Teaching Kids Programming

[nickseb]

Hi Chili

I've seen that in the US there are now a lot of Programming summer camps that kids can go to which is pretty cool. I have an 11 year old little cousin who's in love with games and he says he wants to get into programming.
So as I live in South Africa and summer camps don't really exist (never mind programming ones), I decided to scoure Youtube and see if I could teach him some stuff using awesome people like you to help me along.

I studied Maths and Stats at Uni, and didn't do any programming, so I'm kinda teaching myself and then seeing how best I can teach my cousin. We've started on the first few Lessons of Beginner C++ DirectX Game Programming Tutorial and its going well

I wanted to ask you or anyone on the forum, for tools and ideas to make teaching Kids programming more fun and more successful. Kinda like some of the tools that the summer camps might use. Are their tutorials and their games just bigger and more colourful!? How do you suck younger kids into Programming differently from, older teenagers and adults.

thank you so much for this resource.

[nG Inverse]

This is actually a really interesting subject!

Note that programming is a very unique thing. Those who seem to be introverts, well disciplined in math, logical thinkers, and grasped to the concept of how things work tend to be more willing to stick to the whole idea of programming. I started relatively early (at least what I consider early) myself around the age of 13.

I do however know someone whose father started teaching him to program at the age of 6, and know he's a well established Software Engineer working for a well recognized company in the UK. He's also been involved in a few published research papers for Microsoft. I'll give him a chat and see what made him stick to it!

[Asimov]

Hi ngInverse,

Well I like programming and I am rubbish at maths. Was hopeless at it at school, but I can put a game together.

I think at schools a good object orientated language like C++ should be used, rather than having to relearn it later.

[nG Inverse]

Yes, that list of qualifications does not necessarily guarantee or prevent one from sticking with programming. One of the reasons I was so interested in it was I started by creating modifications for a multiplayer version of my favorite childhood game; Grand Theft Auto San Andreas.

As far as learning programming in school, I think it would be great. Unfortunately my school's most advanced technology class was using Dreamweaver to create a very basic website with menus. That was the far extent of it all. As far as learning OOP; it's difficult. Definitely not something people should start learning when programming right away. Procedural languages are much more straight forward and will offer a better result, as they will see their work more quickly than trying to trouble through all the complications of object oriented programming.

[Asimov]

Hi ngInverse,

Wow you must be young if San Andreaus is a childhood game LOL, as my first childhood game was tennis with a square ball, space invaders and pacman heh heh.

I have completed San andreaus btw, but I thought it only came out about 5 years ago.

I still think OOP is the way to go for children, otherwise they learn one way and then have to relearn. I learnt basic at school, but found OOP much harder later.

A child's mind is like a sponge, best to get the right data in there in the first place.

[nG Inverse]

Currently 18. I consider it my "childhood game" because it is really the only one I remember playing for extended periods of time (along with other GTA titles). I would still be playing and developing for the online modification if my laptop's graphics card (the probable cause?) didn't brake. The game itself came out 9 years ago, so it's getting up there!

I agree children are better initial learners of things (like teaching a child a second language is much easier). However, I doubt kids would be able to actually grasp the complete concepts of such extensive languages like C++ which use OOP. It takes people years to actually get a firm knowledge base of OOP design schematics. Not to mention, learning about memory management, the different APIs, etc. would be too overwhelming for the child to actually enjoy the experience. That is just my opinion, however.

I spoke with my buddy and he said he started with HTML (not "actual" programming, I know). He stuck with it as he liked being able to go to school and show his friends that he made a webpage displaying his friends' names with large, bold, and other whacky characters. He continued to wanting to amaze them, and when they got older, he made other things to pertain to them at that age (like games!).

If you do want to begin some children on programming, start with the very simple stuff first. Showing them just the "Hello World" for C/C++ I'm sure would be a bit harsh to begin. Hell, I remember the first time I looked at C-like syntax code at 13. It took me FOREVER just to remember the basic syntax rules.

[Asimov]

Hi ngInverse,

Strange I went from basic at school straight on to Z80 machine code, which I taught myself while being at school. I am not sure if you know much about machine code, but it is much more abstract than C++.

As for html it did not exist when I was at school LOL. I don't think the internet started until 1995, and I left school in 1987. But a good way to learn C++ might be to start with php, as the syntax is very similar.

I think they used to teach languages like Pascal and Fortran at school back then on the BBC micro, but seeing as we only had 5 computers in the whole school, I didn't get near them much.

[Syncan]

I learned programming on my Commodore 64 computer. A fine machine to do that, as it is a gamecomputer.
I did learn a lot, reading listings from games, publiced in C64 gamer-magazins.
Also machine-language was not difficult. Yes, it was great to play and learn programming at the same time on the C64
Learning C++ is a lot harder than Basic, especially if you are already somewhat older ( I am 60 ). C++ has somuch build-in functions, which makes it hard to remember the syntax and parameters from those functions when programming.
So maybe it is better to start programming with C++ as a child because a child remembers things easier. Or start weth the more user-friendly C# .

[Asimov]

Hi syncan,

Heh heh at school we would have been mortal enemies, as I had a 48k spectrum, and there was always the war between computers LOL.

The commodore 64k was a lie, as it really only had 48k of usable memory, like the spectrum at the time.

I learnt to program on the zx81 in Basic, then the spectrum 48k, and then moved onto z80 machine language.

I think if I could learn machine lanaguage at that time in the early 80's a child now should be able to learn C++, or C# which is a managed language.

Mind you some of the kids I talk to nowadays, it's a wonder they can turn on their iphones LOL. What do they teach kids at school these days ahem.

[nG Inverse]

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!