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Advice needed, son wants to learn how to program (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by foofiepie@lemmy.world to c/programming@programming.dev

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Hi all,

My 8 year old is asking if he can learn how to program. He has asked specifically if I could set him up with a ‘programming kit with lessons’ for a Christmas present. I’d like to support this, and it seems like it’s not a transient interest as he’s been all over scratch, and using things like minecraft commands for the last year. I have an old (pre 2017) MacBook Air I can set up for this. How do I / what would you advise I set up for him, to a) keep him safe online (he’s 8!) and b) give him the tools he needs in a structured way.

I am not a programmer. I know enough bash/shell and basic unix stuff to be dangerous and I was a front end dev a very long time ago, but I wouldn’t call myself a programmer and don’t know what concepts he needs to learn first.

Hugely appreciate any advice, thanks.

Edit: So I posted this then had a busy family day and came back to so many comments! I will methodically go through these all, thanks so much.

A couple of things on resources: he has expressed interest in 3D worlds and I noticed comments on engines, but wonder if that’s too advanced?

Totally agree with the short feedback loop rather than projects that take days.

He has an iPad 6 and I’m happy to pop a Linux distro on the Air, so certainly open to that.

So many links to research. Hugely grateful.

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[–] jet@hackertalks.com 68 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Everyone else's suggestions are great.

Get them a copy of Factorio, it's a game, but it's all about computer science fundamentals, architecture, pipelining, busing, data integrity, etc. It's a visual game, but it'll scratch the itch of programming. It'll get them to think.

Buy the hardware projects, the little ones with either a pic, an Arduino, something that does something physical. A little bit of programming. To make a thing happen. So they can experiment.

Look at the software robot competitions, there's a couple on steam, there's couple elsewhere, you can do it as a family project, whiteboard out the logic of what your robot will do, and you can write it together. And see how it acts.

Just make sure anything you get, has a very small feedback loop, so they can iterate very quickly. That'll keep them engaged and exploring. You don't want to get a daunting project that's going to take weeks to see any output. You want things on the order of minutes, or even seconds to see what happens

[–] Szwajcer@discuss.tchncs.de 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ah, haven't thought about factorio. On that matter 7 Billion Humans is a cool game that can teach the basic logic behind programming.

[–] prenatal_confusion@lemmy.one 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Seconding all of the above. Also tis 100 and exabots. All games by that developer actually.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I love Zachtronics, but I think their games are very ambitious for 8 years old. Maybe teenager with some discreet logic skills under the belt.

[–] prenatal_confusion@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago

You are absolutely right, I overlooked the age.

[–] huginn@feddit.it 1 points 1 year ago

"send me your favorite base" is probably a better programming interview than most

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