Teaching Kids Programming

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Asimov
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Re: Teaching Kids Programming

Post by Asimov » July 14th, 2013, 11:10 am

Hi nGInverse,

Well the British education system used to be very good, but it is sadly lacking now. They don't teach children even basic gramma nowadays. Try asking them what an adverb is and you will get a blank expression. Although I don't actually know what a freshman is. I think I have heard the term in American movies, but not taken it in.

These are the same children that when they leave school will be running nuclear power stations and flying jumbo jets. It is a scarey prospect.
----> Asimov
"You know no matter how much I think I have learnt. I always end up hitting brick walls"
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Syncan
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Re: Teaching Kids Programming

Post by Syncan » July 14th, 2013, 11:25 am

nG Inverse wrote:Hardly anything, which is why I cannot stand general education.

Throughout my whole high school career I never (and I mean never) did a single homework assignment. I would go to class, pay attention during the lesson, sleep through classwork, then take the test where I got below average grades. I still ended up graduating with a C average. It's pathetic - I should still be a freshman as far as I'm concerned!
Looks a bit like me :) I am more or less a self made man. I quitted half-way advanced education ( It's not called 'high school' in Holland ) and later, during my career I did some courses to recover from my lack of knowledge.

@Asimov: Indeed, Commodore 64 did not give you full use of 64 k memory but you could map memory ;)
Apart from that, what are we talking about? What is 64 k memory today?? :lol:

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Asimov
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Re: Teaching Kids Programming

Post by Asimov » July 14th, 2013, 11:39 am

Hi Syncan,
@Asimov: Indeed, Commodore 64 did not give you full use of 64 k memory but you could map memory ;)
Apart from that, what are we talking about? What is 64 k memory today?? :lol:
Heh heh the old rivelry is still there hee hee. Both spectrum and commodore had 16k of ram. You had to be a good programmer in those days to get a game in less memory than we would write an email now.

Mind you later I ended up with a Commodore Amiga 500, then a 1200, and then an Amiga 1200 tower. The whole operating system ran fine in 2mb would you believe, and at the time was much better than a pc.

I have a friend on our game team from Holland. He works at the Spyker factory.
----> Asimov
"You know no matter how much I think I have learnt. I always end up hitting brick walls"
http://www.asimoventerprises.co.uk

Syncan
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Re: Teaching Kids Programming

Post by Syncan » July 14th, 2013, 12:13 pm

Asimov wrote:Hi Syncan,

Heh heh the old rivelry is still there hee hee. Both spectrum and commodore had 16k of ram. You had to be a good programmer in those days to get a game in less memory than we would write an email now.
I fact, I find the 6510 machine language easier to understand than C++.
The set of commands are smaller and true, there are 8 bit registers so that is limited, but on the other hand, beeing limited made it also easier to remember what the instruction set means.

In C++ there are pointers and they are basicly the same as indirect indexing in 6510. In C++ though, they also use the pointers for objects, and that makes it harder to understand.

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LuisR14
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Re: Teaching Kids Programming

Post by LuisR14 » July 15th, 2013, 12:13 am

nG Inverse wrote:Hardly anything, which is why I cannot stand general education.

Throughout my whole high school career I never (and I mean never) did a single homework assignment. I would go to class, pay attention during the lesson, sleep through classwork, then take the test where I got below average grades. I still ended up graduating with a C average. It's pathetic - I should still be a freshman as far as I'm concerned!
haha, i had failed high school just because i didn't do most of my history or english homework xD, but i was able to get my GED (General Education Diploma for those who don't know lol) thru some exit option heh :P
always available, always on, about ~10 years c/c++, java[script], win32/directx api, [x]html/css/php/some asp/sql experience. (all self taught)
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Nek
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Re: Teaching Kids Programming

Post by Nek » July 15th, 2013, 7:07 am

Hi everyone, new here but I just wanted to add into the conversation here a site I found a few months ago. Perhaps it could be of some interest/use to the OP. It is: http://www.code.org/

I have been programming for less than a year but it's a big interest of mine these days. I'm 31 and I honestly really wish I had started programming 10 or 15 years ago. I guess I always thought of it in an abstract way, where you needed some special hardware or expensive software and stuff to do it, as well as taking a course on how to get started. Now that I've gotten my feet wet in a few languages (C++, Java, Python, Lua), I've come to the opinion that EVERYBODY should learn to code (the very basics at least). Even just a small module in junior high as part of the curriculum.

