
Explaining Programming to Six-Year-Olds - rbanffy
https://dev.to/tkaczanowski/explaining-programming-to-6-years-old-kids
======
arghIdontwantto
I did something similar for my kids class (mix between 3 to 5 year olds).

The first thing I did was make a game in Unity (very simple, no death just
collect things) that featured their faces and school uniform (had written
permission from all parents). The kids were amazed at it and asked a lot of
questions. The main point I tried to explain was computers are also for
'working' and 'creating' games, not just playing them and you could make games
by 'programming' and explaining a bit what that is.

After this, I tried to explain what an algorithm is. Sounds strange to try to
explain this to such young kids, but you can relate to real world situations
(in this case, they have a 'routine' for lunch that never deviates, so I
related to this and other routines) but to make it interesting, at the end we
played a little game where we drew a grid on the floor, and we had to program
a 'robot' to go forward or turn to get from one place to another. The robot
was usually one of the kids and the others had to give instructions. We
started to have one instruction, do movement, one instruction, do movement to
having them try at least to do 4-5 instructions to get to the end. The kids
loved the game and the teacher even created a small table based one for them
to play by themselves.

After I took a Sphero ball, did a small app to control it based on the game we
played before, and let the kids try to do the same, but this time controlling
an actual 'robot'.

While I didn't show them any code, they understood that they could create
'routines' in the computer to control or display things. Was pretty cool (and
the parents loved it as well when they saw the game and the kids explained to
them what an 'algorithm' is :))

(this was over the course of a few weeks, so it wasn't a full day of them
trying to learn everything)

~~~
schoen
There have been physical turtle robots that are programmed using Logo.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_(robot)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_\(robot\))

Part of Seymour Papert's pedagogical idea of programming the turtle seems to
me to be that the the students can put themselves mentally in the position of
the turtle and ask "how would I know what to do next?", ideally with the
insight that we're looking for a rule that can be expressed in language and
that answers the question in every situation. That sounds very akin to your
lesson!

I guess the Sphero ball might be a kind of update of this.

~~~
intoverflow2
Beauty of Logo vs other robot command puzzles like Lightbot is Logo isn't just
solving puzzles but a gateway to actually being creative with code.

Kid walking away from lightbot: "I completed all the hard challenges"

Kid walking away from Logo: "I drew this flower using code"

Wish more kids coding tools aimed for the latter.

------
vanni
Well, we programmers are WRITERS who have to think thoroughly and write very
carefully, because our READERS always take our words literally, and we really
don't want things to go bad.

~~~
vanni
After being downvoted, I'm trying to understand what could have hurt someone
sensibility. Maybe the word _writer_ feels far from the shiny tech scene, but
in the end we ARE writers, and of the highest qualities. Kids understand what
a writer does, your parents too. So I think that it is a good approach to
explaining what a computer programmer does, in the end.

~~~
timerol
A guideline to keep in mind (from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)):
"Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or
phrase, put _asterisks_ around it and it will get italicized."

Also: "Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good,
and it makes boring reading." Though I'm personally fine with legitimate
questions about expected behavior.

------
camel_Snake
I've been priming my nieces on how computers operate by playing a simple game
with them. I pretend to be a robot and they give me instructions. When they
say 'turn left' I keep rotating until they tell me to stop or do something
else. When they say 'sit down' I just sit wherever I am, even if there's a
chair right behind me.

They think I'm just being silly and we all have a laugh but they're getting
the hang of it!

~~~
deathanatos
A teacher I had in ≈ fourth grade did this with our class. We had to make a
PB&J sandwich. It was entertaining, and like your example, he pushed us to
give the same amount of precision in our answers, all while having some fun.

~~~
farnsworth
We did this too, but I have no idea why, because we weren't learning
programming. It's probably the only thing I specifically remember about 6th
grade. Maybe it was to teach us to be just as precise in our homework or
something.

------
Xoros
"Nowadays every kid watches cartoons on YouTube".

Well, no.

(Here comes my 2cts)

Recently, at the age of seven, my son discovered how the remote control works.
He was proud that he figured it all by himself.

And I was proud that my son discovered that at the age of seven and not at the
age of two or three.

When my children wakes up in the morning they don't switch the tv on or any
other screen.

They play.

