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How To Encourage a Young Teen To Learn Programming?
Anonymous Hacker writes "I'm in a bit of a bind. My young teenage son is starting to get curious about computers, and in particular, programming. Now, I'm a long time kernel hacker (Linux, BSD and UNIX). I have no trouble handling some of the more obscure things in the
kernel. But teaching is not something that I'm good at, by any means. Heck, I can't even write useful documentation for non-techies. So my question is: what's the best way to encourage his curiosity and enable him to learn? Now, I know there are folks out there with far better experience in this area than myself. I'd really appreciate any wisdom you can offer. I'd also be especially interested in what younger people think, in particular those who are currently in college or high school. I've shown my son some of the basics of the shell, the filesystem, and even how to do a 'Hello World' program in C. Yet, I have to wonder if this is the really the right approach. This was great when I was first learning things. And it still is for kernel hacking, and other things. But I'm concerned whether this will bore him, now that there's so much more available and much of this world is oriented towards point-n-click. What's the best way to for a young teen to get started in exploring this wonderful world of computers and learning how to program? In a *NIX environment, preferably."
Whether or not you have suggestions for generating interest or teaching methods, there was probably something that first piqued your curiosity. It seems like a lot of people get into programming by just wondering how something works or what they can make it do. So, what caught your eye?
Problem solving ability grows only by tackling small small challenges at first.Again, u build that ability by slowly advancing your level.Not to mention that, you have to burn out to really learn something. To write great code, you have to go through great code that others have written. In short,there are no shortcuts .
Teach him python (or ruby, or whatever else that is high-level and easy).
It's the same as basic was twenty years ago, just much more powerful, easyer to learn and more fun.
Tie two birds together: although they have four wings, they cannot fly. (The blind man)
Your approach is still correct. The point and click gives results fast, but doesn't actually teach you anything. If he find the basics, boring, don't even bother anymore. Programming isn't for him.
Heck, I can say that programming for me became boring the day I started doing it professionally. I would rather direct my son in a completely orthogonal direction.
I thought geeks didn't have sex ...
Geeks clone themselves, it provides the same benefits without all the hassle with bodily fluids.
Write a game, perhaps based on a favourite book. Or something that involves a subject he's already interested. Doesn't matter if it's a simple text game. Let him write it on his own. Then when he's finished suggest a few improvements. Repeat. Once he's bored with that, start a new project.
That's how I learnt.
And for pity sake, do not ask him to kernel hack. It's way too abstract. You need something user-level with immediate and very visible results.
C++ primer plus by stephen prata.
http://www.amazon.com/Primer-Plus-5th-Stephen-Prata/dp/0672326973/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216718603&sr=8-1
It is one of the best ways to learn programming from absolutely knowing nothing! Because it explains in very accurate, precise and simple language that is very well expressed.
This is where I learned to program years ago, and I'd challenge anyone to find a better place to bring an absolute know nothing about programming into the fold.
It explains all the simple functions and whatnot for console programming, etc, if he can't dig that then he's not fit to program, the book makes C++ as easy as something as python, or the old visual basic.
The old visual basic 6 is not a BAD place to start if you can find some good programming books, because the old VB gave "immediate" results that kids often look for.
Show him how he can solve some simple problems for school, so he can later try to solve some more complicated problems. I have started this way when I was 12.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
Being able to produce pretty pictures is always fun. I learnt programming by spending all my time drawing bouncing balls that changed colour in 320x200 VGA. Of course nowadays kids can use a lot more powerful graphics libraries like the aforementioned SDL, which can let them make a lot cooler stuff.
If he gets the hang of it, you could even teach him how to write a raytracer. That would also be good for his math, and be a nice project where more advanced programming techniques (e.g. data structures, recursion) and more advanced math (calculus, 3D geometry) have practical uses.
Get him on a typing tutor first. It'll come in handy regardless of whether he sticks to programming. As he's learning to type, print out some interesting program listings (or get a book). Have him type in the programs (don't let him just cut and paste). Once he has the programs entered and debugged, have him modify or customize them.
Once he's done a few of these, he'll have experienced the rewards and tedium of programming and should be able to decide if this is the right path for him.