If we're going down the road to a futuristic dystopian future where computers are everywhere, in everyones pocket (smartphones), even people wearing them (google glass and iphone watches?). Then we should learn how to make them do what we want, know what I mean? =)

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LuX
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Re: Teaching Kids Programming

Post by LuX » July 15th, 2013, 9:50 am

LuisR14 wrote:haha, i had failed high school just because i didn't do most of my history or english homework xD
Lol, I doubt they would kick you out for not doing your homework in high school. Pretty sure you did something like set the building on fire. Anyway, here most don't do their homework unless it's something important you have to return, and most teachers don't "care".
Nek wrote:If we're going down the road to a futuristic dystopian future where computers are everywhere, in everyones pocket (smartphones), even people wearing them (google glass and iphone watches?). Then we should learn how to make them do what we want, know what I mean? =)
One of the reasons I like programming and have continued to practice it. In the future programming is going to be a big thing.
ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ

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LuisR14
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Re: Teaching Kids Programming

Post by LuisR14 » July 15th, 2013, 12:15 pm

LuX wrote:
LuisR14 wrote:haha, i had failed high school just because i didn't do most of my history or english homework xD
Lol, I doubt they would kick you out for not doing your homework in high school. Pretty sure you did something like set the building on fire. Anyway, here most don't do their homework unless it's something important you have to return, and most teachers don't "care".
well it was for bad grades, because of not doing homework and some classwork, and well the teachers i had did care. (and no, i was a good boy, not a prankster or anything xD)
always available, always on, about ~10 years c/c++, java[script], win32/directx api, [x]html/css/php/some asp/sql experience. (all self taught)
Knows English, Spanish and Japanese.
[url=irc://irc.freenode.net/#pchili]irc://irc.freenode.net/#pchili[/url] [url=irc://luisr14.no-ip.org/#pchili]alt[/url] -- join up if ever want real-time help or to just chat :mrgreen: --

Shaki
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Re: Teaching Kids Programming

Post by Shaki » July 16th, 2013, 10:05 pm

@LuisR14

I had a friend (I'm currently IN highschool, just finished grade 11), who was a total idiot in terms of doing classwork and schoolwork. He actually would just sit in class, and watch a video on his phone. He actually managed to get EXPELLED from school because of the fact he never took ANYTHING seriously.

@All
Yea I'd agree, general education (world wide as far as I am concerned), is rather ... general. That's the issue. However, it's really the best way we can approach things, I'm sure there are many "better" ways that actually improve student's success and ability to learn, however the main issue I believe is that it is as you say, general. They can only target so much, and have to remain open to everyone. By doing that, they are forcing people with certain strengths to do things they are bad at. IMO I just really sit through school, do the required work, and when I really want to learn, I go home and use my handy computer.

Children will find learning fun if you make it fun, if they're not excited and don't want to do it, they probably wont learn it very well. But as you said, he/she is asking you to teach them, so don't get a whipeboard and start doing stuff that way, actually sit down and do some fun things with it and I am sure you'll have no problem teaching them. Show him/her how to use google effectively, (i'm not saying this to sound like a dick, but I mean it's actually something that needs to be shown) some websites are more credible, and tell him/her how to interpret that.

I started learning programming, (generally just using scripting languages like LUA) at around 10 years old, and it was really confusing for me, because I did not know what anything was, I just moved things around and tried things until they worked. So I would really just approach it the same way chili does, start simple, very very very simple. Give it a day, then work your way along to more advanced topics.

~Although, I can't really say my advice is too credible, as I'm still in my stages of 'childhood', and am learning myself. Hope that in some way helps.

albinopapa
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Re: Teaching Kids Programming

Post by albinopapa » July 17th, 2013, 10:31 am

@Shaki

Good post. In America at least, IMO we start too late getting kids sorted for career paths. Sure grammer is important to some, and I wish I would have paid closer attention or understood it better, but have you seen the way people communicate now a days. LOL, AFK, AFIK... list goes on. Abbreviations, misspelled words and sentence fragments are part of everyday conversation today. As long as we all understand what the other party is conveying, what does it matter.

Reading is important to everyone, though I am amazed at how some people make it through life by just pictures.

Math I would like to say is very important also. If you are going to be programming games, math I'm pretty sure is a must to some extent, at least when it comes to 3D audio and video. The alternative is using someone else's game maker.

Science itself to me is fun, but isn't necessarily needed. Most people don't care how it works, as long as it just works. I have several friends that have told me that. And for things you want to know you just look them up on Bing or Google.

History, this is the most boring subjuct in school for me. I know the "...we should learn the past in order to avoid the same mistakes in the future..." argument, however if no one has noticed no one really pays attention to that part either. Seems our leaders keep making the same mistakes throughout time, and probably will keep on doing it wrong.

I think after 5th grade you should be tested to see what you are good at and what interests you then from 6th grade on you take classes that will help you achieve that end. Light gen-ed, heavy focused learning.

As far as the original comment about how and what to teach a kid about programming? I am 32, got my feet wet with a VIC 20 which resembled Basic, then QBasic on 386 PC, which resembles C. I have touched HTML (before html5) which was fairly strait forword (until I got to CSS sheets). I have been told that Java is fairly close to c++. So as far as the language goes, start the kids off with C and then add the ++ as they understand more. One trick that seems to work for me and my learning is when stuff gets introduced ahead of time then explained later( chili's pointer tuts are a great example ). I have got to say that I have looked over several tutorials online and nothing compares to how Chili lays out his material. I love his tuts and personality, though I have to wear a headset because I don't want my child to hear him. I think if teaching a child you could make your own lesson based on chili's work and clean it up a bit.
If you think paging some data from disk into RAM is slow, try paging it into a simian cerebrum over a pair of optical nerves. - gameprogrammingpatterns.com

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