programming-for-kids VS processing

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

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I disagree. There are so many creative tools that are now online that you can access from your browser that were not envisioned in the original web. It is obviously true that not EVERY website is about creation (but to expect that seems unreasonable?), but even Wikipedia is a collaborative project.

Examples include products from big vendors like Adobe's Photoshop, to smaller products like SketchUp, to more indy generative art tools like https://processing.org and Strudel (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39924210).

Would processing[0] be a good fit? It's designed to be easy to use and learn but powerful enough for professional use. Very quick to get cool stuff moving on a screen and the syntax is Java with a streamlined editing environment.

[0] https://processing.org/

I would personally use the language Processing. It's the one I use the most. And it's relatively easy to start drawing text, squares, and do other kinds of things. (It's kind of like java, but without all the boilerplate code)

Processing (P5) had this: you can select any string of text in its IDE anl search for it in the docs, and if it's one of the built-in functions or constants it will open the associated static html page that came installed with the software, so no internet nor server required. And despite being offline you can still navigate the docs too. This feels a lost basic skill in static site generation these days.

It was the only creative coding framework that had complete, offline documentation like that at the time I might add. OpenFrameworks is still mostly autogenerated stubs for example.

IMO it was one of the things that gave Processing an edge in educational contexts over all alternatives. I was pretty sad to see p5.js not fully continue that tradition and require that you go online to read the docs, and that it's not a static website but that text is rendered with javascript when you open it (still complete and with examples though).

https://processing.org/

https://p5js.org/

Processing is very cool, especially if you like graphics.

https://processing.org/

Processing is a flexible software sketchbook and a language for learning how to code. Since 2001, Processing has promoted software literacy within the visual arts and visual literacy within technology. There are tens of thousands of students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists who use Processing for learning and prototyping.

And it's not even their IDE. They just slapped some AVR compilers into Processing

https://processing.org/