Javascript is not really a best first language to learn, I don't suppose. But my teenage son was more interested in it than in the C 'hello world' example I showed him, because he was familiar with web pages and web browsers and he could immediately see the implications.
My guess is that if you do a simple script that moves something around on the screen and then let him play around with it some, that this will spark his interest.
Good luck
FAQs are evil.
I have to second this one. I got hooked on programming in high school in a class where we had to program robotic Lego sets to do specific things using BASIC. Regardless of what you use to interest him, I would avoid projects longer than 3 months. If kids work at something too long without any reward, they're likely to lose interest.
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
Give him nethack (or any other OSS game) to play. After a while when he will get interested - give him the source code for it.
Programming games is probably most engaging activity. I'm 31 now - but still on it ;)
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
The best language to teach him is $trendy_language_of_the_moment. If you don't teach him that then he'll never get anywhere. How can people hope to encourage people to learn when they're using $formerly_trendy_language? It's just so horrible that I'd rather gouge someone else's eyes out with a spoon that use it instead of $trendy_language_of_the_moment!
No, really. That way he can share his games or whatever with his classmates, simply by sending them a link.
Of course it'll be a longish road to get to that point, but it might be a goal he can relate to - and I know I simply wouldn't learn anything unless I could see the point. Still don't at 34, come to think of it :)
First off, I think you should start with a language such as Python or Ruby. I started with BASIC which was easy to grasp, and more modern languages are easy yet more powerful.
Second, when I started programming I was first looking at my brother, writing really simple BASIC programs on the C64. Later, I was interested in fractals and wrote algorithms for drawing fractals. I had a book with code examples for different fractals, but in some other language (I don't remember which). The process of interpreting the algorithm in the first language and translating it to BASIC was very good for learning. Tweaking and extending the algorithms and seeing the changes visually was very encouraging.
Today, if I were to teach a kid programming, I think I would look into Lego Mindstorms. It helps if the kid is into Lego or robotics, of course. That's a contained environment with a powerful and easy language, which is also part of something else, with immediate feedback on the changes. You can program it in either the Lego-supplied RCX Code (BASIC-like) or ROBOLAB (LabView-based), or any of a number of languages supplied by the community (C, C++, C#, Java, Lua etc).
:wq!
That's THE way to get ANY teenager to do ANYTHING.
I think logo was my first programming experience and I enjoyed it. It's great to see the fruits of your labor instantly in graphical form.
I don't see that not having a flashy GUI means anything. I grew up in a world where I saw flashy GUI's for exactly what they were. I was much happier hacking DOS to get that extra few KB of base memory than I was playing about in Windows 3.1.
The problem is that you can't foster curiosity, which is the main driver here. Nothing will make you sit down and learn a programming language more than curiosity for what you can make the computer do, whether you can do something better than Microsoft, etc. You can try very hard to keep interest, though, and there practical results tend to have greater effect - this is why most basic ICT in schools is based around roaming turtles, Lego RCX, "traffic-light" kits etc. Computer-controlled with visible, physical effect.
Personally, I think the best way to foster the right computer skills isn't to use a computer much at all (this is a philosophy I've held for most of my life - the best way to program is in your head, not a machine - the best way to write a story is on paper, not a word-processor, etc.). The best things to use to learn are simple gadgets. I'm not a gadget person. I'm not even very good at electronics but I struggle along and get a lot done.
Wire your house for a burglar alarm, controlled by a computer, and involve your children in every step. If your practical skills aren't up to scratch (good, you can "learn" by your mistakes together and your child can try to "out-think" you when you both hit the same problem), you can get X10/DMX-style equipment that makes it a cinch. But there's nothing like a bug that'll scare the crap out of you when the alarm goes off because you didn't cater for a niche-case (opening the back-door while the power was out etc.). It only needs an ancient "sacrifical" computer that doesn't matter if you blow its parallel port, and it introduces every single reason behind having computers - automate tasks that a human could do using simple, cheap components.