They build stuff with Lego or wood game. They draw. They go in the garden to
play with the dog or with their bikes.

Of course they sometimes play a game on my tablet or telephone, it's not 20th
century anymore.

But they don't own any. And they don't choose when they can watch a screen.
(Steve Jobs did the same with his children after all [0])

Despite that, I will start to teach them programming next school year, I've
bought a PI for each, and I welcome the article ! It's just I think this is
important, but not a priority for youngs.

[0] [https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/fashion/steve-jobs-
app...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/fashion/steve-jobs-apple-was-a-
low-tech-parent.html)

~~~
bendmorris
>Steve Jobs did the same with his children after all

Is there any reason to believe that Steve Jobs is an authority on raising
children?

~~~
Theodores
Steve Jobs was famous for his reality not being the same as everyone else's
initial idea of what reality should be.

This would have been an enforceable rule, a decree to be obeyed by nanny. So
ideals from Steve Jobs could be valid even if delegation was involved.

~~~
gcb0
he forbid his kid from drinking milk and many other harmless foods. I guess
that is not even an outlinner in California... but still

~~~
JCharante
I'd imagine there's a lot of vegan households that forbid the consumption of
milk and other "harmless" foods in California, so it doesn't seem strange at
all.

------
Marcus316
Reading through this link, I like that the author/presenter is trying to
relate things to what the kids experience. That said, it still felt a bit all
over the place. That's OK, of course, as I wouldn't expect much more than to
pique the interest of the children, inviting them to explore a bit on their
own later.

My five year old is starting to understand a bit about programing and
computers, and we enjoyed going through the following book:
[https://usborne.com/browse-
books/catalogue/product/1/9570/li...](https://usborne.com/browse-
books/catalogue/product/1/9570/lifttheflap-computers-and-coding/)

It's a pretty good basic introduction, in my opinion. It doesn't get too
complicated, either, presenting different types of computers, the basics of
binary numbers, input and output, and also has online resources available as
supplement. If you can find a copy at your local library (which is where we
picked it up), give it a look-see.

~~~
vanderZwan
> the author/presenter is trying to relate things to what the kids experience.
> That said, it still felt a bit all over the place.

Arguably, a kids experience is all over the place too ;). But I guess that's
one of the tasks in education, and what you're getting at: teaching them to
stay concentrated.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>teaching them to stay concentrated //

To add a thought: I'm coming around to, in non-group situations, trying to
accommodate distraction rather than steamroller over it.

I teach clay pot throwing. Younger kids particularly are often highly
distracted. In part that's because of the tactile nature of the medium. I'm
finding that if I go along with the distraction, playing with how the water
feels say, then we can usually get the central activity (making a pot) done
"better".

For me it's key to recognise that distractions are often moments when
something is inspiring the child, aside from the central task, and that the
child is learning still in such situations (just learning about other things
than are included in the 'lesson plan').

Just a thought to mull over.

~~~
vanderZwan
That sounds like a great approach for that type of hands-on teaching!

I was teaching at a uni for a year - bachelors, masters, so all young adults.
However, especially the bachelors were still in the process "unlearning" the
high school attitude, that is: learning what you have to in order to pass, not
because you want to understand the subject.

When teaching theory, the most effective way to shift them to the second mode
of thinking and keep them engaged, was chopping up the lectures into ten to
fifteen minute chapters, with two to five minutes of mini-discussion breaks.
These would include an optional topic starter, _" now discuss how you would
apply what I just explained to X"_, where X is something that at hopefully
least one in the group can directly relate to from their own lives.

I think replacing long lectures of passive listening with that type of short
loop - passive listening/active discussion doing - would also work for younger
ages. I don't believe long lectures are good in general, _even if you 're into
the material_. They make you wait until you can actively engage with what
you've learned and force you to keep it all in your head until then. Just
adding short breaks of talking about it with the person next to you already
helps a lot.

