Teach nephew (age 10) programming

barkalov2012-11-30 20:53:28

Programming

barkalov, 2012-11-30 20:53:28

The kid is 10 years old, plays Left4dead and GTA all day long. I would like to direct energy in a different direction. What are the languages and IDEs for the little ones? To be clear and interesting.

At one time, my classmate and I independently studied qbasic's help in incomprehensible English, but these were the dashing nineties . Surely now there is something easier and more fun. Of course I will help.

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20 answer(s)

DanielWolf, 2012-11-30
@DanielWolf

I recommend LEGO Mindstorms
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEGO_Mindstorms

Dmitry, 2012-11-30
@EvilsInterrupt

Dear topic-author:
Get away from the child! Give him a chance to grow! Yes, playing with toys, even if it develops computer games.
>>At one time, my classmate and I on our own
Everyone has their own games! You like to “play” with computers, and someone looks at you and thinks, “What is this stupid nerd doing anyway?”
My former colleague is an excellent programmer and can write a static unpacker for almost any modern executable file protector. When asked for advice from him on any situation: “Didn’t you play games at all? This is indeed...". He is quite passionate about games, but at the same time he is a very strong system programmer.
Summary: Do not deprive the child of childhood! And if you want to do something useful for him, then it’s better to take him to the sports section once a day (boxing, football or something else).

Ivan Ivanov, 2012-11-30
@javamain

It is better to give it to a sports school or to English courses. Sport is health, and English is needed both by a programmer and not by a programmer.

alexhemp, 2012-11-30
@alexhemp

It is better not to let the computer go to the computer for the whole day at the age of 10.
Maximum - half an hour a day, and then if there are no neurological contraindications, and for sure - do not play such games. Put at least Portal.
But judging by the fact that “it sucks all day long” - it’s easier for parents to put him at the computer and go about their business.
If you really want to help him, take away his computer and hand him a book.
Start with the "Dancing Men", using their example it's great to talk about a bunch of different simple ciphers, and from them smoothly move into the binary system. Let the messages write in binary code.
And then any books on entry-level programming can be used. Libraries probably have other books like The Beginnings of Informatics. Logo language. It is absolutely not necessary to program something at this stage, the main thing here is to learn the basic concepts like “information”, “encoding information”, “a program is a coded sequence of actions”, etc.

svoyak, 2012-11-30
@svoyak

Lego Mindstorms - game and programming, what could be better for a kid? Then it will be possible to gradually switch from the graphical editor to C.
The most important thing here is that the child will have an awesome "feedback" from programming.

Seter17, 2012-12-01
@Seter17

Playing games doesn't mean you love programming. Yes, here a lot of users spent their childhood behind consoles and grew up into normal people. So there is no need to start a topic about the fact that "games have a bad effect on the psyche of a developing child" - these are parents who do not take care of the child, they have a bad effect on his psyche (this was said without hints and insults).
Take the child in the sections and he will not have time for the computer. Give it to gymnastics and acrobatics - provide a good body. Be sure to give in English courses. Maybe he wants to try in music or art? Do you have a liking for math? It may well appear in programming. At 10, a child only wants to have fun - but your task is to give him as much as possible. But don't force a guy to code just because he likes to shoot zombies.

Ivan Ivanov, 2012-12-01
@javamain

The entire modern education system is built on the principle: For the child to live up to 23 years and harm himself as little as possible, and at the same time learn as much as possible.
That is, the point is in effectively solving the problem: How to educate a person to the maximum, while harming him as little as possible, taking into account the fact that he will still need to work 40 years after university.
Learning to program at the age of 10 is clearly not the best way.

KoXGen, 2012-11-30
@KoXGen

Still better with Basic or Pascal

Yuri Popov, 2012-12-01
@DjPhoeniX

Dear, you do not have to be philanthropists. Parents themselves decide how to raise a child, it is not for you to judge their methods. Not by subject - in a personal.
Now on topic. I was personally “hooked” on programming using the “forgotten” book on game development in my room (at that time - on the same QBasic). At almost 19, I have been programming for more than half of my life :)
But, I think, such a joke will not work in the current reality - there is more code than the buzz from the result. But you can try to offer to make a couple of mods for the same GTA, let him be interested in graphics, and then you can already “open the secret” that you can write your own something. Go further - say that you can make money on this - one of the more successful mods (with which you, of course, will help), put up for sale for some ridiculous 30-50 rubles (and buy from a couple of fake accounts). I think that no one will refuse to have “their own” at this age. Further - more, to say that the world of computers is not limited to graphics and games ... Well, then your flight of fancy :)