You can learn programming, you can learn embedded programming, you learn about the importance of bug-checking and clean code, you learn about interfacing, buses, serial/parallel data transfer, physical and real-world effects and how to counter them in software (e.g. switch debouncing). You even get to learn how the damn computer does its job so that it's no longer a magic box that does stuff. You get to interface with all types of cool gear. You get to bring practical, real-life skills into the learning environment which can help immensely if your child learns better that way. (And I don't count "how to write a letter in Office", I mean REAL life skills, like practical problems, electricity and electronics, wiring, why the bloody ladder won't stay still and why Daddy put his foot through the roof).
The rewards are instant, visible, practical, extendible and "show-off-able". The "reward" of having the whole family laugh at a a doorbell that plays a WAV when someone presses it is very rewarding especially when "it was all my son's work". My particular favourite is a doorbell that goes "knock knock" when you ring it. I also bought an old-fashioned door knocker which has an integrated switch in it and want it to set off a "ding-dong" sound, just to see the postman's face. I'm doing it with simple electronics and one of those recorable greetings-card chips but you can do it with a PC easily. Ten minutes of very basic wiring to an old-fashioned joystick port (ancient laptops are great for this sort of thing), a WAV file off a free website and a twenty line program. You can see exactly where his skills lie. Is he a better programmer? Is he a better thinker? Is he better at practicalities? But no matter what he is, it's so simple to do that you can have great fun wiring it up (probably with Mum in the background tapping her feet because she's getting sick of "Yankee Doodle" every time the neighbour's call).
Then you need to get to the point, as quickly as possible, where he can *think* of new stuff to do himself. You started with a doorbell
Video games are fun, and making your own video games is fun too.
Start by making him learn text game programming, like the price is right. That's both on the very basic level of programming, and a quickly gratifying game to learn.
Then, maybe I suggest low level game program. And by low level I mean no SDL (well, maybe a wrapper), but writing your own pixels to a frame buffer is more gratifying. As in, teach him how to make a function that write a rectangle on a frame buffer depending on the rectangle's size and the coordinates of its center, then make him move the rectangle around by pressing keys.
Build on top of that by making he do a very basic game like pong. My first graphical video game was a pong and I coded it in two days, that's how easy it is.
From that point on, he will probably start to get ambitions. As in, he'll want to draw lines, load sprites, rotate them, use physics, learn about tcp/ip network, signal processing theory and techniques, etc, to achieve a precise purpose. All of these things will fuel his interest towards mathematics and physics, and give him a good reason to learn about and understand these things.
Finally, introduce him to more "real world" type of programming, by giving him some of the stuff you have to do at work, for uhh.. the sake of his education!
You just got troll'd!
I started programming when I was about 12, and I am completely self taught. My parents knew nothing about computers, and still know nothing now despite my efforts. Anyway, i started with javascript, html, and php. (This was around 6 years ago). I think it was much easier to start learning the basics of this kinda stuff when you don't have to deal with all the boring (to a 12yo) details of memory management, libraries, and compilers etc. Web programming is something were you can get the instant results and action, you can just keep tweaking the source file and hitting F5 until you get something that works and looks vaguely like what you're after; this is especially useful when you don't know what you're doing. :)
I had a few books which taught me the basics, a javascript book and a html book. They only covered simple things, (I think the js book was a For Dummies..., actually), but it was enough to get me started. After that I found the php.net docs and a friend showed me loads of his php code and i picked that up fairly quickly.
Being a website, it's something easy to show off too, it was kinda cool to be like "dude, the whole world can see my webpage!". Following that theme, i got started on irc bots, eggdrops are written in C, and you can script em with tcl. Be careful tho, tcl is kinda quirky and weird (at least, that's how i remember it). But it's great for simple stuff, get the bot to parse some text and reply etc. This might also be a good time to learn some networking stuff. Also since eggdrops can also have C modules written, this is a possible path into C, although I didn't go that way so I don't know how good it is.
I eventually learned C(++) from some online tutorial, http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/ I think. And I wrote a load of code for manipulating some large binary files (game resource files, from Halo). I certainly don't recommend letting anyone learn C solely from some tutorial, since I had rather large gaps in my knowledge at this point (that code i wrote is terrible), but it was some great experience anyway. I played around with some .NET (ugh!) gui stuff, because I didn't know how else to make a gui program at the time (seriously, I don't know how I was meant to know about qt, gtk, or win32 etc at this point) and a program that just prints text on the command line got boring real fast.