------
j_s
_Lauren Ipsum: A Story About Computer Science and Other Improbable Things_ |
[https://amzn.com/dp/1593275749/](https://amzn.com/dp/1593275749/) ($10.99
Kindle / $11.40 Paperback)

\- "I think it is a little too subtle"

\- "it introduces some basic computer science ideas, without being too
technical"

\--

src: _Ask HN: How should I teach code to kids?_ |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13675268](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13675268)
(4.5 months ago)

~~~
sideshowb
I was about to recommend this. +1 for Lauren Ipsum.

I'm also working on my own programming based fantasy story. Will definitely
post up on HN when it's done.

------
dogprez
I was once got a chance to describe to a class of kids in Marin County what
programming is. They were maybe 10 years old. I used the analogy of a robot
that does exactly what you tell it to do. A little girl raised her hand as
asked, "Like my maid?"

------
neves
I preferred my approach. It was for 9 years old.

I've build with them a robot mask from a cardboard box. (fun!) Put on the mask
and told them that the robot is stupid, just understands 2 commands: step
forward and turn right.

Put them to teach the robot to go around the room. Asked how to make the robot
turn left. Created a command to turn left. Abstraction! Simplified some
commands with loops.

We all had a good time.

~~~
EvanAnderson
The board game "Robot Turtles" is a slicker-looking implementation of what
you're describing:
[http://www.robotturtles.com/](http://www.robotturtles.com/)

~~~
neves
Are you insinuating that a simple board game can be slicker-looking than me
with a robot mask? Offense!!!!

------
sonabinu
Why don't we focus on teaching critical thinking and making kids comfortable
with abstract concepts? Do we need to call it programming and overwhelm those
around us. These are skills that translate to most of life's situations and
decision making. when I started programming my biggest obstacle was the fear
of seeing error codes.

------
racl101
I believe that just like any other topic in life such as math, science, music,
etc.

There's no easy way to explain programming to the majority of kids that
doesn't involve oversimplifying it.

There's simply: the group of kids who are curious about it, who want to learn
about it, who are willing to go through the rigor to learn it and then there's
the other kids who don't.

If a kid isn't interested then there's no amount of simplifying it that will
make them get it.

------
mmirate
6 years old?

This confuses me.

Formal operations typically develop at around age 11 (cf. Piaget); this mental
capability is necessary to (among many other things) comprehend abstraction,
isomorphism, algebra, recursion, and most of the other mathematics-originated
components of computer science. How can children without these capabilities,
possibly comprehend programming, to any extent beyond the trivially concrete?

~~~
dbcurtis
It means you need to keep the learning tangible, tactile, and concrete. Simple
robots are great for that. At that age with my kid, we did Logo+Turtle
graphics, with a "be the robot" walk-through before coding. Also we got a Pro-
Bot from Terrapin Logo, which is again create concrete, observable output from
simple programming steps. Somewhere along the line we had a robot that I don't
think is made any more, but it had a paper disk with two channels of
information for driving the two wheel motors, and you programmed it with a
black crayon.

The key is keeping a direct, concrete connection between program and output.
Multiple steps of abstract thinking don't work well.

~~~
cr0sh
> Somewhere along the line we had a robot that I don't think is made any more,
> but it had a paper disk with two channels of information for driving the two
> wheel motors, and you programmed it with a black crayon.

Sounds like one of the old OWI MOVIT robots - they used to sell a version (I
think it is discontinued but still available from some vendors) called the
"Binary Player Robot Kit". It doesn't look the same as the original version in
the 1980s, but the internal circuitry is probably identical.

~~~
dbcurtis
Oh yeah, Binary Player. It was pretty interesting for how simple it was.

------
Koshkin
I once explained a kid how to create a web page in plain HTML and some simple
JavaScript, and that seemed to have completely removed the shroud of mystery
from what programming is all about.

Of course there is much more to programming than writing HTML, but setting the
entry bar low enough can help tremendously getting one interested in learning
it.

------
mathgeek
> They also know the movies are kept on CDs/DVDs

I think this is the first time in my children's lifetimes (roughly five years
for the oldest) that I've considered the fact that their understanding of
where movies are kept is different from most people due to our goals of going
mostly streaming when it comes to media.

------
mtl_usr
When I was about 6 or 7 there was a complete section of my math textbook which
contained informations and example on the BASIC language. We, of course, never
read those chapters in class but I did anyways while bored with the actual
stuff the teacher would say.

It would use a very simple and systematic flowchart representation to model
control flow. The great thing about it is that once you understood < > = (also
taught in the class) the whole program could be readable.

