programming-for-kids VS glicol

I can tell you as a dad, it frightens me that the future is coming so fast I cant even see 1 year ahead.

I teach my daughter things from small circuits to assembler, c, python, sql but also basic prompt engineering, how next word predictors work, how surveillance works or how privacy is infringed, how do we pay for the "free" apps, or how to make an idea into something real, also things about how to type fast (at the moment she types with 80wpm) and how to not be afraid of computers and how to just play with them.

Of course, it might turn out that I have wasted her time, but we spend time together, and during this time I also teach her how to learn things.

Honestly I am not sure "what" you are teaching is that important, If I knew how to bake, I would teach her the deep mastery of baking with all my heart.

PS: you can check my teaching progress log here https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/blob/master/...

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pico8+tutorial

Another option is to make a Roblox game, their studio is very accessible and the scripting is quite straight forward (e.g. if you step on this object it moves)

I have spent 2 years teaching my daughter and I thought python and pygame are nice, but we made lots of other games, and lots of turtle based generative art (you can also get some basic game ideas from there, like snake or tictactore or whereiswaldo):

https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/blob/master/...

I think the curve of excitement is quite steep at start, and then it gets super boring, so if you can reduce the scope as much as possible, and manage to get to some playable state its amazing, if you use godot or some other engine you can make the game playable on web so he can share it with his friends its really nice.

That looks seriously cool. Just the colors give me goosebumps :)

completely offtopic:

My dream is to build a super cheap child friendly computer, that the kids can build themselves, has a software keyboard that directly polls the gpio pins so that kids can modify their keyboard instead of having a keyboard controller (just so there is less mistery in what happens when a key is pressed). And the OS is something inspired from LEAP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_TlE_U_X3c that allowing you to evaluate code and apply it to your current file. A bit like your LOAD81 but with text.

I have a prototype now: https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/blob/master/... but it has a long way to go.

I think programming is literacy. People who can code can see through the fabric of our world in the same way as people that can read can see different worlds.

Teaching programming is so incredibly difficult, I am trying to teach my daughter, 343 days so far (12 yo, log here: https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/blob/master/...) and I am not sure it is a tooling problem at all. The problem seems to be to be able to understand what the student does not understand. And to be able to keep their focus.

I also use a lot of incentives (custom tshirts, vbucks, displate posters etc) to compete with the million developers in snap/facebook/tiktok/epic/etc that are trying to steal and sell every bit of her attention.

I constantly try different methods, we even made programming card games together (like https://punkjazz.org/programming-time/), or downloading music or generating music, writing games with python/lua/c, making autoclickers or bots, pranks, hacking things (e.g. explaining and using the whatsapp url parse bug recently was very fun), playing war games etc, but every day I have to spend a lot of time thinking about what is the "right" next lesson, what does she need to learn to level up.

Learning programming is not a curve at all, it is a staircase and stairs are like walls for some people. It might take 10 years to get to the next level. You can have people programming whole complex programs without having any idea what is going on.

That being said, the future of programming pedagogy and andragogy is very open, and I am very happy for every attempt to try to make a dent in it.

i code for 25 years, i am teaching my daughter (12) now, you can see her progress at https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/blob/master/book.md , so i have some experience teaching

My daughter(12) started using ChatGPT recently for homework stuff, but she also asked it some personal things about a friendship situation with her best friend, which made me think about how dangerous it is to take a friendship advice from a llm.

I thought its important to explain what it is and how it works, so I made our lesson yesterday be about ChatGPT (we spend every day doing a bit of coding and I log it in this repository):

https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/blob/master/...

Today before school I asked her to reflect on what ChatGPT is, and she had a pretty good mental model from yesterday's lesson, so at least she doesnt think it has empathy or is telling the 'truth'.

I managed to change 'ChatGPT is giving an answer to a question' to 'its just guessing the next word, but it understands deeply how words are connected'.

We did a lot of exercises where I asked her to think what would the next word be given a sequences of words just by thinking about their probabilities, like: 'Your name is ChatGPT. What is your' and the next word is going to be probably 'name' and then '?' and then 'My'

How do you explain it to your kids? Do you worry about them using it?

Since OpenAI makes it super easy to login with gmail (and her gmail is a kid account), I didn't even know she had a user there until she told me, but I think most kids in her class use it without their parents knowing.

you can also just go for python with pygame zero (this is the approach i took with my daughter when she was 9, i logged the progress here: https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/blob/master/book.md )

Hi

I am teaching my daughter how to code, and now I am running various pranks on her computer. For example, every time you alt+tab there is a weird beep sound, or the computer randomly restarts every 10 minutes, or after 10 minutes in Minecraft the keyboard presses 'W' for 3 seconds, or I move her mouse remotely and etc... (some are extremely evil, like stopping half the internet 128.0.0.0/1 or 0.0.0.0/1 every 10 minutes for 3 seconds)

I made a whole deck of cards (each prank fits on one playing card): https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/blob/master/projects/panic/cards-small.pdf

I sell the decks for 5€ (e.g.: https://punkx.org/c-pointer-game/ or https://punkx.org/punk0/) but for this one, I am not even sure what kind of lawyer should I talk to, to make sure I am not liable if a user of the deck damages someone's computer. I also aded epilepsy warning on the cards that are very visual (like randomly rotating the screen 90 degrees).

