

Ask YC: How would you go about teaching a child? - mk

More specifically, I want to teach my little brother some programming. He is 9 years old, pretty intelligent for his age, ie does really well in math  at his grade level, reads at a much higher level than his grade. I opened up the python repl for him and showed him how to do basic arithmetic and some for loops and he seemed to understand, but I think it would be beneficial to start with something much simpler. The short solution would be to start off teaching him html, that way he can easily get a webpage up and see results happening on the internet. Then move on to either javascript or python and show him some simple dynamic stuff. The harder/longer solution would be to start working on a very simple language. Something like logo but with a web lib. I was tempted to start teaching him scheme because I myself am trying to get decent at scheme and am starting to understand macros and all that jazz, but am worried that by not seeing quick results on the internet he would lose interest. The main problem is that shared hosting providers usually do not have scheme setup to where you can run a web application. I don't really want to have to go through a bunch of hacks to get it to work either. So my idea is, and this would be a learning experience for me as well, to create a very simple scheme like language to teach a child web programming. I was thinking it would compile down to python, because almost all shared hosting providers have python installed. I have no idea what I am doing, but like I said it would be both a challenge for me, and something that would be beneficial for my little brother to learn programming concepts with. Thoughts? Suggestions? Would people be willing to help with a project like this?
======
tjr
I opine that Python should be sufficiently simple for this purpose.

If you really want to show him Scheme web apps, you can run the PLT Scheme web
server locally, and make Scheme web applications with that. Not o'er the net,
but I would like to think it'd be sufficient at this stage.

~~~
mk
I thought about that. But would probably stick to python. Thanks.