I think I was the only one to read it and pretty much got the feeling it
wasn't important as nobody, even the teacher, payed any attention to it.

~~~
contingencies
I remember thinking that math classes would be far more interesting if we were
allowed to hand in a program to solve the class of problems they were asking
us to manually and repeatedly solve, and to bring that program to the exam.
Presto: actual comprehension of a nontrivial problem space, real world
documentation skills and no rote learning requirements.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I remember thinking that math classes would be far more interesting if we
> were allowed to hand in a program to solve the class of problems they were
> asking us to manually and repeatedly solve, and to bring that program to the
> exam.

How do you have test cases without first solving a number of problems in the
space without the program you are writing?

~~~
contingencies
The teacher and the book would explain the case, and the teacher would take us
through a few on the board.

------
bllguo
I once knew a 2nd grade kid who was learning calculus and competing in AIME.
An incredible outlier? Or is it possible for children to develop these skills
through practice and early training? I wonder how many of our attitudes and
beliefs towards early education are dictated by tradition (what we went
through in our childhoods), vs. what is actually possible.

Think of the potential when someone learns to program at 6 years old, and
keeps at it! I hate to use the word "disruption" but I really wonder if
education could potentially be "disrupted."

~~~
gertef
It depends on what you mean by "learning" calculus. Of course it's an
incredible outlier.

Even for designated geniuses, the ones who excelled all life and ahd strong
parental support and become world-famous mathematical achievers, calculus at
age 8 is unusual.

There's plenty of room to increase the level of achievement across many
inherent-skill-level bands, though, with focused training.

~~~
Cozumel
>'calculus at age 8 is unusual.'

It is, but it shouldn't be. I taught my niece calculus, programming, foreign
languages (mostly swear words, her mom got mad!) She was like a sponge and
just soaked it all up, I made it fun and she loved it.

I think all kids have that potential but the education system lets them down,
class sizes are too big and can only go as far as the curriculum or slowest
kid there.

------
whatnotests
Now if you could just tell me how to explain it to the execs that would be
swell.

------
Dowwie
When I think of 6 year olds, I think of learning from real-world, hands-on
demonstrations rather than learning from abstract ideas.

There's a collection of children's games waiting to be made from kits like
this:
[https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11006](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11006)

------
bastijn
My wife's school has cubetto [0]. A toy to get the kids familiar with
programming. Recently, in last kickstarter I bought my own because I love the
idea. In addition, on my kids school they ask for parents with experience
software engineering to give courses outside the regular hours. When I gave it
once at my own work during an open day I used a fun game similar to cubetto
(but digital). Kids love to be busy, so making it physical next time as
suggested here is something I will definitely try out next time.

0) [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/primotoys/cubetto-
hands...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/primotoys/cubetto-hands-on-
coding-for-girls-and-boys-aged-3)

------
wbillingsley
A couple of years ago, we tried literally giving some five to seven year-olds
a computer science lecture (because we also wanted them to be able to play at
being uni students, sitting in the big lecture theatre)

Used a deliberately home made looking game that looked like Angry Birds (using
a child's sketches of the birds) and exposed a few lines of code that the
children could tell me how to edit. Worked really well, but it's partly like
thinking about putting on a small stage show

[https://doi.org/10.1145/2908805.2909410](https://doi.org/10.1145/2908805.2909410)

------
wslh
Too complex... use ScratchJr, Scratch, Alice, a car/robot toys moving around.

~~~
ferdbold
Meh... I prefer his approach. Teaching Scratch to a bunch of kids for half an
hour would just have ended in them thinking "that's cool... but what is it
for?". They would still have no idea how programming relates to the real world
and their experiences.

His way of teaching instantly draws a connection between the work of a
programmer with the world that the kids live in, which is terrific value for a
child. Sure, they're not walking away with any technical knowledge, but that
wasn't the point of the presentation.

~~~
patejam
But his approach is boorrinnggg. It's just like any other school lesson.

Throw some wheels and a motor on a board and create a simple abstract
language:

drive()

stop()

turn()

wait()

Boom, now you have them programming and have a freaking robot moving around!

I don't think we should be starting out with even mentioning binary to college
students in the intro class, let alone _6 year olds_. How are either of them
going to use that knowledge? The college kids will use it when they get to
their assembler class...otherwise that's about it.

