
Apple launches coding camps for kids in its retail stores - pavornyoh
https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/21/apple-launches-coding-camps-for-kids-in-its-retail-stores/
======
plg
I took my kid to one of these last year. It was fairly useless. They drag
around little action-icons into a list to make an animated character move
around and do stuff. My 11-year-old was bored stiff.

Edit: PS the Apple Store employee who ran this thing (he was a very nice guy)
admitted he had zero coding experience himself

~~~
jshevek
Yes, given the level of competence of the staff at Apple stores, it seems
unlikely there could be a worthwhile coding camp at that venue. Apple would
need to bring in some much higher caliber people.

~~~
ralfd
Urgh, it is basics of coding course for 8 year olds. What do people expect?
Albert Einstein giving lessons?

~~~
jshevek
In my experience, 8 year olds often ask more penetrating questions than
adults. If they take an interest in understanding something, they often desire
to understand it on the deepest level possible for them - quickly exceeding
the capacity of their parent or teacher to explain (unless the adult is a
'renaissance person'). (Edit: or a competent teacher with adequate training
relevant to the subject)

If the 8 year olds are really encouraged to explore and ask questions (vs
'jump through these hoops, follow instructions), the staff at apple will most
likely be unable to answer their questions.

~~~
rimantas
Have you ever met 8 year olds? Care to give some examples of "more penetrating
questions"?

~~~
duderific
Maybe jshevek means that they tend to ask "why" type questions which can be
difficult to answer, as opposed to "how" type questions which are less
difficult to answer.

~~~
jshevek
Yes. The way that children use "why", it can mean "with what motive" but also
"by what mechanism" or even "which events necessarily precede that" depending
on context.

I would say that most adults are often simply unable to answer those questions
because they just don't know. Children are naturally curious to levels which
exceed the average adults ability to answer. Even educators are often
inadequate to the task, if the question falls out of their areas of study.
Some educators try to condition their students to focus on the limited
prescribed domain of 'material they are to learn' and not ask questions that
cross outside of that domain - in part to avoid acknowledging their ignorance.

But I would go further and say that children often also ask perfectly
reasonable questions beginning with "how" and "what if" which stump adults.
You can see this very readily when the topic is anything related to the
natural world, as most adults are ignorant of basic science.

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coleca
A few years back my daughter went to movie camp at the Apple Store. It was
really well done and they taught the kids all about making movies, how to
edit, and at the end they had a big screening of all the movies the kids in
the class made for all the parents. She even got a nice apple t shirt and usb
keychain.

Glad to see they are now expanding it to coding.

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s3r3nity
It seems like a lot of folks don't give Tim Cook enough credit in the post-
Steve Jobs world for a lot of the philanthropic work Apple has done for
education (as well as for the LGBTQ community.) Kudos to them for this
initiative - and I'll be excited if this expands to adults at some point.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
When I was an intern at Apple I asked Tim what the hardest part was about
filling in Steve's shoes and he said:

"Steve was my friend, and I don't believe a friend could ever replace a
friend, so I chose to run Apple like Tim."

I've always respected that answer.

~~~
ohstopitu
what did you intern as, at Apple?

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Can't talk about it ;)

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gshulegaard
I am pretty surprised by the general lack luster comments bordering on
negativity here. Personally, I think it is great to see a major retailer take
even a misguided stab at improving child tech education which has quickly
fallen behind demand (in America).

Do I think the approach is more than a little bit wrong? Sure, GUI programming
a non-useful task wouldn't be my choice.

Would I prefer a more robust longer-term program? Absolutely.

Does this fall well short of actually being useful/addressing the original
problem? More than likely.

But despite of all that, I would much rather have Apple try this and hopefully
improve on the offering pending demonstrated interest than not have it at all.

~~~
jshevek
For me, it has the feeling of being more of a PR stunt than a sincere effort
to help education. Plus, its an opportunity to build brand allegiance at a
young age.

I would rather Apple donate an equal amount of money to any of those entities
out there which help to bring technology to the youth.

~~~
mythz
I don't see this as a PR stunt at all, this goes to one of Apple's core
values. Apple's very good at marketing, if this were a PR stunt they would
have large brand building ads and little substance, whereas this initiative
requires a lot of resources, logistics and investments to run and are offering
it for free.

Since Tim took over Apple's been doing a lot more towards "We want to leave
the world better than we found it". Eventually I expect it will be good for
Apple's bottom line long-term, but this follows their theme (e.g. Swift
playgrounds, WWDC Scholarships) of helping teach more kids how to code.
Personally I think Apple wants to attract students, because they prefer that
demographic. There would be a lot more money to be made going after Enterprise
wallets than spending it on free programs for cash-poor students.

Basically under Tim's leadership I'm expecting Apple to invest a lot in: Green
Energy, Kids Education, Privacy, Diversity. Not because it's good for their
bottom line, but because they think it's the right thing to do.

