

Ask YC: Best way to get my son started on programming? - pensiveye

Hi all. My son is eleven years old and I'm looking into a good way to get him passionate about computer science and programming. There are a lot of resources out there. Does anyone have a recommendation on the best?
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gharbad
If your son is passionate about technology and computers, direct him to
learning to code the hard way series. Or pick up a book that will teach
programming by creating a series of simple games.

If he his not, stop trying to live vicariously through him.

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yShrike
You'd recommend to an 11 year old to read a book "learning to code the hard
way"? Really?

I think you're making a lot of assumptions with a comment like "stop trying to
live vicariously through him". Would you have had the same reaction if the
question was about sports?

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gharbad
It's a series where you dictate written programs and then debug them.
<http://learncodethehardway.org/>

If the question were about sports, then yes, it would be similar. (eg:
football) If your child is passionate about football, begs to watch games etc;
consider enrolling him in a football league where he will play football and
buy him a book that explains real plays that wont talk down to him because he
is a child. If you love football and want to see your child play football, but
he has expressed no interest in it, it may not be A Really Good Idea(tm).

(EDIT: added link)

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yShrike
For an 11 year old, a more visual pseudo programming language (see Scratch or
Alice) is more appropriate than jumping into something like PHP or C. Even
Codea is a jump... but Lua is pretty friendly for someone seeing code for the
first time.

My kids aren't passionate about sports but they play soccer. The question that
I could have asked is 'what's the best league in my area to be in?'. I
wouldn't expect that readers would jump to the conclusion that we were living
vicariously through them.

At any rate, I thought it was a reasonable initial question. We don't push
kids into programming, but we do make materials available when they show
interest. That's why I'm familiar with what I posted. However a comment such
as "stop trying to live vicariously through him" comes across as rather snide.

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steventruong
Disagree on Scratch or Alice being necessarily better. At 11, he can certainly
jump into languages like PHP or Python perfectly fine. Many programmers
(including many here) started a much younger age than 11 and at a time when
Scratch or Alice may not have been available. There's nothing wrong with going
straight to those.

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yShrike
Yes, I think that really depends on the kid. Mainly I wanted to point out that
there are plenty of learning vehicles that teach the programming concepts
without necessarily being 100% text-based coding. For some kids that will
excite them more. (That's also why I like WeDo Robotics and Mindstorm.)

Nothing wrong with going directly to programming languages if that's what the
kid's into.

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gaius
Get him one of these <http://sites.google.com/site/libby8dev/fignition> \- and
nothing else, no PC, no games console, no smartphone. When I were a lad, we
made our own fun. Out of rocks. And we liked it that way.

~~~
brudgers
PAL output might be an issue in much of the world.

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yShrike
Here are some ideas (and we've used pretty much all of them)

Alice, from Randy Pausch (<http://www.thelastlecture.com/>) team
<http://alice.org/>

Scratch <http://scratch.mit.edu/>

Codea--programming on the iPad. I highly recommend getting a keyboard.
<http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/>

Art of Problem Solving has online programming classes
[http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/School/courseinfo.php?cou...](http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/School/courseinfo.php?course_id=cs:intro)

Good luck!

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brudgers
Resources about programming won't make a child passionate about it.

If he's interested, spending time with him doing some Alice or Kodu might have
an effect over the long term.

But passions and interests build over time and at age 11 are heavily
influenced by the interests of peers.

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ddorian43
If he likes computer games like i do try with Game Maker like i did. 2d game
engine with drag and drop actions + scripting.

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twelvechairs
Find a nice open source game and start showing him how to modify/extend it.

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rdouble
lego mindstorms

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pensiveye
This is where we started a couple of years ago. He has expressed a lot of
interest in app design, and I'm taking the track of "walk before you fly." As
an intensely analytic and intelligent guy, I think he's ready to get into the
code.

Surprised no one mentioned HacketyHack. Anyone have any experience with that?