Messing around with a super abstracted language will give them the only thing
they should get out of the lesson: you tell a computer what to do and it does
it.

~~~
mmirate
> Messing around with a super abstracted language will give [the 6 year olds]
> the only thing they should get out of the lesson: you tell a computer what
> to do and it does it.

What is the point of that lesson at that age, then? As far as I can tell, it
will be of no consequence to them until high school.

> I don't think we should be starting out with even mentioning binary to
> college students in the intro class ... How are [the college students] going
> to use that knowledge?

Ideally, CS would be taught in a "bottom-up" fashion, from transistors to
gates to adders to processors to higher- and higher-abstracted concepts; with
Haskell etc occurring last, or nearly so. Then we'd actually have a much more
solid grasp of what's going on "under the hood" and can make more informed
decisions (e.g. for iterating quickly through many structs, better to actually
have 1 struct of arrays/B-trees than 1 array/B-tree of the many structs; both
of which are better than anything that involves a linked list; all due to how
processor caches work).

In such a situation, binary would indeed be important for assembly and
arithmetic units; but also for e.g. knowing to replace expensive integer
divisions with cheaper right-shifts when possible by making the divisor be a
power-of-2.

~~~
jackhack
I make this same argument for today's Code Schools. They teach high-level
language/frameworks like Ruby on Rails, and the graduates can do productive
work, but often have no idea what's happening underneath. Take serialization
for instance -- with a limited understanding, the DOM just somehow magically
stores data and retrieves it later; but the operator has no understanding of a
database, or knowledge of SQL, or a sense of the value of referential
integrity, or foreign key indexes, or how to use explain plan to see where the
time is going, etc. So when it comes time to tune/refactor/redesign for
performance, the student is lost and goes off looking for some Gem to drop in
and solve the problem.

Perhaps it's just a natural stratification of the industry, but it leaves me
feeling uncomfortable and frustrated when a jr engineer doesn't understand
what's happening underneath the veneer of Rails (not to pick on Rails solely,
this could also apply with many other frameworks & languages - I just see this
the most because it's the latest fad) and/or doesn't understand why
reentrancy, interrupts, or parallelism with mutable items is dangerous and
hard-as-hell to get right.

I would love to see more developers with at least a passing familiarity with
the basic concepts of computing, of the sort presented in Chuck Petzold's book
CODE (which I highly recommend).

