Slashdot Mirror

If you've never programmed before, the first thing I'd recommend is learning html and write a basic web page. Play around with the formatting and css...

This is solid advice for a starter because you don't need anything more than a good text editor and a web browser. No need for a complicated IDE, where learning the intricacies of how the IDE works is half the battle. Plus you're not platform bound, like you would be with C# or Swift. Sure, they're "open source," but the best tools for either of those is on a specific platform.

If you really want to get a good idea of how you're doing, you could always sign up for CodeCademy's HTML & CSS course first, then their JavaScript course. It's free, and you earn badges to show your progress. As an added bonus, there's forums where you can ask for help if you're stuck on something, and the community is fairly helpful. There are a ton of other free sites out there, but this one is probably the best approach for newbies IMHO.

If you've never programmed before, the first thing I'd recommend is learning html and write a basic web page. Play around with the formatting and css...

This is solid advice for a starter because you don't need anything more than a good text editor and a web browser. No need for a complicated IDE, where learning the intricacies of how the IDE works is half the battle. Plus you're not platform bound, like you would be with C# or Swift. Sure, they're "open source," but the best tools for either of those is on a specific platform.

If you really want to get a good idea of how you're doing, you could always sign up for CodeCademy's HTML & CSS course first, then their JavaScript course. It's free, and you earn badges to show your progress. As an added bonus, there's forums where you can ask for help if you're stuck on something, and the community is fairly helpful. There are a ton of other free sites out there, but this one is probably the best approach for newbies IMHO.

I feel your confusion. This may be "old school" but I feel it's solid (or has been for me). Start with learning the basic rules.

A lot of people like Python but because most languages use certain characters to enclose blocks of code (and python only uses indents) I would suggest starting with Java or C/C++. Many here will say Python is easier (ruby is probably easiest for many), but your goal will be to have room to grow. You'll find more languages conform to the C/C++ or Java syntax style rules than Python or Ruby. I find it easier to ready than Python myself.

Do yourself a favor and skip VB.net. If you want pure Microsoft (and I would advise against that, would have saved me much grief early in my career) you can do C# and you'll be better prepared for languages with more platforms.

Java, for example you can use in many enterprise system and embedded systems, including Android. C/C++ you can use for robotic controllers, IPhones (objective-c), real-time critical applications (and gaming!!).

Some may suggest starting with scripting languages like PHP, Python or Ruby. there is faster "joy", but I'd sooner suggest starting with MIT's Scratch https://scratch.mit.edu/ (GUI language for teaching children basic of programming). It's a great teaching tool for anyone I think. Hey, it's still valid basics which converts the GUI instructs into 'C'. the reason

I'm so "hung up" on starting with C/C++ or Java is most newer languages take a lot of their cues from the concepts widely used in C/C++/Java. once you learn one of these (especially C++/Java) you can step into any other language out there with relative ease. Some good sites to start would include:

http://lifehacker.com/five-bes...
Note: These are all free or have free options

http://www.learn-c.org/
http://landofcode.com/programm...
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/el...
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/el...
https://www.codecademy.com/lea...
http://www.coursera.org/ (real university level courses, a little intimidating at first, but worth it)
http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/t...

For python:
https://www.python.org/

For Ruby:
https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/

the courses as udemy are a little light so I'd only go there for review.

I've given many options here although I've stated my preference. The other advantage to using C/C++ or Java is they make using these invaluable books easier to read:

Writing Solid Code: Microsoft Techniques for Developing Bug-free C. Programs (Microsoft Programming Series) by Maguire, Steve
Code Complete by Steve McConnell


Yes, these books are from MS and old, but I found them invaluable (and I wish MS had actually practice what came from their own publishing companies when writing the code for W2K and XP). Was required reading at one workplace. You'll want to learn about Object-Oriented approaches as well as syntax. It's a lot to take in and this is just the beginning, but it's fun journey. Oh, I would agree, don't bother with Basic. You are better off with Python or Ruby. :D Again, to reduce your learning curve later on, I'd start with C/C++/Java. You'll be glad you did.

Wikipedia. If that's too advanced, you can always try UrbanDictionary (html = how to meet ladies).

