How to test if a child is interested in programming?

3 points·laacz··5 comments

Assuming a child (10) has no knowledge of programming, is there any fun way of giving him a go at it and seeing if he wants to go on? I myself started with programmable calculator and continued onto zx spectrum. I had different motivation of doing so - no internet, just pure fun of messing with what you have. Nowadays computer is not something you need to make do things, it just does them all.

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My son (13) only gets interested when I hack something quick, simple, AND fun!

Last thing we hack was connecting a raspberry running espeak so we can send audible texts to each other around the house.. by the end, he was really hooked with the project, but at the start he really didn't care.

I learned to teach him without pushing him. I usually start working on the thing myself, and during the project he will show interest, but never worked the other way around.

He shows interest for other things, like maths, game theory, and books.. specially books! so I think we are from a different breed of hackers, and not all of us learn the same way.

Try to find what's you child's learning type, and what are the things that motivates and are fun to him

Scratch works real well for teaching kids to code. There is a bunch of fun programs for them to do that doesn't even feel like programming.

I learned python at 14 (12 years ago) to get it to do my rote math homework for me. Seemed like decent motivation at the time.

Modding Minecraft might be a good place to start, assuming like so many kids that age he is into it.

I started in my early teens with GameMaker. It was fairly straightforward to use, had lots of tutorials available on YouTube, and games were super relatable to me and really got me motivated to learn more.

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