[just read my post - I really am sounding like a grumpy old man these days,
but I'm clicking "reply" anyway. Stay off my lawn. ;)]

~~~
mmirate
Exactly!

(Of course, being an undergraduate CS student, from my point of view the idea
is better expressed as, "I would love to see more companies who value
internship candidates with more familiarity with the basic concepts of
computing, of the sort ... ".)

------
Tade0
I remember my first encounter with "programming": It was a Turbo Z 32.8 SL
programmable toy car. I was fascinated by the fact, that I could input a set
of instructions and the toy would store them in its memory and execute on
command. Naturally I was also disappointed with the lack of sensors or the
ability to add control structures, but it was enough to spark my curiosity.

Also toy train sets with rail switches and loops are a perfect, tangible
example of how a program executes.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
We had a robosapien, it's got rudimentary programmability, sensors, it also
dances and burps. Fun!

------
yourapostasy
Has anyone worked out a way to turn the Minecraft player into a Logo-like
turtle? That is, drive all interactions (walk a step, jump, extended jump ,
hit, use, hear zombie moan from the sound effects subtitling, _etc._ ) from
within Python? The Raspberry Jam mod comes close, but actual movement of the
player is not in the API.

There are a ton of children who would get right into such an updated Logo
turtle.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
ComputerCraft has turtles you can program in-game in lua. Eg
[http://computercraftedu.com/](http://computercraftedu.com/).

IIRC FreeMiner may be better in this respect? Minecraft had fallen out of
vogue with my kids so not played around with this for a while.

------
sytelus
This is really not a good way. Kids are naturally interested in tools that are
magical. You need to show that power right away and without having to lecture
them for an hour. Here's how I would do it. Go to some online interpreter for
BASIC[1]. Type

    
    
      10 PRINT "Hello World"
    

Tell kids that you can make computer print any message. After some fun
suggestions, put next line,

    
    
      20 GOTO 10
    

Kids would immediately get it what just happened. Then introduce, how to print
message just 5 times,

    
    
      5 FOR i = 1 to 5
    

Then ask them to sum numbers from 1 to 5 verbally. As they do it, ask them to
sum numbers from 1 to 100 and watch the frowns. Now ask them what they would
want in return if teacher really told them to do it and how long it would take
them. As they reply, write 5 lines of code that does that.

    
    
      10 SUM = 0
      20 FOR i = 1 to 100
      30   SUM = SUM + i
      40 NEXT
      50 PRINT SUM
    

At this point kids with programming aptitude should be hooked. Rest would be
still puzzled a bit. To get them onboard, switch to graphics mode and start
writing code for fun stuff like expanding circles. Making series of beeps.
Doing piano tunes. Gradually move towards more visual stuff like basic
fractals, equation plotting, random color noise. Generate sound waveforms and
play it. Before you run code ask them how things would look and then run.
Start adding interactivity. If you are doing great, there would be suggestion
to make a game. Go for it! Watch wishlist keep flowing and hours pass by.

Note that I have purposely chose BASIC language above. It's fairly forgiving
with syntax. It gives error messages which are much more digestible.There is
no overhead of includes and imports that very often trips off new comers in
mystery land. All you really need is kids to understand just two constructs
GOTO and IF-THEN. Its extremely easy to understand these two and they would be
able to grow from there.

PS: before anybody cries about GOTO considered harmful and suggest everyone
needs to start with functional programming, I'd suggest try that idea first on
real group of kids. There are always 1 or 2 kids who would be lucky enough to
survive through and "get it" but you will turn rest of them against
programming very quickly.

[1] [http://www.calormen.com/jsbasic/](http://www.calormen.com/jsbasic/)

------
dragonwriter
Related—an exercise in the same area targeting the same age group (from the
Computer Science Unplugged curriculum):

[http://cs-unplugged.appspot.com/en-gb/topics/unplugged-progr...](http://cs-
unplugged.appspot.com/en-gb/topics/unplugged-programming/kidbots-unit-
plan/fitness-unplugged/)

------
romaniv
If you find this kind of stuff interesting/challenging, you might want to read
some stuff from Seymour Papert who dedicated large portion of his life to
figuring exactly this: how to teach kids to program. His definition of
"programming" was a bit broader, though.

[http://papert.org/](http://papert.org/)

~~~
contingencies
Working link [http://www.papert.org/](http://www.papert.org/)

Alan Kay on kids...

 _Children need to learn how to use the 21st century, or there 's a good
chance they will lose the 21st century._ \- Alan Kay (2016)

 _Television is the last technology we should be allowed to invent without a
Surgeon General 's warning on it._ \- Alan Kay

 _With a good programming language and interface, one - even children - can
create from scratch important simulations of complex non-linear systems that
can help one 's thinking about them._ \- Alan Kay (2016)

 _Most of my ideas come in "waking dreams" (this is a state that most children
indulge in readily, but it can be retained in a more or less useful way - I
don't think you quite get into adulthood by retaining it, so it's a tradeoff).
Main thing about ideas is that, however they come, most of them are mediocre
down to bad - so steps have to be taken to deal with this major problem._ \-
Alan Kay (2016)

... from my fortune clone,
[http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup](http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup)

------
partycoder
The best analogy I've found to explain programming are cooking recipes.

You have input (ingredients), a procedure (recipe), output (what the recipe is
for). From there you can start a transitioning towards more abstract ideas.

Knitting is another analogy that can be used.

~~~
jackhack
>>Knitting is another analogy that can be used.

And it's not mere coincidence that one of the first programmable machines was
a loom that took paper-tape instructions, in the year 1725.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basile_Bouchon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basile_Bouchon)

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partycoder
Right. And Herman Hollerith (of IBM fame) took punched cards, that were
mainstream in the textile industry, and used it to create the "tabulating
machine", the computer used to streamline the US census.

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jgamman
we play robot turtles. we only use function frog as a jump at this stage but
it's fun to see her describe mistakes in her drawings and other games as
'bugs'. we messing around with scratch jr as well but only when she wants to.
odd squad is what it's all about at the moment ;-)

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benpbenp
First thing, you have to teach them the phrase, "Explain it like I'm five."

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swayvil
We are going way overboard in our infatuation with technology.