Hacking at computer games was what really drove my interest in C at that time. Reverse engineering of the file formats was fun! Even if I did kinda suck at it and just found most of the info on the web.
Looking back, I'm thinking I probably would have liked someone to show me python (and maybe perl) much earlier than when i eventually discovered them. php sucks as a general purpose scripting language and C gets tedious for those little tasks.
Sorry that was all probably a little incoherent, I spent the time I was meant to be doing english homework programming ;)
I know you're lying : you actually enjoy telling him.
(\__/) This is Lapinator
(='.'=) copy it in your sig
(")_(") so it can take over the world
Don't try your to encourage your child to do anything for which they don't have a natural inclination, they will end up hating anything you try to push them towards to forcefully. Give them a well rounded education and make programming one of many things you expose them to, this was what my parents did and I am thankful for it. I lost count of how many people I met in college whose parents had enthusiastically encouraged them to learn one topic or another, especially the children of professors. Some people took off with whatever topic their parents introduced to them but most of them ended up switching majors 4 or 5 times and spending years and many dollars on undergraduate education. Demand excellence in whatever your child has interest in, with the caveat that as they get closer to 18 they have a plan on how they will feed themselves (so you want to be an actor Johnny? Great, better double major in something practical otherwise you'll be waiting tables cause I won't be paying your bills).
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
Draw upon the extensive knowledge of the GNU/Linux community, for example:
If he actually does find a bug, here are some of the basics you should tell him about bug reporting:
Now this post may seem like a troll, but if you do exactly the opposite of what I advise, he should do well.
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
Whether you teach him programming or someone else does, the most important thing you can do for him is to show your enthusiasm for programming and demonstrate why you love it. Those kinds of things are infectious. If he catches the bug then he'll learn it, one way or another.
-deane
Not NetHack! It was written by the evil Wizard of Yendor with help from his idiot minion Eric S. Raymond; consequently, the source is a horrifying abomination worthy only of the renegade god Moloch. It is not a good learning example. You should be at least a level 20 Kernel Hacker to venture inside.
Can I suggest instead that you look for a simple game written in Python or Ruby. They are likely to have source that is possible for level 1 Noobies to understand.
10 print "No Freaking Way"
20 print "Who starts on C?"
30 print "Seriously!"
40 goto 10
Geeks clone themselves, it provides the same benefits without all the hassle with women.
It seems you made a mistake in your post, I've gone ahead and fixed it though.
I've seen a few other people mention story writing, and I'd second that whole-heartedly. My friend and I first got hooked on programming when we started writing simple 'Choose-Your-Own-Adventure' style branching games in Q-Basic (complete with sqealing PC speaker musical soundtracks).
My friend even got more sophisticated and started creating simple RPGs - random number generators with modifiers for the attacks, variables for vital character stats, etc. They were alwasy *very* simple, but we had a great time, and learned a lot as a result of it.
There are so many reasons not to start with PHP, that I'm not even going to start listing them here. PHP is a HORRIBLE first language, and a horrible second, third or forth language. It corrupts minds, and makes it harder to learn other languages. It's a lot worse than corrupting someone by teaching BASIC as a first language.
You should be ashamed of yourself for suggesting teaching PHP to a kid.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Provide him with a computer. Provide him with help when he asks (or not, figuring things out yourself is best).
Show him how useful it can be to write programs to make the computer do whatever you want.
If he wants to learn, he will. If not, bad luck.
Teach him JavaScript.
Set up Firefox and Firebug, and you have a wonderful console for programming right from the browser. You can do fun animations, effects, and various cool things.
And showing it to friends is as easy as uploading to a host...
3 months? I lose interest after just a couple of sec
When all else fails, try.