~~~
CPLX
Perhaps add privacy to that list as well. Hopefully.

~~~
mythz
Updated, thx. Yeah that's definitely one of their core values.

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danso
Ironically, I sometimes fear Apple would be the harbinger of programming's
death, what with how much can be done via consumer-friendly app and touch-
screens. It didn't help hearing about OSX becoming macOS, which would be well
in line with a dystopian future in which the only people who need to know
about plaintext and file systems are the full-time Apple programmers.

But this sounds like a great initiative...and also, one that seems to be
nearly all upside for Apple. Great PR, good benefit to society, increased buzz
at the brick and mortar stores, and the cost of running these camps seem like
it would be more than paid for by kids who are not only buying the
programmable peripherals (anyone have experience hacking the Sphero?), but
Apple products for all of their coding lives.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
I think the invention of the GUI killed the dream of mainstream programming.

If computers had to be interacted with in ways that resembled programming -
like a UNIX prompt - then people would be more used to the way computers
actually work, with functions and parameters instead of icons and settings
menus.

I really hope that raspberry PI gets more mainstream appeal as time goes on. I
fear the separation between coders and users is creating parallel worlds of
echo-chamber wizards and ignorant commoners.

~~~
schoen
I believe as you do and in basically the same terms, but, having had forms of
this discussion for much of my life, I've encountered a counterargument that I
thought I'd bring up as a devil's advocate:

> the way computers actually work, with functions and parameters instead of
> icons and settings menus

Isn't "the way computers actually work" at a fundamental level about
electrical engineering, or at least about machine instructions? If you're
using Unix commands, hasn't a whole lot of work already been done to create
the abstractions of pipes, file descriptors, files, filesystems, and so on? Is
it clear that there is some sense in which these abstractions are faithful and
true to the machine and technology, where other software abstractions are not?

~~~
schoen
I got a ton of upvotes on this, but nobody has replied to it! I wonder how
many people who upvoted me noticed that I claimed to be expressing an argument
against my own opinion. :-)

~~~
exolymph
I noticed, but I'm sort of mystified about why you wouldn't agree with that
opinion. Clearly the command line is an order of magnitude more abstract than
practical electrical engineering.

We need different people to understand different layers, and as long as there
are enough people paying attention to each layer, there's no problem.

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rjvir
I remember going to Apple Camp as a kid (around 2006). At the time, they had
different sessions teaching kids how to "edit movies", "make music", "build
websites" etc. They were showing us how to use iMovie, GarageBand, and iWeb.

After attending those camps, I so badly wanted a Mac.

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reedlaw
As much as I want to cheer this it leaves me with the sour thought that modern
Apple robbed kids of the joys the original Apple afforded. Growing up with the
Apple II+ in our home I was programming from an early age because that was the
primary activity you could do with one right out of the box. Look at the loops
you have to run through to unleash the power of the iPad. Developer accounts,
EULAs, closed APIs. Where is the modern equivalent of computer clubs where
most members could code or at least were interested?

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sangnoir
I find this program ironic since Apple locks down iDevices pretty hard - their
App Store rules prohibit coding[1] on iPhones & iPads. If anyone were to
attempt to make an interpreter/port Scratch or Python to iOS, the app would
not be approved.

1\. §3.3.2 An Application may not download or install executable code.
Interpreted code may only be used in an Application if _all scripts, code and
interpreters are packaged in the Application_ and not downloaded.

~~~
rsfinn
Perhaps you haven't heard about Pythonista, which is a full Python programming
environment available on the App Store. Now there's also Playgrounds, which is
a Swift programming environment that comes with the iOS 10 beta and runs on
the iPad (you can even invoke iOS frameworks, apparently) — yes, this is from
Apple itself, and yes, they're bending their own rules. But your original
statement is not strictly true.

~~~
Longhanks
In what way are they bending their own rules? The application comes with it's
own Swift compiler and exposes only the public APIs.

Nothing Pythonista couldn't do already.

~~~
nickmain
Pythonista cannot open code from other apps so all code has to originate in
the app (other than copy-paste).

Swift Playgrounds can round-trip with XCode.

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s_dev
People often suggest that we should be teaching programming in
primary/elementary school to kids.

I'm skeptical that that would encourage kids to code. This opinion is
particularly espoused by politicians who can't code but want to be seen as
technically progressive.

I think part of loving programming is discovering it on your own and seeking
it out. Events/Sessions like this and CoderDojo that we have here in Ireland
are more effective at evangelising kids to code because it endows a greater
sense of autonomy to the individual that what you get in a classroom and I
think thats a more conducive environment to encourage coding.

