How to start kids off with coding

OhYeah84 said:
Dude, unfortunately you've opened yourself up to that comment with yours. I'm also getting impatient with people who have nothing to offer a discussion other than plonking some irrelevant, inconsequential reply down on a topic that the rest have been very forthcoming over.

Move on now. Find another forum topic.
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He's not entirely wrong though. I also thought about doing something like you are intending, but changed my mind.

Basically I fear pushing my kids into a certain field and they later hate it, they'll resent me.
 
The_Ogre said:
He's not entirely wrong though. I also thought about doing something like you are intending, but changed my mind.

Basically I fear pushing my kids into a certain field and they later hate it, they'll resent me.
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I work in IT, it's not to get them to go into IT at all. One wants to go into engineering, the other into accounting.
It's simply to give them something else to think about and maybe help them learn a bit of critical thinking. Something they'd asked me about in the past.
 
I would say just get them interested for now.

For me it was playing Uplink https://store.steampowered.com/app/1510/Uplink/ that got me interested.

From there I joined IRC and started messing with pirch and mirc. Completely changing the look of the program, adding in "cool" pics, adding as many scripts as I could then showing off what you learnt to your friends. Moved on to basic html so by the time programing in std 6 came around I was way ahead.

Funny enough I now do the things in uplink legally for a living.
 
Is bad parenting to introduce your 10 year old to Kali Linux, reverse shells, backdoors, trojans , keyloggers, wifi cracking etc?

Asking for a friend.
 
Another idea, is that perhaps you could get your kids interested by buying or emulating a classic PC from back in the day and using some the excellent classic Usborne books (available for download below).

I taught myself to code when I was 6 from these books. In the 80’s, there was this belief that all kids could learn to code, even in assembler.

usborne.com

Computer and coding books from Usborne | Usborne Publishing

Usborne children's coding books for a new generation
usborne.com usborne.com
 

Al Sweigart's Website

alsweigart.com

His Udemy Scratch course for kids is free. Also some of his Python Ebooks.

Edit: I see the 'Automate Everything...' course on Udemy is paid but every lecture is a 'Preview' so you can effectively watch the course for free and buy the course if you want to support him
 
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OhYeah84 said:
Hi All,

I am looking at getting my kids set up to learn coding. Basically to learn some new skills and get them thinking a bit differently.
Got an old laptop I can use, but I was wondering what would be the best way to start them off? What software would be needed, or what courses/websites should I look at?

Thanks!
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Kids get taught scratch at school.

You can also try coding board games and depending on their age, Robot Turtles is great.


I got my kids into Arduino last year and they love it. My daughter is 11 and my son 15.
 
OhYeah84 said:
Hi All,

I am looking at getting my kids set up to learn coding. Basically to learn some new skills and get them thinking a bit differently.
Got an old laptop I can use, but I was wondering what would be the best way to start them off? What software would be needed, or what courses/websites should I look at?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Coming from someone who was recently a child, I would advise you to make it as game like as possible. The moment that little shits knows you want to set them up for work, they will rebel. Build something with them and demo it to mom when it's finished. You will have them picking up Jira tickets in no time.
 
Other Pineapple Smurf said:
Kids get taught scratch at school.

You can also try coding board games and depending on their age, Robot Turtles is great.


I got my kids into Arduino last year and they love it. My daughter is 11 and my son 15.
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I think coding stuff that you can actually see in the real world is much more interesting than putting some text on the screen, or drawing a circle on the screen, so Arduino is a great learning tool.

I got myself the Sparkfun Inventor's kit, which contains an arduino and components, as well as instructions for a few designs and corresponding code. If I was still a kid and had some creativity I would have built all kinds of stuff.
 
Great thread: For younger kids I bought the board game Robot Turtles (as mentioned)

It teaches Logo style coding and kids immediately grasp the gamification aspect of coding. Every parent has the same story of leaving kids alone with this game and then hearing battle noises.

This is also an educational tool for teachers.

It is for any child who has never coded before and up to 4 players (or 4 groups).


www.thinkfun.com

Robot Turtles™ - ThinkFun

The most backed board game in Kickstarter history, Robot Turtles is the perfect coding board game to help your kid learn programming principles.
www.thinkfun.com www.thinkfun.com

Robot-1900-LoResSpill.jpg


EDIT: There are also more coding games for older kids from ThinkFun. The //CODE is very good and I would recommend that as well.

1645687199462.png
 
Barbarian Conan said:
Maybe you're just smarter than everyone else, or you surround yourself with stupid people. Neither of which is a given for the rest of us.

Engineering / software development has taught me to solve problems more methodically, but I can't remember when last I've had to listen to someone blabber about a problem for 3 minutes about a problem that's easy. The times where I THINK I already know the answer, I still learn something by listening, some other fringe scenario I never thought of. Or it is just easy, and we decide quickly.

OP: when your kids get too smart from coding, remember to teach them patience as well.
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Patience is a virtue...lol! Not easy when it comes to IT at times.
 
Other Pineapple Smurf said:
Great thread: For younger kids I bought the board game Robot Turtles (as mentioned)

It teaches Logo style coding and kids immediately grasp the gamification aspect of coding. Every parent has the same story of leaving kids alone with this game and then hearing battle noises.

This is also an educational tool for teachers.

It is for any child who has never coded before and up to 4 players (or 4 groups).


www.thinkfun.com

Robot Turtles™ - ThinkFun

The most backed board game in Kickstarter history, Robot Turtles is the perfect coding board game to help your kid learn programming principles.
www.thinkfun.com www.thinkfun.com

Robot-1900-LoResSpill.jpg


EDIT: There are also more coding games for older kids from ThinkFun. The //CODE is very good and I would recommend that as well.

View attachment 1253660
Click to expand...
I did Logo coding in junior school what felt like a century ago! I don't use it now, but I do remember it fondly.

Thanks for the above too!
 
Arduino. Not just switching lights on but start to do functional home Projects. Start small and grow from there. progress into ESP, Communicate serial and embed webpage to control arduino from esp 01/di mini. this is all doable at 15 years of age. There many examples and a great community to assist you.
 
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