Seriously though, I've seen people get basic literacy in HTML in a few hours. There are a lot of details beyond that, figuring out how to get things exactly where you want them on the page, how to deal with browser incompatibilities...........plenty of things that take a while to learn. But basic literacy in HTML? Start here, or maybe here.

"Teaching" as we know it is going to be replaced. We will always have teachers and people that foster learning but it will not be done as it is done now. K-12 virtual schools have taken off in Michigan. They have all online and 'hybrid' programs as well.

As a high performing student I would have watched Kahn Academy until I couldn't keep my eye lids up. The times I did have a question it could have been answered clearly and easily by someone in a video.

You're going to have super star teachers on youtube or other learning channel answering high level questions. (Like how Stack Exchange works). For those people that need hands on learning (which is a small subset of everyone) they will get hands on learning in person.

Why does a tiny small school in the middle of nowhere need both a French AND Spanish teacher when you could have someone in Spain and France teaching them through Youtube and interacting through Skype. Look at how Duolingo[0] has taken off. That's something that can be introduced to a 3 year old and they will intuitively pick up without fighting 13 years of trying to 'unlearn' some things in English.

Teaching as we know it is going to be automated away by technology. Code Academy taught me python syntax in an afternoon. It's clear and straight forward enough that I'm trying to get my wife to learn coding.

I would have spent every waking hour doing Code Academy in one window with Kahn Academy in the other if I had those tools available to me in high school. Instead I got stuck in some math classes with people that didn't care or distracted the teacher from actually teaching. In that scenario I would have benefited from where technology is taking teaching. So will a lot of other students.

Teachers are already experimenting with Fliped classrooms where students watch the lecture as 'homework' and the homework is done in class when the teacher is available. There's no reason the 'interacting with a teacher' part can't be done online. [Some rural schools are rolling out alternatives to 'snow days' where the students still learn at home](http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/02/02/382701005/for-some-schools-learning-doesnt-stop-on-snow-days)

There was a story that I can't find now about a teacher that had students write the book for the next semester. Take a classroom of 8th graders and have them make a LaTeX/Wiki page for each chapter they learn about. Make it the final class project and have different groups take a different chapter. The next semester improve on it. After a year or two you'll have a very well written and vetted wikibook on a class.

Why do teacher spend so much of their time on lesson plans? That's something that should have a good central Git repository. If you have a different style of teaching fork the project and make your own. Let teachers merge revisions back. You should have a good set of lesson plans, books, etc all. End the big book cartel and just start publishing LaTeX books for K-12.

I sit at home 400 miles away from my boss. I use my webcam for meetings. I push and pull git repos over VPN. There's no reason learning can't be facilitated in the same way. The best part about it is I can work it into my schedule. Some days I'm up at 4 am coding and feeding the kid. When the kid goes down for a nap, so do I. Then I'll work until midnight with dinner, TV and time with the wife intermixed. Apple has "At Home Advisors" so that people can get tech support from an American working at home. My company has moved almost all IT support to people working from home. Parents don't have to choose between raising a family and working.

With online courses my kids will learn the same way I work. If we want to go on vacation for a month in Germany all we need is internet access and both him and I can get our work/school work done and then eat dinner at a delicatessen, talk Ger

In the press release, the National Parks Foundation and Google left no doubt that this was intended to be a for-girls-only event The Google for Education blog also drove home this point: "Earlier this year, we introduced a program called Made with Code to inspire millions of girls to try coding, and help them understand the creative things they can do with computer science. Starting today on madewithcode.com, girls can use the introductory programming language Blockly to animate the lights of the state and territory trees that will decorate President's Park, one of America's 401 national parks and home to the White House, through the holiday season." BTW, Google did require kids to declare their gender on other sites (Khan Academy, Codecademy) so that public school teachers would only receive $1,000+ in funding rewards for encouraging girls to code. A current Google-Codecademy promo takes things further, asking kids to declare their gender and race, apparently to exclude all boys from a $100 per-student reward ("gift codes will be distributed only to girls"}, and white/Asian boys from a $1,000 per-10-students bonus ("Why is the bonus funding specifically geared for girls and students of color?").

perhaps Codecademy might be good for her, depending on how well her comprehension is: http://www.codecademy.com/skil...

