
Why My 11-Year Old Stopped Coding Then Switched to Python - rbanffy
https://hackernoon.com/why-my-11-year-old-stopped-coding-then-started-again-ccc259f2f1a5
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sacado2
If you're looking at a way to teach a basic AI for beginners (yes, even
teens), you could just try Markov chains.

You can make an easy garbage text generator / automatic text-completion (à la
text messages) with markov chains, they are quite intuitive to understand and
easy to implement. You can even easily make an artificial player that beats
you at rock-scissors-paper, in less than 100 lines of code, using only maps
and the good old random function. Teens are both surprised, proud and angry
when their own code beats them, especially at a game that looks so random
("hey! my own code can detect patterns I'm not even aware of in my playing!")

Although that is not for beginners (it is using go), here is a good
explanation of what I mean:
[https://golang.org/doc/codewalk/markov/](https://golang.org/doc/codewalk/markov/).

Naive Bayes (and how it can detect spams) is a good second step: it is still
rather intuitive and is a real, industry-tested ML algorithm.

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Waterluvian
Getting kids engaged by showing them how to dig into a website's HTML and
JavaScript was fantastic back in the day. But now it's basically asking kids
to reverse engineer assembly because of transpilation, minification, etc.

When I do this with my kids it will be with python and some Lego or lego-like
robotics components. Basically, extend their Lego experience the way redstone
extends a child's Minecraft experience when they're ready for it.

~~~
jessriedel
Honest question: once a kid is old enough to have mastered/outgrown Legos, why
not get them using real tools? I loved using Legos late into my childhood, but
in retrospect as I got older it was probably closer to art than building. Art
is of course fine, and art overlaps with building sometimes, but they are
different.

~~~
pasabagi
I always had real tools as a child, and wasn't particularly interested in
Lego. I think there aren't that many transferable skills between Lego and
making things more generally. Frankly, I don't even think there are that many
transferable skills between different mediums, or even between processes in
the same medium.

Forging steel with a hammer and anvil, for example, teaches you a lot about
fire management, temper, and so on - but teaches you absolutely nothing about
accurate machining of steel parts. The attitude isn't even the same. If you go
into a wood workshop after six months of working with metal, you're going to
break things, destroy finishes, and waste work.

There are some general principles that apply to a lot of mediums, but I think
they're the exception, not the rule. For instance, sticking stuff together
generally relies on the surfaces being very clean - and that's true if you're
using glue or welding. On the whole, however, I think the reason why distinct
processes, finishes and materials exist is because they offer different
possibilities.

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joelhooks
So far none of my kids have really cared about coding at all. We’ve got python
books, js books, ruby books, scratch, Lego Mindstorms, arduinos... they aren’t
interested. Definitely wouldn’t pick it up unless prompted.

We home educate, so they have access and time to explore.

Nope.

Our oldest picked it up after a 6 month stint making sandwiches when they were
17.

“Dad, can I still learn to code?”

I miss the days when “tell turtle forward 50” was amazing.

~~~
xstartup
I and my wife discuss programming matters in front of our kids. And my kids
listen to the discussions and want to be part of it.

Then I start teaching the basics, they are a bit more willing to hear.

Here the incentive for them is to be part of the club where interesting things
are happening.

We laugh at coding jokes which kids don't appear to understand which leaves
them confused.

So, it seems they are aware they lack some understanding because of which they
are unable to understand us.

The same idea has worked for math, playing musical instruments like
keyboard/ukelele, physical exercises like skipping ropes or air pushups.

If I simply give them a computer or ukelele, they won't be interested as they
don't know how to hold a ukulele or have no one to tell them how to hold it
right and how to fuse a chord progression with the strumming pattern. These
things are not obvious by just watching or hits and trials on a
guitar/ukelele.

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AstroJetson
Having the right subject matter makes a difference. Baseball has a ton of data
that they collect about each game. I wanted to learn R and took an online
class where the professor was a Sabermetrics guru. Made the learning of R fun
while also learning more about "inside baseball". I turned that into a small
AI project on what players would be / should be traded as the season came to
an end. (Teams that are out of the running will trade top players away to
teams that are in the running to win their divisions. ) It was fun, because
the subject is interesting.

Trying to teach programming with a dry subject matter is very hard to do
(Calculate area under a curve for your second programming assignment anyone?)

Congrats on the son keeping up with it

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jlebrech
there's nothing out there like BASIC anymore (except maybe lua or
moonscript/python)

also why would a child want to code a website, I learned BASIC because i
wanted to make games.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
> why would a child want to code a website

Noticed this a lot when engineers try to teach their children coding, far too
much time spent trying to teach what they view as the correct way to do things
or correct thing to learn. e.g seen several articles that opened on trying to
teach them to set up git and a command line environment.

I think there is more value in trying to teach them to make something that is
more understandable to their world and allows for creativity and therefore a
self-learning reinforcement loop to begin. This is why more interactive things
like games work so well for this.

It's a huge achievement that an 11 year old could complete the courses
detailed in the article, but I'm interested if they can go on to take those
learnings and initiate their own project. Which is something you definitely
see from kids who learnt to code through the likes of Flash or game engines.

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karmakaze
TL;DR - “No more Javascript?” He asked.

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hellofunk
Can anyone comment on the quality of these DataCamp courses?