The deck is also licensed CC BY 4.0, so anyone can re-print it, and are the people printing it and sharing it liable as well? The warning I have now is made by me and you can see it on the first card, but I will also paste it here:

    WARNING! WARING! WARNING!

i am teaching my daughter since she was 10 and i am logging each day in a book https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/blob/master/book.md so far she is making great progress, you might get some ideas from it

I've worked on Ambient Engine and now on the Bevy engine. I totally agree with these points, very valuable. I only make some comments from my professional (audio) perspective:

We need the highlight author's affirmation of cli. Rust's tui (ratatui) is great. I used it to make Glicol-cli [1]. If you are a Linux user, you are welcome to test the music production of the code.

Speaking of game audio, I actually think rust is perfect for audio. I have also continued to develop Glicol recently, and my recent goal (starting tomorrow) is the bevy_glicol plug-in. I want to solve bevy's audio problem on the browser.

All in all, even though I've had my share of pain with ecs, I still think rust is very valuable for game and app development, maybe not multiplayer AAA, maybe practical apps.

[1] https://github.com/glicol/glicol-cli

[2] https://github.com/chaosprint/glicol

Nice! Great project website styling and demo.

I had a WebGPU scope demo using vanila JS here, but it's not connected to AudioContext at all.

https://stackblitz.com/edit/vitejs-vite-cuc9vs

Still, I had to use the old WebGL solution for https://glicol.org since the WebGPU support seems to be pretty slow at the moment.

Suno is great and I already shared its potential back in v2. I have always believed that the essence of digital music is "organized numbers". I think what needs to be thought about is how to use AI in this process. If you look at the results (numbers) generated, then we are indeed very close. But there is another future I believe: I hope AI can compose music with me, like copilot. This is why I keep working on

https://glicol.org/

and the destination is:

https://github.com/chaosprint/RaveForce

Also want to hear your feedback.

Interesting!

Similar note-based expression can be found on TidalCycles/Strudel. although it's not valid MIDI format anymore, you can use notation like c4, f3, and make them as "pattern". Samples are also supported in the same manner:

https://strudel.cc/

And in my project Glicol, I use only numbers in the seq node. So 60 means middle C. Underscore means rest.

https://glicol.org/

I also applied with Glicol (https://glicol.org/) and got rejected, which is totally understandable. I am basically working this project on my own with almost zero extra funding.

I am currently working on a new website. The old stack is Vite, Svelte and Windi CSS (discontinued unfortunately). So this time maybe Astro + Solid + Tailwind.

And I am also trying to rewrite the whole Rust backend if possible, so there is quite some work to be done.

Let me know on GH or Discord if you are interested.

It's a good chance to try Rust, WASM, DSP, etc.

This is a really informative and inspiring article.

It hasn’t been 6 months (not 6 years) since I quit my full-time job as a Rust developer to start my own business.

As time goes by, I can feel the pressure of mortgage and car loans, and I can also feel the care and pressure of my family.

My original plan was to make an interface for Glicol (https://glicol.org), and to develop relevant hardware with firmware written in rust for school education.

I sent some cold emails to VCs, but most of them got no reply.

I also sent an email to the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology, offering to perform for children for free, but they didn’t reply for two months. I shamelessly sent it again, and someone finally replied with a rejection.

Only one VC talked to me and thought that I should convince and validate a partner first, and he suggested that I go to an incubator.

Very good advice.

Later I learned that even Norwegian education startups skipped Norway and focused directly on the US market.

People from the incubator also told me that it is impossible for Norwegian schools to accept new things independently.

This is very enlightening to me because most of Glicol's visitors are indeed from the US. And it took me so long to discover this fact.

But if I don’t start, I’ll never get past those six months.

I picked up LOGO when I was 6 and leant Pascal and C later.

I didn't program for a few years because I wasn't interested in competitions. So I think interest is the most important, otherwise it will be easy to get lost and give up.

Later, I became very interested in programming, mainly because I came into contact with music technology.

I think since your child is interested in game development, it is a good choice to start step by step. For example, starting with threejs. I also recommend learning Rust and Bevy so you learn the underlying layers and ECS.

Last but not least, although it's not related to games dev but I sincerely invite you and your son to try Glicol (https://glicol.org), the project that I am developing.

I quite my job as well to work on

https://glicol.org

I have a lot of feelings, but I don't have a blog so far. But one of my feelings is that universities should alloc some of their funding to many of these open source projects and open source community should be better managed rather than donation. My plan is to start my own company and work on hardware .