When I was 15, I had never seen a computer, but I knew that I wanted to work with them. The _idea_ of computing, of writing instructions to make the computer do what I wanted, of playing with something that exhibited some of the powers of human mind, was terribly interesting to me. Getting my hands on my first PC, a thing with a BASIC interpreter and graphics! display in a TV monitor, was an intense experience, even if I cannot say why, what clicked inside me. The making of my very first BASIC program, unaided, reading a manual in a foreign almost-unknown language (English) was a triumph. The making of a program that draw a circle on the screen by calculating the distance to the center, was making mathematics come alive for me for the first time.
What I mean is that, in my case, no stimulation was needed, and probably difficulties just added emotion. The interest and emotional attachment to the computing world was immediate and intense. I don't know if I'm a typical case, but my anecdotal evidence is yours for what's worth.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Javascript was my first programming language. It's something everyone's got simple access to, it's very forgiving (though it does set you up for some bad habits), and it's very simple to make GUIs and interact with the user.
Once he has a solid knowledge of basic programming and if he's still interested in learning more of the basics of how computers work and if you are willing to dedicate quite a lot of time and effort to destroying the social life of your kid once and for all and turning him into a full blown geek I'd recommend that you take a look at a course that has been called "From NAND to Tetris" in which students are given a NAND logic gate and must construct their own (simulated) computer out of that by gradually building on top of that NAND gate. Eventually they end up implementing a simple game, such as tetris or snake in a computer that they build from the ground up.
Here are some links for this material:
A short introduction to the course: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtXvUoPx4Qs
A long introduction to the course (Google Tech Talk) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7654043762021156507
The course material itself: http://www.cs.rpi.edu/news/colloquia/December8_2005.html
Above all else I think you need to be sensitive to your kids needs and longings. Who knows, maybe he will not be interested in all about learning the internals of computers but more interested in the usability and design of interfaces (I know, your worst nightmare I'm sure). My point is, don't push him into a direction that isn't to his liking.
You don't think enough... therefore you better not be!
More than half of the a woman's body is water. So without loss of generality, he could just have written "without all the hassle with opinionated bodily fluids".
Ezekiel 23:20
IMHO, if he has already started teaching C, then that is what he should use. Not because C is superior language, but because teaching multiple languages will certainly confuse the student.
I think that C might actually be pretty good language to start with. You have to do a little more work to write something you might be able to write less lines in e.g. Java, but then again it is pretty logical how things work. E.g. first you initialize SDL, then you get the surface where to draw. Then you draw into it, then you display it.
In Java, you initialize by creating certain classes inherited from certain classes, get the drawing surface as a method parameter for a method, which name must be something special then you draw to it and then it is automatically displayed. Then you have to study API to find out how is it updated.
I'm not saying that Java is hard to use for experienced programmer, I think it is very easy. A lot easier than C. But IMHO it is harder to understand for someone new to programming. Or even someone new to Java programming.
I've often found that by far the best way of teaching him to do this kind of thing relies on finding something he wants his computer to do for him.
:) )
This could be just about anything - if he likes sports, it could be a sports results and stats database, if he likes RC modeling it could be an interactive application for setups for his radiocontrolled cars. Your only real role here is to ensure he chooses something feasible in a reasonable timeframe (don't suggest writing Quake5
The thing I like about this approach, is that it will teach him far more than just "how to do it" - you can start it with a discussion about how he wants to go about it, to start with which language (pros and cons, quick GUI development vs. old school stuff - basically just see what ticks his boxes) and it'll then take you through the basics of data models, and the fact it'll be useful will keep him motivated. Help him break the task up into little bits, and use the first few to teach him the ropes, and then let him try some on his own.
Make it clear it's his project, that you're there to help whenever and wherever you can - but don't judge. If he wants to start with an Access DB - by all means point out the pros and cons, but it's his toy - let him do it, he should be old enough now to see for himself whether it's "right" or "wrong".
Try NetBSD... safe,straightforward,useful.
...the hassle with women.
It seems you made a mistake in your post, I've gone ahead and fixed it though.
Why don't you two just stop complaining and fix the problem once and for all by writing a proper manpage on women?
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
While I'll aggree that kernel hacking won't get anyone interested in programming, I think programming web sites is somewhat lacking in motivation. As you were saying, you want it to provide some serious bragging rights.