~~~
jeffwass
I've long felt that the utility of learning to code was less about vocational
training but more about analytical thinking.

Ie, figuring out how to solve problems by analysing a task and breaking it
into small and discrete bite-size pieces that can be understood by a
computer's rule set.

~~~
blendo
Hopefully a course like UC Berkeley's "CS10: The Beauty and Joy of Computing"
can point the way: [http://cs10.org/su16/](http://cs10.org/su16/)

"But this course is far more than just learning to program. We'll focus on
some of the "Big Ideas" of computing, such as abstraction, design, recursion,
concurrency, simulations, and the limits of computation. We'll show some
beautiful applications of computing that have changed the world, talk about
the history of computing, and where it will go in the future. Throughout the
course, relevance will be emphasized: relevance to the student and to society.
As an example, the final project will be completely of the students' choosing,
on a topic most interesting to them. The overarching theme is to expose
students to the beauty and joy of computing. This course is designed for
computing non-majors, although interested majors are certainly welcome to take
the class as well! We are especially excited about bringing computing (through
this course) to traditionally under-represented groups in computing, i.e.,
women and ethnic minorities."

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alongub
That's a really good idea to make the future developers learn the Apple
platform. But Microsoft had a better one; to buy Minecraft and add it to
Visual Studio.

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dschep
Microsoft already does one day events in their stores. My SO who's an
elementary school teacher took her class to one of them.

~~~
vblord
I didn't know that. I found the link to the MS summer camps.

[https://www.microsoft.com/about/philanthropies/youthspark/yo...](https://www.microsoft.com/about/philanthropies/youthspark/youthsparkhub/programs/yscamps/)

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Michie
I like Apple's initiative but why use a third party application instead of
their Swift Playground? It seems more appropriate and based on what's shown on
WWDC, it's not that hard to learn.

This is a possible sign that Tynker can be bought by Apple soon to be
integrated with Swift Playground.

~~~
glhaynes
Swift Playgrounds only runs on the iOS 10 beta and is itself still in a
prerelease form.

~~~
Michie
It's possible that it still runs on iOS 10 beta, but based on their sample
templates and what they have used in WWDC16, it's already a fully functional
app. Better implementation than Tynker. And it's also a good preview for
future coders to use.

~~~
glhaynes
Yeah, and it might even be the best choice to use it. I'd guess it would be.
But it feels against Apple's "house style" to use unreleased software in that
way.

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iamleppert
It would be more useful to teach them an ultra-simple language like BASIC
(there was an article posted about it recently -- the early DOS version --
still being the best language/IDE to teach kids), or even a stripped down
version of javascript. Imagine the advantages in pure thought that would come
for those kids that are able to grok functional programming at age 8?

~~~
rimantas
Why do you want to expose kids to the horrible mess called JavaScript? And you
can teach functional programming with Swift, thank you very much.

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thenadamgoes
Can I do the coding camp? I'd like to learn...

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sten
Does anyone else ever wonder if this is part of a long term strategy to reduce
costs by inflating the pool of developers? Corporations can think long term.

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LELISOSKA
for a second i thought it said walmart in the beginning

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skocznymroczny
Why aren't there any white people on the pictures?

~~~
terrywilcox
Because you need glasses?

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dublinben
I don't think it's necessarily fair to call this program "philanthropic." It's
teaching kids how to use proprietary and commercial software, like iMovie,
iBooks, and Tynker, when completely free alternatives exist like Blender and
Scratch.

This is essentially building a new generation of future Apple customers.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
It's still better than nothing.

If Uncle Ben's rice donates its branded rice to victims of a natural disaster
- provided the containers say "Uncle Ben's Rice" \- would you refuse it for a
generic?

~~~
dublinben
If I were a relief agency, and those were the terms of their donation, I would
refuse it. If they aren't willing to donate without making it a marketing
opportunity, it's not really charity/philanthropy.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Wow. You would rather people starve than look at a logo?

Wow.

~~~
dublinben
No, _they_ would rather let people starve than _not_ look at their logo.

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taytus
Why surprised? This is HN

~~~
gshulegaard
I suppose I anticipated a more open reception to the idea of Apple leveraging
it's brick and mortar locations for something like this from a tech oriented
community.

Not that you have to like the course, there is a lot to dislike about it, but
the melding of Apple's store location infrastructure for providing accessible
child bootcamps certainly is an interesting concept.

I was surprised everyone chose to focus on the course content instead (at
least when I wrote the comment originally).

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robertcorey
They're taking our jobs!