Three of us took that "Beginning Game Programming with C#" Coursera course. Two of us were professional programmers (myself a professional game developer) so we blew through the course; our third was a gaming buddy who wanted to try out programming -- he was an excellent gamer but had never done any programming. (Back in the day he had done a little shell scripting on Windows.)

The coursera is NOT a beginner friendly course -- it had two major problems:

* it teaches concepts in the wrong order, and
* doesn't explain key critical concepts at all, or extremely poorly.

My buddy dropped out after a few weeks because he just felt completely lost. We would spend hours going over concepts with him and he would get most of it. But when it came to the assignments he didn't have enough of the big picture and low level details to reason things out. IMHO there are better lessons out there, such as:

* http://www.codecademy.com/
* http://learn.code.org/hoc/1

Which is a shame too, because the professor is actually friendly, and has good intentions.

MOOCs are "famous" for having a 98% drop-rate. Seriously, like 20,000 students signed up. Very few made it to week 5.

Codecademy is o.k., but I think they start off on the wrong foot. It would be better if they went HTML->CSS->JavaScript instead of JavaScript->HTML->CSS. That way you could ease into things, and then incorporate JavaScript into your web pages from the get-go. For a beginner, they might not have any idea of what the point is behind learning JavaScript and how it is used in the real world.

Many games use java and or lua.

Minetest-C55 Block style 3D building game. (Open source)
http://minetest.net/

also
http://www.codecademy.com/
http://www.lua.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lua-scripted_video_games
I haven't tried Infon Battle Arena (yet) though it looks promising. :)

Or...learn to program and save your spreadsheets in CSV. Took me three days of classes in Codeacademy's Code Year project and about 20 different google searches to start gathering data from CSV's in javascript and mangling it together. And that was while answering support calls.

Once you learn a little programming, it doesn't matter how complex the task, you can write up some functions to do whatever with your data over and over. Feature requests become notes to yourself.

Codeacademy also has a python track now: http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/python

Give Codecademy's Python a try. It's fun and easy. http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/python

I've been teaching my 9-year-old daughter programming. We started with http://www.codecademy.com/ learning JavaScript but have now moved on to Python, which she prefers because of the Monty Python references. JavaScript is similar enough to C++ (those annoying semi-colons!) to give them a bit of the flavor, and CodeAcademy makes it easy to give them a taste. On a side note, Python has a great free intro book, Think Python: http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython It's not turnkey like CodeAcademy, but it's very well written for someone who has never programmed before. I think Python is easier to learn but it is less similar to C++ than JavaScript, so there are pluses and minuses to using it in your situation.

I love all the new tools out there to help people engage with technology on a deeper level. Going to have to see if we can set up a local event for kids from the nearby school. They have been using Codecademy this year in some of the classes, seems like this might be a nice bridge over the summer and maybe something they can use throughout next year.

JavaScript requires the teaching of an environment and pre-existing objects like DOM

Of course it doesn't require those, you idiot and everyone who voted you insightful. The Code Academy Getting Started with Programming is in JavaScript and doesn't cover the DOM, CSS, or anything else that goes on in a browser.

Your argument is like saying kids shouldn't learn mechanical engineering by looking at car engines, because car engines are hooked up to all those distracting car interiors and dashboards, and once you shift out of neutral, you have to learn the vast messy subject of driving. So kids should study freestanding steam engines, no potential distractions there.

The environment that JavaScript runs in is a huge feature because it's the web pages where everyone spends much of their time! Once you learn the language, you can start doing canvas graphics (are you seriously proposing BASIC's shitty graphics instead?) Once you learn about objects, you learn that the browser and the window in which your script runs in are themselves objects that you can mess with. What's more motivating, peeking under the covers of Facebook and a million other websites or learning some ivory-tower language and its own limited environment disconnected to everything else the kid does on a computer? Your claim "this is motivated by business" is laughable. It would be profoundly stupid to begin with any language other than JavaScript when the other essential computer course is "Learning how the web works (HTML and HTTP)."

Other web based programming learnifying things I've seen tend use javascript as a starter. Codecademy for example.

Although I have been seeing places use coffeescript too.