driving around. I wonder if there will be a smaller version at some point. I can imagine it would be awesome for table top gamers!

I wish to God they'd had one of these for me when I was ten..

... Soon to be followed by the children for robots program.

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