Dmitry Timofeev, 2012-12-01
@blackstrip

Programming at 10 years old is very early. When I was 9-10 years old, I spent all my free time on the street, the third grade had just ended, and with it, mathematics like “5 + 3 = ?”, “From point A to point B” (what kind of programming can be there?).
Later, at the age of 12-13, I got carried away with the dandy console and games, and then I had plans “somehow poorly made dendev games. here's how to make your own game. there would be such a hero and such a plot, such music, such versatile levels, like in the first we go there from the side, then the second from above, then the third - to wet the boss on the roof of a skyscraper.
Then in the 8th-9th grade (14-15 years old) a computer appeared and my brother showed me qbasic. And I realized that not everything is as simple with graphics, music and gameplay as it was in my dreams. At the same time, the school gave me the necessary mathematical apparatus so that I could draw graphs, emulate the fall of objects along a parabola, bouncing like “slowing up, stopping in the air, accelerating down.” The first game programs were based on dandy games: top-down races, snake rattle and roll where the red head of a snake crawls, bounces, opens its mouth at a space, all sorts of top-down tanks, etc.
And since the BASIC was poor in functionality, I had to write my own procedures for loading and quickly rendering BMP images, working with SVGA modes and banks, protected mode, playing WAV files and MIDI files (more precisely, study ready-made solutions and test them on your card), creating your own fonts that you can write in games, mouse and keyboard control, interrupt interception, etc. Moreover, already with Qbasic 1.0, I switched to QuickBasic 4.5 (which EXE makes as an output, and also supports connecting third-party or its own QLB libraries), and then to QB7.1, the Future library and other conveniences that make a multifunctional monster out of cubesik.
And even then I was wildly afraid of Pascal (terrible syntax). And only in the 2nd year of the institute at the age of 19, when I was forced to study Delphi as part of the educational process, I already got used to something like Pascal. Then, on the 3-4 course, I switched to C-like Java for mobile phones. And then on Java-like C-sharp at work.
In general, maybe I'm a brake, and maybe someone faster all this happened. But at 10 years old, there is no knowledge of mathematics, no knowledge of “what is already programmed in this world and how it looks, how it is played.” Let him play games, test someone else's strength, fantasize - this is a good stage for moving on to writing your own.
Although I do not know if it is possible to switch to programming from today's ubersuper3digr. There's also supergraphics and other things that make studios of several tens or hundreds of people. And no one will appreciate their own BASIC works, because. The bar for the quality and beauty of modern gaming software is set high compared to 10-15 years ago. And there is no DOS anymore, Windows does not allow debugging either in BASIC or in Pascal, it works crookedly with index DOS palettes, and does not like these modes at all, the protected mode crashes with exceptions. Therefore, Cubeic and Pascals, it turns out, have died in modern windows.
There is a Windows BASIC from Microsoft. It's simple and free. Such Qbasic for Windows. Here on it can be try? smallbasic.com/

Rafael Osipov, 2012-11-30
@Rafael

Look here: www.alice.org/

FanKiLL, 2012-12-01
@FanKiLL

Have you looked at www.kidsruby.com/about ?

FanKiLL, 2012-12-01
@FanKiLL

In general, it is strange that they did not offer small basic. The Russian-speaking community is smallbasic.ru/ and there were posts on Habr after his announcement. For starters, you can play your own IDE + with a turtle, make it run around the screen in a couple of lines of code.
There are already a couple of books in Russian and video lessons. See if it fits.

gleb_kudr, 2012-12-01
@gleb_kudr

The main thing is something with a simple visual component. qbasic was good precisely because it was easy to draw all sorts of garbage in it and how easy it was to get the result.
I think javascript is a good place to start.

nochkin, 2012-12-01
@nochkin

Maybe Java.
There are many guides for beginners, there are also many different IDEs for development, and there are many areas of application.

psylostlife, 2012-12-01
@psylostlife

Pascal. It is easy to learn and, at the same time, will teach the kid the rigor of programming. These are not schoolchildren who started with php and, when changing hosting, fall into prostration and complete misunderstanding of what kind of notes they got out here and there. You need to learn to keep track of variables and code from an early age.

LuckyStarr, 2012-12-01
@LuckyStarr

Look, they advised: habrahabr.ru/qa/27279/

ad1Dima, 2012-12-01
@ad1Dima

Try Kodu (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/kodu/): You can make games using simple behavioral algorithms. And if it drags on, it will be possible to look at something more serious.

Alexander Lebedev, 2012-12-03
@cawaleb

Try getting him hooked on scratch.
scratch.mit.edu Played for a
few hours when I saw this project. In general, I don’t let children “wet zombies” if they play games like The Incredible machine.

Alexander Lapenko, 2012-12-03
@webrider

How about Game Maker ?
This is a toy building kit. In it, you can collect toys both with the help of cubes (constructor), and with the help of the built-in scripting language.
Easy to learn, interesting, there are many examples (including video tutorials). I myself once studied, regretted that I had not stumbled upon it earlier.