Parents of Hacker News, I'm curious to know if parents in the tech community here are teaching their kids to code - and if so, what apps, online classes, or other resources you're using? What do you like? Thanks!
Maybe its my personality or upbringing but I saw many instances where parents forced their kids into something because it was what the parent liked or was interested in (not just sports but same concept) and I didn't want to do that at all. I saw kids have a love of something and that get completely ruined because the parent basically made it their kids' job.<p>With my kids there wasn't any natural interest in it from them. Their interest in anything related to computing is consumption based not creator based. I've let them know if that changes, I'm here and can help. I try to encourage them in the things that they are interested in.
With my older daughter I used Clasic Visual Basic 6. It's very easy to make small programs with a silly UI that does something. And also make some graphics. I liked Logo when I was a child. If your favorite program haas a turtle odule, I recomend to use it. (Later she switched to C, Python, a litle of R, C#.)<p>Probably Python is a good first language. I think it has a turtle module, but I'm not sure. <a href="https://docs.python.org/3/library/turtle.html" rel="nofollow">https://docs.python.org/3/library/turtle.html</a> looks good.<p>In may cases, I gave her a simple working program and made het tweak it, until she could write her ow programs.<p>(I also recomend to teach Excel. Used correctly, it's very powerful for simple math task.)
The basics is just solving puzzles. It's games similar to The Incredible Machine.<p>1. Define the problem.<p>2. Build a part of the solution that gets them closer to the answer. They should be able to evaluate whether this is closer to or further from solving the problem.<p>3. Build more parts iteratively. Test and debug. These will break earlier solutions sometimes.<p>4. At higher levels, they define the problem to solve. Make a racing game or a platformer? Automate something. Minecraft is good for figuring this out.<p>Many other hobbies work here. Paul Graham was inspired by painting. TDD utilizes climbing analogies. Something like cooking may not work because you have a full design and it can't be figured out iteratively.
I tried giving my oldest a Minecraft Redstone lesson. The youngest was also watching, but considering he's a little too young I was focusing on the oldest. The oldest listened and nodded to everything, but never ever built a redstone contraption since then, no interest at all (despite the fact that his world would dramatically improve with some of the stuff I taught him). On the other hand, the youngest now often gets to Creative mode and makes dozens and dozens of contraptions using observer clocks, pistons, trapdoors and dispensers.<p>You can show them that it's an option and give them an introduction, but you can't force them to be interested. They need to be ready and need to choose it.
I am not really actively teaching them, but I am providing some resources like books. My older son (8) enjoys playing around with Scratch. I think it's great and at this age it's just good to experiment.
I'm not forcing anything on them. They have done a small bit of scripting to get things to happen in Minecraft and elsewhere. As they move to adulthood, I'll offer programming and repair of electronics, etc.. (outside of the college system) as a possible career path to route around their disability. I've done quite a few things, and an apprenticeship/mentoring approach seems to be the best choice for transferring those skills to the next generation.<p>They do horribly in traditional education, but tend to test well in spite of it.
No. Don't want my kid to become a software coolie like us. With AI and scrum masters and micro managers, it is quickly becoming more of a replaceable blue collar job.
My kids are teaching themselves to code and build computers and stuff like that without my encouragement or involvement, apart from some support from me to help pay for some pieces of computer, only if they do some chores or something else that is helpful or good.
It’s their interests and I just like them to learn stuff they’re interested in without external pressure or influences.
No. They aren't really interested in learning (yet?), and I don't force it.<p>I do show them the type of force-multiplying work I can accomplish and they seem mystified. But then they use Scratch in school and can't do the same kinds of things and they aren't yet understanding there's stepping stones to programming.
No. I'm teaching my kids basic math for now. They can learn how to program later if they have the interest for it. Generally I allow them to follow their interests instead of forcing them to learn mine.
I plan on introducing them to programatic thinking before introducing them to code. Letting them play around with Scratch, for example. The nice thing about Scratch is that they would probably perceive it as a game, whereas writing code they would probably see it as work.
I tried to introduce it and it wasn’t very interesting to my son.<p>Now between Fortnite and 3D printing he’s doing alot of adjacent things and getting interested in a variety of computer topics including some coding.
As a follow-up, I'm also curious if you think coding is still useful for kids to learn, both in terms of innovative skills and preparation for jobs...or will AI largely obliterate the need to code...