Whatever you want to do on the web at teen level, has been done before and better. Publishing photos? There are a ton of providers which achieve the same thing. Forums? Ditto. All you need for a good guild web site are webmaster skills or maybe graphics design, _not_ programming. Approaching it from the programming side is the way to get the least bragging rights, with the most effort. Everyone won't go "woot, what an original forum you programmed!", but the more discouraging, "geesh, why don't you use PhpBB like everyone else?"
Personally, looking back at what motivated _me_ back then, I'd say start with games. That was my motivation. I could throw together a game as good as Psion and the gang made for the ZX 81 and later ZX Spectrum, and show it to my classmates and get some serious appreciation. The first game I wrote, when I invited a couple of classmates to see it, they ended up playing it all afternoon. Mind you, it was uber-simplistic by today's standards, but it was as good as anyone could possibly do on a 1K ZX-81.
It was motivating enough to get me started on assembly and converting it by hand to hex.
Nowadays I wouldn't advise anyone to write a game from scratch at home, but there's a _lot_ you can achieve as a mod. And mod-friendly games are getting rather common these days. I can think of a few where most of the game logic (i.e., minus the graphics and such) was Python, one even TCL, and one was scripted in Java.
So basically I'd say, show the guy how to make his own mods. Even if it's just for cheating it's a start.
And the distant carrot of making it big and famous is there too. Both Counter-Strike and Team Fortress started as mods, and ended up major successes.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Sorry for the polemic, but believe me, your son will stretch himself to understand you far more than he will even for the most gifted teacher. What I owe to my parents can never be repaid, and there isn't a day goes by that I don't miss them.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Games are what got me interested in programming. I used to read Creative Computing BASIC games compilations in bed as a youngin'. They had the source code of a game along with a couple of printed-out test runs. I found this an interesting application of programming that spoke to my hobby of video games.
Why don't you write a game with your son? A text adventure a la Infocom, or a slot machine or dice rolling board game?
Just show your son these comments. It'll convince him to learn to play the violin or become a social worker instead.
Can he sing? Tell him to get three of his friends and start a boy band. Then you can retire and hack your kernel in style.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You've hit on something there. I started messing around with computers when I was 12, and got such a kick out of getting them to do the simplest things, like print messages on the screen. And I can't say the thrill of getting one of these dumb lumps of matter to do what I want it to has never really gone away.
I think Python would be an excellent starting point, but the language I would choose for a kid's first taste of programming is javascript. They're already familiar with browsers, and within seconds they can be bossing one around, leveraging all its graphical power.
There are girl geeks... Few, but some... So you can't assume your % of woman / water, it could have been % of male / water, etc..
Off topic, but...
One GG that I know, and is rather pleasant to view, decided the biological ticking was too loud. Having not found a suitable male after being hurt/rejected a few times, she decided to completely forgo the male part of the equation. A few Dr. visits, lots of $$ for fertility drugs, and some frozen sperm = twin babies on the way, no father needed.
Now, in reality, a male was the initial donor of the frozen sperm, and I told her that she could of saved a lot of money by just going to a bar and drinking a lot of vodka, but she went on spouting about genetic core, family traits, selectability, et al...
I almost wanted to point out the story of Dr. Jacobs who was convicted of fathering children with his own sperm instead of the donor sperm that was selected, but figured that would only cause too much angst.
BTW, I guess this is becoming a trend among some women today, so the available men better figure things out soon, or the next generation will all be wearing "popsicle"(tm) T-shirts... (I'm out of the game, married with 2 kids myself, so don't blame me.)
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
Hey, I learned PHP as a first language you insensiti-Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/a9286564/public_html/x/forum/bb-settings.php:169) in /home/a9286564/public_html/x/forum/bb-admin/install.php on line 10
If you're a PHP programmer, you're irresponsible if you're not already aware of its flaws, because you have not educated yourself by reading any of the following well publicized articles. Once you understand the flaws of PHP, you can't honestly make the statement that it's a well designed language suitable for teaching programming to kids.
First there is this classic article, Edwin Martin's "What I don't Like about PHP", which goes into detail about the following fundamental flaws:
Then there is the mind-set of the PHP language designers and community, which is deeply flawed. Ian Bicking's "PHP Ghetto" article sums up the problem with PHP's design and community pretty well:
Jonathan Ellis' "Why PHP sucks" article makes a lot of good points and links to many other sites with more information to back up the claim that PHP sucks.
