> My father tried to interest me in programming somewhat before high school; it didn't work, and I didn't continue then.
I suspect, that it almost never works that way. Learning programming or hacking as a child is all about figuring it out on your own, doing something, what your parents or your teachers can not understand, defining your own identity.
That is why I doubt that all the programs in the US, which try to teach children programming, will work. They might teach some concepts, but in the end i fear, that they will hinder the children to aspire a career in the field. I see a bad parallel to beauty contests, were parents try to live their dreams through their children.
Of course it is never black and white, but I think you have to be ultra careful with stuff like this. I think naturally interesting, open platforms are a better way to get children to dig deeper. Minecraft is a perfect example.
My mom taught me programming as a 6 year old almost 25 years ago. I went on to study it at college night school from 10 to 14 and held a job before graduating high school programming ASP, JS, and MS SQL.
Sometimes parents can teach their children things and have it stick.
Yeah, not everything involving generations is so myopic. My kids, 7 and 4, are absolutely entranced by computers and love to sit down at our old-school 8-bit battlestation and bash things out. The elder has figured out how to do his maths homework on it, and the younger has become an expert at loading files and running them. None of this would be possible if I hadn't encouraged them to investigate computers by setting up the battlestation in the first place .. I think the key to getting kids interested in programming is to understanding cyclomatic complexity in the first place, and not introducing them to things that will overwhelm their interest. In the case of our 8-bit machines, which are still fully functional programming devices, we seem to have met the sweet spot .. lets see if in a couple of years we upgrade them to a Linux box and compilers and so on. I'm fairly confident this will happen .. at least in the case of the 4 year old, whose affinity for the subject seems to be being amplified by observing daily his elder brothers' competence and confidence as they discover - together - new things.
I will be very interested if one day you write about it. How you "designed" the right battlestation (not too hard, but still challenging enough for their age), and how you get them interested while avoiding not to over push them.
Actually I didn't have to do much beyond setting up the machines (in our case an Oric-1/Atmos) and getting the means together to load the old software archives on it.. once that was ready and booted, the kids just took over. It turns out that 8-bit computing is really accessible to little kids, just like it was for me in the 80's, and while that may have changed with the current generation: the old machines still live!
I share a similar thought. My wife's younger brother watches me write various things on occasion. He asks questions about how things work and I'll answer those. I've thought about buying him introductory books on a language, for example Python and showing him small programs to build. I'm hesitant to do that because I'm afraid it will cause him to lose interest since it will feel too much like mandatory school work and might take the fun and curiosity out of learning to program and tinkering with ideas.
I remember when I was younger, thinking to myself if a certain idea could be done and trying it out. The joy of getting the idea to work was a great feeling.
I suspect, that it almost never works that way. Learning programming or hacking as a child is all about figuring it out on your own, doing something, what your parents or your teachers can not understand, defining your own identity.
That is why I doubt that all the programs in the US, which try to teach children programming, will work. They might teach some concepts, but in the end i fear, that they will hinder the children to aspire a career in the field. I see a bad parallel to beauty contests, were parents try to live their dreams through their children.
Of course it is never black and white, but I think you have to be ultra careful with stuff like this. I think naturally interesting, open platforms are a better way to get children to dig deeper. Minecraft is a perfect example.
reply