General > General Technical Chat
Learning Simple Programming for a Ten Year Old?
sokoloff:
I don’t think c++ is an ideal first language for a 10 year-old. It’s too easy to make a mistake in syntax and get a fairly unhelpful error message from the compiler. (Plus the Arduino IDE isn’t very helpful in general.)
If you have an experienced programmer to guide you, it’s totally doable, but if you don’t, it’s easy to get frustrated.
Languages with a REPL or at least without a distinct compile-link stage (slight hand wave here) are often easier for beginners to pick up.
tooki:
--- Quote from: sokoloff on November 14, 2022, 10:32:14 am ---I don’t think c++ is an ideal first language for a 10 year-old. It’s too easy to make a mistake in syntax and get a fairly unhelpful error message from the compiler. (Plus the Arduino IDE isn’t very helpful in general.)
If you have an experienced programmer to guide you, it’s totally doable, but if you don’t, it’s easy to get frustrated.
--- End quote ---
But isn’t that exactly the situation here?
Fred27:
I'd definitely recommend something visual like Scratch. I think the key is to find what sort of coding interests your kid in particular.
For instance, my boys loved creating video games with Make Code Arcade. I pormised to create a Pi-based physical arcade for them if they wrote an original game. I know that a friend's daughters were more interested in making a little cartoon in Scratch. (My boys weren't.) As someone else mentioned, Lego Boost / Wedo 2.0 / Spike Prime may be their thing. There's also a raspberry Pi hat to interface with it too. Unfortunately Lego can't seem to keep to one product range and they're all subtly different.
sokoloff:
--- Quote from: tooki on November 14, 2022, 11:12:51 am ---
--- Quote from: sokoloff on November 14, 2022, 10:32:14 am ---If you have an experienced programmer to guide you, it’s totally doable, but if you don’t, it’s easy to get frustrated.
--- End quote ---
But isn’t that exactly the situation here?
--- End quote ---
If OP lives with their grandson full-time, yes. I didn’t find that in evidence, so suggested a course that would allow the child to
make progress as their interests drive them rather than only as grandpa visits.
fourfathom:
--- Quote from: sokoloff on November 14, 2022, 01:15:46 pm ---
--- Quote from: tooki on November 14, 2022, 11:12:51 am ---
--- Quote from: sokoloff on November 14, 2022, 10:32:14 am ---If you have an experienced programmer to guide you, it’s totally doable, but if you don’t, it’s easy to get frustrated.
--- End quote ---
But isn’t that exactly the situation here?
--- End quote ---
If OP lives with their grandson full-time, yes. I didn’t find that in evidence, so suggested a course that would allow the child to
make progress as their interests drive them rather than only as grandpa visits.
--- End quote ---
Yes, that's pretty much correct. I spend a lot of time with my grandson (we're best buddies), but there are big gaps. I would like to find something that grabs his interest, but I will be satisfied if he just learns enough to not be intimidated by it all as he grows up.
Again, I appreciate all the discussion here.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version