He perfectly summarizes the yapping of the PHP apologists when he says: Basically these all boil down to, "I don't have enough experience to recognize PHP's flaws because I haven't used anything better."
He summarizes:
There is also a lot of great stuff about why PHP is so bad on http://www.ranting-wolf.info/category/technology/programming/php/ including a concise description of why the "Smarty" templating system is such a horribly ill conceive and terribly implemented idea.
And if you're still not convinced the design of PHP is deeply flawed, because language design is HARD and should only be attempted on purpose by experienced people, here's what the Father of PHP Rasmus Lerdorf himself said in an ITConversations interview, quoted in "Why PHP sucks, Part III":
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
I can't comment to a teenager, but I've been having success getting my 7 year old daughter interested in programming with Scratch. She's been using it to make movies and games. The thing that really captured her attention was that she could publish her work through Scratch and get positive feedback from the community on the Scratch website. The idea of building a fan base really appeals to her. I've also told her that if she develops the skills, when she's ready for her first job, we will give her part time work instead of her having to get a job in some fast food joint or convenience store, and that seems to have made an impression on her.
Seems to me the best thing you can do to get your teenager involved in *nix programming is to get them involved in an online community that will give them some positive feedback and the possibility of celebrity, then show them some of the success stories out there that started in just that way. And, of course, let them know you're genuinely proud of them when they create something.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Moffett's Ghost
Hey it worked on me when I was a kid!
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
If you're going to pursue this dream for your son, I suggest the "stage mother" approach. Force him to program, drag him to computer conventions and force him to take computer classes, and when he starts to cry tell him you're going to put his dog to sleep if he doesn't perform. It may sound harsh, but if you're ever going to exploit and live vicariously through your kid. It's the time-tested way.
Granted, to date, it's mostly been used for singers and actors. But there is no reason it couldn't work for other professions as well. Just be careful to dodge the whiskey bottles when he gets older.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If this thread can even touch on how to encourage a young teen to do anything, I'll be impressed and grateful. My current strategy is to let mine be and hope that when he screws up he doesn't die. If he can make it to the end of the adolescent years, with all limbs and senses, then he may be able to achieve something.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
Get Lego Mindstorms and download Java for it, called leJos. That way his programs can start simple and still get real feedback.
Along those lines I would point out that Smalltalk was designed to be easy for children as well, so you might want to take a look at http://www.squeak.org/ It's never too early to pick up good programming habits.
I fail to see how procreation without mean will make bugs squish themselves.
is perfect - immediate gratification as well as using APIs.
I have kids around the same age, and got them into the Alice environment for a while. It fell out of favor after a bit, but some of the concepts seemed to help later on when my son got a Lego Mindstorm set. My son is currently digging showing off pics of his lego creations on the lego community kids portal. He keeps bugging me for a "real" digital camera, as he has one of those cheap $15 deals from Wal Mart. I've been toying with getting him a better camera, registering a domain name for him, then teach him the basics of HTML and see what he does with it.
Method of processing duck feet
I started programming in BASIC when I was after my dad taught me
1 CLS
10 PRINT "My brother smells",
20 GOTO 10
I later improved after getting AOL in elementary school and picking apart Pong Kombat, a Pong-Mortal Kombat hybrid. I learned the fatalities by reading the source.
My dad always told me, "Women are like martinis for lunch. One is never enough, but two is just too goddamned many."
Try teaching something that will instantly set off the endorphin rewards. You certainly know a whole lot more about what makes him tick than anyone on Slashdot, but most teenagers, myself included (though I'm 20 now...) play games. Get him started on Python and PyOpenGL, that way he can easily get some 3D graphics on screen.
For some reading on education in general, in case you're curious, Dimensions of Learning is a good place to start. It's a relatively current teaching model. I have the textbook on it, but you can find general outlines of it everywhere; though, curiously, it doesn't have it's own Wikipedia page. I might need to do something about that, unless it's in another article.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll