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Best Introduction To Programming For Bright 11-14-Year-Olds?
firthisaword writes "I will be teaching an enrichment programming course to 11-14 year old gifted children in the Spring. It is meant as an introduction to very basic programming paradigms (conditions, variables, loops, etc.), but the kids will invariably have a mix of experience in dealing with computers and programming. The question: Which programming language would be best for starting these kids off on? I am tempted by QBasic which I remember from my early days — it is straightforward and fast, if antiquated and barely supported under XP. Others have suggested Pascal which was conceived as an instructional pseudocode language. Does anyone have experience in that age range? Anything you would recommend? And as a P.S: Out of the innumerable little puzzles/programs/tasks that novice programmers get introduced to such as Fibonacci numbers, primes or binary calculators, which was the most fun and which one taught you the most?" A few years ago, a reader asked a similar but more general question, and several questions have focused on how to introduce kids to programming. Would you do anything different in teaching kids identified as academically advanced?
We'll see how bright they are then...
I learned Lua when I was 14, with no previous programming experience. It's a pretty simple scripting language, and it can be really fun when you make addon scripts for games you play (quite a few games use Lua these days) and see them come to life. :)
Functional programming is making a comeback- it's going to be to the 2010s what OOPs was to the 1990s. I'd suggest these, and make recursive loops a major sticking point. Dr Dobbs has a nice article on why these functional languages make excellent methods for taking advantage of multi-core processors.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It is partially in jest, but LOGO was created to teach kids how to program. Real world wise, though, I would say C or PHP. They are both currently used, relatively easy to learn and require no cost to get started.
See subject.
I started with QBASIC, and I would rather recommend against that. Things like real functions (as opposed to GOSUB) and such, even though you can do them in QBASIC, I didn't see for years.
DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT do what many comp sci departments and high schools do, and that is "begin with Visual Basic".
NO! NO NO NO NO NO! Okay, so they learn about variables and shit, but, just, NO. Terrible programming practices and weird little things where commenting is done with apostrophes and other typical retarded shit is what you'll end up teaching them.
Visual Basic is OK for a quick and dirty Windows program. But if you want to teach the basics of what "real" programming is, I wouldn't recommend VB.
Consider something like POV-Ray, since it's a programming environment with a visual payoff.
Show someone a simple program that generates 10 randomly positioned mirrored sphere over a checkered landscape then encourage them to play with the number of sphere, assign colors to them, etc.
Much more interesting to be able to *see* the output of your program than just reading "Hello World!".
G.
11-14 years old = NO CASH.
Nobody has more free resources available to the budding programmer than Microsoft; like it or not.
Anyone can download FREE IDEs, free Source code, videos, documentation up the wazoo.
Also, C# is almost syntactically identical to Java, and it is a good language for the beginner to discover whether or not they have a REAL interest and a knack for coding.
If I were 14 again, wanting to learn how to code, Microsoft would be nirvana with all the free available stuff out there. There really is no contest.
As always, I got karma to burn, so take your best shot....
If you want to use C# because it's similar to Java and is freely available, why not use Java? It has awesome tools available and is just as (moreso?) free as C#. Since we're talking about free, what decent programming language exists that is not free nowadays or does not have loads of free support material available?
If you're trying to introduce the concepts of looping, iterations, etc and don't want to get hung up on the details of the language, I highly recommend the Lego Mindstorm kits. They have a flow-chart programming interface that I had great success introducing programming to my 11-13 year old cousins, and if I remember correctly, they also have a lower level interface to let you start writing your own functions.
For kids this age, nothing is better/cooler at showing them the basics of programming than something that gives a physical response. Loops, conditions, make so much more sense when trying to figure out how to keep your robot from running off the edge of the table.
Tangible real-world feedback, and a sense of real accomplishment. If you just give them abstract languagues for the sake of language, they get disappointed they can't just whip up the next Madden game. Besides, they probably all already have Legos at home, and a Mindstorm kit is something they can easily get at home, which probably won't happen with Pascal compilers or Basic editors.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
I know several young people who've got hooked on programming because of this free book: http://www.briggs.net.nz/log/writing/snake-wrangling-for-kids/
There are versions of the book for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Although the book targets kids as young as 8, it would still be able to speak to an 11 or 12 year old I think.
Objective C gives them the ability to build applications quickly and easily using GnuStep or Xcode. If they have iPods, this also gives the them ability to develop apps for them as well. The intrigue and excitement in their ability to do that often will get them excited in developing in other languages.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Instead of teaching them how to write a dummy program in a particular language, it is by far better idea to lay the foundation work by teaching them how to design and formulate a solution to a particular problem in a logical, concise, and efficient practice. Being able to diagram out an idea, condense it into a formula, and then simplify will be much more useful than knowing how to write hello world in one particular language. In a sense, you would do them the favor of prepping their minds to be able to handle any language their future employer will throw at them.
Where is the "Ignorant" mod tag?
It wouldn't start with any specific languages, but using Alice and its younger cousin Storytelling Alice might provide a good intro to concepts.
I would judge how quickly those concepts are being integrated and then move on to an easy-ish language like BASIC.
Take a look at this: http://www.swaroopch.com/notes/Python
http://pinopsida.com
http://scratch.mit.edu/ Scratch is very cool, comes with an educational program for kids. It's an mit/ucla project
I'd think the only reasonable languages to start programming should be PL/1 or COBOL. Whitespace or Brainfuck could be suitable alternatives.
PHP or C are ideal for a number of reasons. Enforcing OO from the outset is a terrible way to teach programming, so java should be right out. Functional languages are fun and interesting, but unless a major paradigm shift happens in the next decade, it's not going to be as useful.
With a procedural language, you get the benefit of showing them with just a few lines of code what you can do. The basics of programming can all be taught from the outset including arrays, loops, conditionals, functions w/default parameters, etc.
As they learn more, they'll have a natural step up to OO with C++ or php's built in OO. With C, they get the benefit of compiling code and having an avenue for more sophisticated programs, graphics libraries, etc. With PHP, they'll be able to set up web servers and use that as a stepping stone to html, servers, and javascript.
Neither language needs a large investment to start programming with in terms of money or teaching, both languages are widely used, and both languages give them a clear avenue to more advanced topics.
Lisp.
I recommend PostScript.
For kids, PostScript has the advantage of nearly instant gratification, because it allows them to draw graphics quickly. It has loops and conditionals. It uses stacks and variables and functions.
All you need to get going in PostScript is a text editor and a PostScript to PDF converter. On a Mac, it's built in. On Windows, I use GhostScript in CygWin and run ps2pdf, just like I would on Linux. Alternatively, Acrobat Distiller should do the trick.
If these children really are the gifted ones you say, they'll already have the basic concepts of an editor: create, change, save, so they can start creating programs much sooner.
You also want them to become familiar with the basic syntax od computer languages - most of which are quite similar and look a lot like Perl's syntax.
Perl also gives those who wish, the ability to develop further, after the classes finish.The large amount of freely available documentation and examples on the internet will help then learn from properly written code from other people.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
These are kids of the 21st century. Start with simple web pages in HTML, then add picture loading, tables, etc. If they take to it, then basic javascript. Start by using a text editor then later introduce graphical tools. All free and easy to implement.
I hate to say this since I don't even know the language (heck I'm barely competent with HTML) and came up through GW-BASIC, Turbo Pascal, assembly, FORTRAN, C, Tcl, C++, Perl, and some others I'm sure I'm overlooking, but...
JavaScript
First, it's nominally C-like, so it gives them exposure that will help them with a large variety of other languages (e.g. C, Pascal, C++, Java).
Second, it's available to be used pretty much anywhere the kids have access to a computer. At home. At school. At a friends house where they can show off their newfound coolness. Don't underestimate this, because it's very important that they have access to the necessary programming tools in their idle time at home and elsewhere. It's also important because they don't need to learn how to use a compiler, linker, and all those other tool distractions that will get in the way of understanding programming itself.
Finally, it's useful in a context they likely already somewhat understand -- web pages. Fibonacci sequences and prime number sieves and such are all wonderful, but an environment that allows them to build something a bit more interactive and, lets face it, relevant to their day-to-day life, will inspire some portion of them to continue the pursuit. Granted, I got a lot of personal satisfaction out of writing BASIC programs to print "x" characters in a sine wave scrolling up the screen, but somehow I think the bar has been raised for today's kids' expectations of what a computer can do.
Cyrano de Maniac
I (and others) wrote a good wikipedia page on this topic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_programming_language . I'd look at this list
I personally love and can recommend Alice http://www.alice.org/ and had a great deal of success with my daughter with this.
If only for the graphics control. It lets you draw text anywhere on the screen, and clear it, enabling quite sophisticated graphics and animations. It can also wait for user input and respond, so you can make games with it. Kids love that sort of thing.
Logo has good graphics control but poor input-response, and Python is a much better language than both Logo and QBasic, but since it can't (easily) do graphics, it appears quite boring.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Lojban is a constructed, parsable language that can deliver the same (or greater) information content as natural languages.
For different challenges you could put them to, I would recommend http://projecteuler.net/. There are a huge variety of programming challenges (most involving math concepts) across a huge range of difficulty. They also provide a good introduction to recursion and cost of complexity since the 'most efficient' algorithm is not always obvious.
You could provide prizes for who completed the most problems as well as a prize for being the first to complete a problem. Then when all or most of the class has completed a problem, you can show them an 'efficient' or 'simple' solution depending on which you want to emphasize.
i got a mild introduction to programming from learning LOGO and LOGO for legos (that may be deprecated by now). anyways, the first 'big' project i did was a Mastermind clone. it taught me the basics of looping, random number application, and how to make use of the mouse.
Actually, I started my son off with Visual Basic at age 12. It wasn't very difficult and it may well be better to start them off with event driven programing rather than procedural. Rather than writing the answer on a command text line, put the results in a text box. Push buttons to actually execute code. The kids will really like writing a program that looks more like what they are used to than some antiquated program written for use on DecWriters. My son loved it and now at 24 he is a programming project leader for a software development company.
If your students aren't total noobs, ask them about what languages or web technologies they might have thought about trying out, like, someday.
If they are total noobs, ask them what their favorite sites are. Protip: do not roll your eyes at any point after asking this question.
Either way, it will give them familiar ground to work from, and a little bit of context. myspace may be godawful, but learning from the mistakes of others is second only to learning from your own mistakes.
The future ain't what it used to be.
We'll see how bright they are then...
I know that I am piggybacking but I thought that the educational world had moved on from the terms bright, gifted and related words.
A good read, if nothing else.
More
I always wonder why colleges start out teaching Java first. Procedure based languages are easier. You learn
2 + 2 = 4
before you learn
a^2 + b^2 = c^2.
You can learn the basics in any language. The syntax is all very similar. Lets look at the difference.
in C explain a routine.
int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
return 0;
}
In java explain a class and a routine. Plus the string class is more complicated than a char * and an int.
class javaprog
{
public static void main(String args[])
{
}
}
Always start with the fundamentals.
You should know what pointers are and what memory is before you learn what a class is.
A programmer needs to know why if he allocates 2 million empty string classes why his memory gets chewed up. To a C programmer the answer is obvious.
Fundamentals! Fundamentals! Fundamentals!
COBOL.
http://squeak.org/
It's not just the language, it's the whole dynamic multimedia environment. It's great for adults; it's perfect for young'uns.
I'll get modded to oblivion, but I'm leaving others to answer the question actually asked
/rant
The answer is a sound education from ages 3 to 10, not a good text. There's so much of a push-- personally and in our educational systems, to train ourselves in whatever the hot job is for today rather than securing an education that matures one into the kind of person that can span any discipline with ease.
Looking back to Stroustroup's(sp) article yesterday, the reason there are fewer good programmers is because fewer and fewer are actually -educated- in how to think, much less higher math. If you want to teach your kid(s) useful/fun skills, teach them the liberal arts (in the classical sense); once well understood, picking up a computer language (grammar + math) will be as easy as anything else. I freely grant that a good text will eventually be necessary, but if your child is not chewing your arm off for some kind of resource on their own-- be it chemistry, astronomy, CS, mechanics, or what have you, you've missed something in their earlier education
4x the lines, and the only line that's easily understood on day 1 is the line you'd have in a procedural language.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I wouldn't want to try to teach "programming" to any child who hadn't had Algebra I [and preferably Algebra II].
I suppose that "programming" could serve as an introduction to Algebra I, but my gut tells me that that's the wrong way to go about it.
I don't get endorsing C and telling people to stay away from BASIC when its "about knowing what is going on inside computers". Unstructured, old-school BASIC is, in many ways, a lot closer conceptually to what goes on inside computers than any structured programming language, C certainly included.
The problem with most introductory programming courses is that they drop you in the deep end and expect the student to eventually figure out how to stay alive based on all the tools they start throwing at you. And I'll be honest, I don't have an answer as to what programming language you should use or if it even matters. Let me explain.
I first started learning programming at the age of 14 (first year in high school). So I might have been one of these kids. Prior to that I knew how to write html and make webpages. That part was easy because there is no programming there. But when I got to my introductory programming course taught in C/C++ at the time, I didn't feel equipped as a student to tackle the problems presented. For example one of the tougher problems in the course was printing a diamond (ascii art) of stars based on a given number as input. So if they provided you with an input of 5, that meant at the widest point, the diamond would be 5 consecutive * characters with the previous and next lines being 3 consecutive * characters followed padded by one space on each end, and finally the top and bottom lines having one * with 2 spaces padding the left and right sides. Keep in mind that by this point, as a student, the most I had learned was basic algebra and perhaps a bit of geometry. The real heavy math/science courses were to be taught later in high school involving trigonometry, calculus, and physics.
Continuing on with the story, most students in the introductory programming class failed at this simple task of printing a diamond to the screen. It wasn't because of their lack of knowledge regarding programming, but their lack of knowledge regarding problem solving skills and the application of math. Had the teacher reviewed the problem at hand, by examining the necessary parts (calculations involved) on a black or whiteboard, I think all students could have implemented a solution. But the place where students were struggling was finding A solution. They would start writing 'for' loops knowing that this was a test of how well you understood 'for' loops without having a clue of why they needed the loops or what the loops were going to do.
So if you want your students to succeed, the language of choice will be the least of your problems since you are not bothering to teach high level programming paradigms (OO, functional, logic etc). The bigger problem will be how to teach the students to apply what they already know in a fashion they've never seen.
It uses language as close to natural as I think a programming language can. It also forces proper indentation, which, as we all know, is very important for readability. It's also a scripting language that is very useful in RAD. All in all, it's a very good first language for those that don't want a C, hair pulling out, first experience. It also runs pretty much everywhere. Also, if you want to do graphics and/or games, there's Tkinter, PyOpenGL and PyGame.
Happy Hacking!
It was developed by MIT (http://scratch.mit.edu/) and has some cool stuff to keep their interest.
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
Dr Dobbs Journal suggests that just such a paradigm shift is around the corner, based on OO's inability to handle multi-core processing properly.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
FOR $DIETY sake, don't do it!!! You'll end up surfing Slashdot ALL DAY like the rest of us.
If you're really bright, go into Physics or Chemistry! Better chance at girls than living in your mom's basement for the next 30 years till you're too old to program any longer!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Whatever you do, never ever ever teach someone BASIC. Not QBASIC and not any other flavour. It was my first programming language, too, and it took almost ten years and a study of computer science to finally get all those bad habits you acquire in BASIC out of my system. DO NOT POISON INNOCENTS WITH BASIC.
You can consider Pascal, which after all was designed specifically as a teaching language. There's also Oberon if you want to go more into OO and make sure that the language they learn on will never be used in an actual real-world context. :-)
Java, Mono, C++, etc will probably all be suggested, but I wouldn't consider them suitable for beginners.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I started with line-numbered basic on a TI994A. To this day, I don't think I have ever seen a simpler and more perfect beginner's manual than the one included with that machine. I was programming sprite animation with conditionals and loops within hours of opening the manual. Since the TI994A didn't have a C compiler available, I moved on to the assembler, which it DID have. Never got very good with it but it definitely taught me the low-level nuts & bolts of computing. After an eventual transition to x86 hardware, I learned a little C++ to help me manage my servers but backslid to Perl for day-to-day GUI web stuff.
Considering how much of computing has shifted to the client-server model lately, I don't think starting out with simple html & cgi would be inappropriate. For a 2nd or 3rd project, I highly recommend giving the kids some thumbnail images of fruit and having them build a CGI slot machine. That's how I learned Perl. It's a great base project to build on too, and you can teach them version naming conventions along the way. Once they master the basic mechanism, you can add flat-file I/O to keep track of winnings and results, and then finally convert the whole thing over to a simple MySQL database with the images stored as blobs. (OK, that last bit might be a little over the top for first-week noobs :)
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
I believe the currently accepted term is "stupidity challenged."
I was just looking into this recently for my nephew. Scratch looks really cool. I downloaded it and played for a few minutes and e-mailed my sister to tell her to install it for her kid. She hasn't done it yet, so I don't know if it was as good of an idea as I thought, but it sure looks cool.
It has color coded, drag and drop logic stuff that interlock like a puzzle so that kids can see how it fits together. It takes seconds to get a little animated sprite "walking" and do the fancy, whiz bang, pretty stuff today's kids will be wanting to see right away.
I would suggest Alice http://www.alice.org/. It is a drag and drop interface to a 3D environment. It is FREE and was designed at Carnegie Melon University. I teach high school sciene and have almost zero programming background. I learned the basics in two weeks at a summer workshop at Duke University. The last week of the workshop was a summer camp for middle school aged children. They picked it up easily, enjoyed making worlds, and learned quite a bit about basic programming. Once they learn it, they can easily start exploring languages like Java.
Unfortunately, we are saddled with the term "gifted" thanks to Louis Terman, who both created the Stanford-Binet IQ test and did the first large-scale longitudinal study of intelligence (which is still going on with the few remaining participants in their 80s and 90s). It was in that study that he classified people with an IQ of 140 or higher "gifted," and the terminology stuck. Personally, I can't stand it and try not to use it, in favor of the more straightforward and less loaded "high ability." But it will be a very long time before "gifted" goes anywhere.
BTW, that article is dead wrong with regards to grade-skipping. Over 50 years of research has shown that in most cases students who are skipped a grade have no negative social or emotional outcomes from it, and often it's positive socially. This research is summarized in the report A Nation Deceived.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Exactly. And then, if your child is reasonably bright, they will be asking why the hell you need an object if all you want to do is dump "Hello World" to the screen. OO definitely has its place, but you need to understand why it's useful. For me that came from hacking around in C and finding the need to work with more complicated data structures than you can get with int/char/float/etc. So I played with struct's. When those were worn thin, my dad brought home a couple OO/C++ books and I continued from there.
In my opinion, the best way to teach your kids to program is just to give them a couple decent reference books, a computer with a terminal, and maybe just a basic hello world kind of set up to show them how to compile their code, or work the interpreter they're using. I don't think the particular language you use is a big deal. Maybe one that you know best, so you can help them with their questions more easily. I.e., if you don't know C well, you may not be very useful the first time they encounter buffer overflow. For my case, I'd likely give them a little bit of compiled and little bit of interpreted. Some C/C++ and either Perl or Python. These are ones I'm very comfortable with. They are well supported with extensive libraries, and I already have a ton of reference material on each. They all have their problems, but to some extent part of learning to program is learning how to deal with the idiosyncrasies of the language you're working with. If your language has perfect garbage collection, will you even understand the importance of memory management when you try C for the first time?
You won't be able to force programming down their throats, so if they're naturally interested, they'll be able to take it from there. If they're not, no biggie, you gave them the opportunity.
I know that I am piggybacking but I thought that the educational world had moved on from the terms bright, gifted and related words.
Indeed, the educational world has moved well away from those terms.
The rest of us recognize the realize the reality that some people are in fact academically gifted and prefer to recognize talent instead of trying as hard as possible to homogenize it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Evidently not you. 1 * 3 = 3. 1 * 4 = 4.
The problem you're going to run in to with beginning programmers is that they have to learn the environment as much as the language. I remember back in the day we had to adapt to an assortment of editors and operating systems. To an extent the lack of choices in this arena is going to help you out here. I'm assuming kids these days have some computer experience coming in to your classroom, too. If that's not a safe assumption, you might consider covering how to operate a computer first.
You can go with a compiled language like C or... well C. No java? I've tried to explain classpaths to IT professionals with little success. Maybe it'd be easier to a 14 year old. If you do that, you should probably set up the environment and gloss over stuff like building a makefile. It was not uncommon for our professors to hand us a cheat sheet describing how to build and run the code along with the vi cheat sheet. Those languages will be visually more boring than the ones with immediate visual feedback, but they might make it easier to explain what's going on inside the computer.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Hackety Hack is designed just for this purpose.
I recommend Computer Science Logo Style by Brian Harvey, one of the best CS instructors at UC Berkeley. You can get the books for free here (scroll down a bit).
OO need not even be used in python. You can do straight procedural programming in it. The loop constructs are also richer (maybe more intuitive) than what you would get in C.
JavaScript will give young programmers the immediate feedback that I think many of us found so addictive back in the early days. Lots of comments here talk about "kids these days"; about how they're somehow dumber than us for not jumping into C right away.
But I think we forget: modern computers are extremely complicated. There wasn't much that could go wrong on my old TI (OK, there wasn't much to go right, either, but I digress). How many of you out there have really written something in C? I don't mean something academic, like some command-line thing that sorts randomly-generated numbers into a tree. I mean a program that actually _does_ something. I have, and it's a bitch, let alone getting it to run on both, say, Linux and BSD, which are both, in theory, POSIX.
Kids need feedback. HTML + Javascript gives them that, right away. They can run it anywhere they get a web browser. They don't need a development environment. They don't even need a server! Or makefiles! Or autoconf! And it's fun.
Another language, which is really underappreciated in my mind, is AutoIt! Yeah, it's hodgepodge, and doesn't conform to your paradigm-du-jour, but it will give young programmers some idea of how you put together a GUI app. And heck, it's useful! We use it for all kinds of automation of stupid Windows apps where I work, and it's so damn addictive to play with it makes me forget how much I loathe my Windows machine...
Alice and StoryTelling Alice
"Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience."
Thank you Randy Pauch. We miss you.
Or try
Myro using Microsoft Robotics Studio
or Pyro which was the non-MS precursor to Myro... program bots in Python with either real bots or simulation.
Either way, the graphical environments and real bots give kids a great way to SEE and TOUCH their results, which is more how they learn. You can cover all the important software constructs (variables, loops, events, data structs, etc) and avoid some of the abstract conceptualization required in more conventional languages/applications. They will learn the concepts through doing & using them. Then once they are hooked, they can dig into other languages.
Works great for middle school & college kids.... Pyro's got years of track record teaching intro to AI - to liberal arts majors!
PHP and C are an awful lot alike, minus the notion of strict data types and the clumsy string handling. PHP is pretty darn close to C with dollar signs if you just start the file with <?php and end it with ?> and don't mix it with HTML.... So I would agree that either would be acceptable.
The way I started learning C was to start with a large code base and tweak it. I studied a piece of code, figured out how it worked, and then started making changes. I started with NUTS 2.3.0, an Internet talker, and used it for chatting with friends while I hacked on the code. By the time college was over, I had reverse-engineered the NUTS 3 NetLink protocol and expanded it, added email capabilities, added games, etc. It was a fun little project, and I'd definitely recommend doing something like that as a way to get young people interested in coding. The best thing about the NUTS 2.3.0 code base is that it is straight C---no OO to make things complicated. By the time you have worked with it for a while, though, you start to see places where data structures are essentially only used with certain functions and vice-versa. Once you reach that point in your understanding, the concept of OO basically sells itself fairly readily. :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Someone in another thread noted that kids who haven't yet had Algebra may not be ready for complex programming. I agree. If you're not actually planning to prepare these kids for life as code monkeys, and you're just trying to introduce them to procedural thinking, I'd suggest MIT's Scratch.
http://scratch.mit.edu/
It's sort of like Flash for kids, with a modular interface so that kids never see an error message. If you try to put a number in a slot where the syntax demands an operator, the number will just bounce out of the line -- it won't fit. All the elements have shapes that plug in only a certain way. The Scratch website has screencast tutorials (with cute kids narrating them) and a community for sharing creations.
Unlike Mindstorms, Scratch is free.
I've taught my own son when he was 9 and 10, using Just BASIC (we created a simple Choose Your Own Adventure story) and Scratch (he created a catch-and-avoid game).
I have also taught college English majors the fundamentals of computer programming, using Inform 7 (a relatively new developing environment for creating classic text-adventure games).
I should think that most kids in your target age group would get very excited by making their own mods, which could be a gateway into teaching them actual coding.
Literacy Weblog http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog
I've been following along this semester's CS61A Lectures by Dr. Brian Harvey out of UC Berkeley (audio and video podcast). He devotes two lectures to a 20 some year old videotape of Alan Kay talking about the coalescing of OOP principals in SmallTalk. Kay makes an important point: at different ages we learn differently. He also shows kids doing clever things with drawing and computer animation and they do it by writing programs. Look for Sept. 12 and 15.
I also found a book from Apress "Squeak, Learn Programming With Robots" which I think is very good, once one gets over the disappointment that the robots are graphics producers and not metal crushing monsters or lovable rogues, a la Bender Bender Rodriguez. Author: Stephane Ducasse. ISBN 1-59059-491-6
RAPTOR Flowchart Interpreter
Web Site: http://www.usafa.af.mil/df/dfcs/bios/mcc_html/raptor.cfm
Web Site: http://raptor.martincarlisle.com/
Screenshot: http://www.usafa.af.mil/df/dfcs/bios/mcc_html/raptor_picture.cfm
RAPTOR is a flowchart-based programming environment, designed specifically to help students visualize their algorithms and avoid syntactic baggage. RAPTOR programs are created visually and executed visually by tracing the execution through the flowchart. Required syntax is kept to a minimum. Students prefer using flowcharts to express their algorithms, and are more successful creating algorithms using RAPTOR than using a traditional language or writing flowcharts without RAPTOR.
I have found Alice (www.alice.org) to be a great introductory language for this age group. Depending on how quickly them come up on it, Ruby would be a great follow-on (assuming they have some experience with HTML, so they can use it with web apps).
Jordan
Python is by far the best. I learned it myself at about the age of 14 (16 now). It is very simple. Easy syntax and just makes common sense. And although it is dynamically typed, it is strongly typed so it forces kids to learn types. Also python forces good coding standards by requiring indents.
Also projecteuler.net is good for kids to develop problem solving skills. Alot may be a bit over their heads, but the first few are doable without being too easy.
Please do not teach VB or QB. My school does this and it hurts more than it helps. Teaching a friend any other language with a background in these is just annoying. It it not a wise idea. Whatever language you pick make sure it is strongly typed and is based in C rather than basic. This helps learn other languages much more.
+1 for Parent. I just finished teaching a semester course in Alice. For their group project, my class made a tank game where you drive your tank around on a map and try to kill the enemy tank. The enemy tank (for time's sake) was run on a series of waypoints, but it detected when you were in range and fired in the appropriate direction. Alice is VERY VERY easy to pick up for non-programmers, and it gets them used to concepts in a pretty friendly way. Plus the 3d graphics gives it a bit more appeal than a console-driven application can. The language is a bit clunky, but rumor has it they're releasing a new version. Bonus: Open-source software!
Windows isn't the answer... it's the question. NO is the answer!
Like anyone on Slashdot is going to take advice from someone who calls PHP a "pathetic insult to programming", then holds on VB.net as a paragon of virtue?
Learn about Photography Basics.
Revolution would be ideal for the following reasons:
1. You can download a 30-day demo for Mac, Windows and various flavours of *nix.
2. It supports the basic programming concepts you mentioned without being overly burdened by misplaced semi-colons, strongly typed data, or really.hard.to.read.crappy.dot.syntax
3. It has a GUI with drag-and-drop GUI interface elements that appear platform-native on the platform on which it is being used (and later deployed -- it's truly write once, run anywhere).
4. It uses a scripting language that is like Hypertalk on steroids and thus leverages the students' naturally occurring understanding of natural English language constructs (e.g., "put 3 into myVariable" etc.).
Because it's graphical, because you can test without compiling, because you can start something out in class on, say, a Windows or *nix box, then take your project home and continue working on it on, say, a Mac, and then back again, because it leverages natural language, it really is an ideal introductory programming environment.
Give it a try!
I agree with C. I self-taught myself enough to get by from working on modifying a MUD around age 12, though I'd done some QBasic several years before that even (very simple stuff, but what would you expect from a third grader?). I also got into some HTML around the same age, and as that's now my primary source of income it was probably a pretty good choice. Given how much stuff is shifting to web-based apps as compared to their former desktop equivalents (SaaS in particular), it would probably be a very practical choice.
As others have mentioned, it's also very easy to get into PHP once you know a bit of C. Not so much on the newer OO stuff (in my experience, it seemed pointless until I actually had a need for it, at which point it became the most awesome thing ever), but enough to make some dynamic pages at least. And god knows how many PHP-based odd jobs are out there.
I don't see what being gifted has to due with anything. Programming isn't hard to learn unless you have no interest in learning it - but that's true of a ton of stuff. Or maybe I was gifted but just never got the label. Whatever.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
I am 12 years old and now program Java and C++, but when I started I programmed FreeBasic (basically QBASIC.) It was nice and easy and FreeBasic has many advanced features as well so you can learn at any level. But 1 thing - don't teach SUBs - teach functions. Believe me, it's really hard to move from SUBs. Isaac Waller http://www.isaacwaller.com/
Talent doesn't disappear due to a bad system, though it certainly may be wasted in such an environment. Either you're able to pick up on new concepts and ideas easily or you're not. And if you are able (as the best and brightest tend to be), you'll pick it up somewhere. With the entire knowledge of the human race seconds away, having teachers cram facts down your throat isn't the way that the gifted will be getting ahead. If they don't understand something, they'll look for the answer, and learn along the way.
It's much more a matter of motivation than one of the learning environment.
(having said that, I'll definitely agree with anyone claiming that our educational system is in desperate need of an overhaul)
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
May I suggest Think Python, which originated as a book written for middle schoolers.
Originally it was called How to Think Like A Computer Scientist: Learning in Python, written by one high school teacher for Java, and translated to Python by another teacher. A collaborative project resulted in the present volume, which is being published in hard copy by Cambridge University Press, but the linked page has a free downloadable PDF.
Written for kids and partly by kids, I think this volume might fit the bill. It's also free, just like Python itself.
Did I mention the book is free? Free?!
Mindstorms is far from being a dead end toy and is used in many university programs too.
Robotics is an excellent way to learn about programming. You see real stuff happen, not just pixels on screens. You see the algorithm actually working. A bug is impressive ... crashing debricking robots make you really think. My kids (and I) have two Lego NXT sets and one RCX set. We build our own sensors too.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
When my "computer savvy but not programming" youngest was about that age he called me into his room with "Dad, do you know anything about a program called python? Look what I can do with it!" - and he showed me several small things he'd been able to create after reading the online tutorials. He found python intuitive, fun and useful - and that's what a first programming language should be all about.
"Straddling the sword of technology..."
Python makes sense to a degree, but its trademark The Whitespace Thing might prove especially frustrating, as adolescents tend to pay little attention to subtlety, so I could imagine the somewhat-subtlety of indentation could be problematic. Maybe I'm wrong; this is untested.
In general, I like the idea of using a clean, interpreted language like python. If a compiled language is used, the interface used should make that automatic. Still, playing with an interactive session might be invaluable.
I guess that doesn't really conclude anything.
To be honest, it's the algorithms and paradigms that are the most important thing to teach. The language is merely the tool. I would recommend some form of procedural BASIC (eg. QBasic, GWBasic) since the syntax is very clear and concise. No fancy braces or semicolons for a new person to worry about.
Which of the following examples would be more understandable for someone who's barely even heard of programming?
if foo = "bar" then print "Hello world!"
if(foo.equals("bar")) System.out.println("Hello world!");
if(foo=="bar") Console.WriteLine("Hello world!");
if(strcmp(foo,"bar")==0) printf("Hello world!\n");
if($foo eq "bar") { print("Hello world!\n"); }
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
You ever see Alice? http://www.alice.org/ Not a language per say, but it teaches you the structure of programming, and you can look in at the code to see what it is doing behind the gui. We used it in a beginners class in SRU once, thought it was kinda neat.
Xaotik Designs
So... You believe that they can't pay attention to whitespace but can pay attention to matching braces?
Slashdot anagrams to "Sad Sloth"
Sorry, but Python the language is indeed object-oriented (at least from the "everything is an object" standpoint), it just doesn't force you to write code in an object-oriented manner.
kaens.blogspot.com
I personally think "The Whitespace Thing" is a good thing for new programmers. It's more-or-less how most coders indent their code anyhow, and the last thing you want is to have to deal with reviewing code written with a bunch of different brace / indentation styles (there are, of course, editor-based solutions to this on your end, but why not just cut out the middle-man?)
I took a comp-sci course in high-school, and the teacher enforced a specific style. It was a bit of a pain to keep up with at first, but as the class got more complex, everyone thought that it was a good thing that we all wrote code in a similar manner.
Not to mention that Python's whitespace thing makes the code look pretty similar to pseudo-code - which is good for beginners, IMO.
kaens.blogspot.com
Then why not:
print "Hello world"
Python would be great choice. Procedural could lead right into OO programming. Functional programming could be touched on as well.
The greatest advantage to python is how similar to English it is. When 'while a equals b print c' involves swapping only a single word for a symbol and adding a colon:
while a == b: print c
the students wouldn't feel like they where learning a new language, just a new way to express one which they already knew. Using a language which has an interactive environment would also be a plus since code the kids could quickly test code they write. Also, using a dynamicly typed language would remove the kids from having to deal with type specifics. The kids don't need to learn why a number is anything but a number in an introduction to programming course.
"As near as I can figure, the shit is supposed to hit the fan!" -Richard K. Feynmann
Python and Ruby are pretty popular and far from weird. Logo was designed for kids, and many of us have fond memories of using it as kids, so it isn't odd that people recommend it.
Java is actually a really poor choice. Java started as a language for set-top boxes but it made it big time because it was a pretty successful attempt to address the concerns of large-scale commercial software development in the late 1990s:
Those are just the warts that come to mind right now. The worst thing about Java is that its warts and oddities can only be explained by saying, "You'll understand someday when you have to work on huge software systems," which to kids sounds the same as, "You'll understand when you're older," the classic parental cop-out.
I think for kids it's better to use a language based on a clean set of abstract concepts, because when a kid asks "Why?" you want to be able to give him an answer that he can grasp without having any experience of large-scale software engineering. Otherwise you're just teaching him that he'll never understand the reasons for things, and the most important decisions are made by people who know better than him. That's not the right lesson to teach a kid, unless you want him to grow up intellectually passive and easily controlled.
So you have not been able to use muliple threads in an OO-language? Is this what you mean by "OO's inability to handle multi-core processing properly"?
.NET and java class libraries). The advantage of this of course being that you would not need to have to recreate all those graphical widgets and other side effect stuff.
I might as well make the silly claim that "the inability of any true functional language to have any side effects whatsoever, makes FP utterly useless". You made it sound like OO can not be run in parallel and I made it sound like a fact that functional languages can never have any side effects. I do not doubt that OO languages could do with some new ideas, but there is no need for this type of FUD.
The linked to article suggest the use of F# or Scala. Don't get me wrong, both seem like fine languages to me, but they do allow you to reuse object oriented code in your new FP program (you can access
By redefining that all the "dirty" stuff resides in OO-land and then to continue to actually use those OO-components won't change anything. You might as well define a new block-type in OO-languages where you say:
stuff in here can be run in parallel and is not allowed to have side effects. Then you let the compiler/verifier ensure that this is the case and that you can really take advantage of muliple cores.
How is it with Monades? Are they blocks of the program that can have side effects?
FP has brought a lot of good ideas, but I can not help but feeling that a lot of FP FUD is going on right now.
She made the willows dance
what other language could have done a better job in easily developping web pages for the past 10 years
Honestly, I am not too concerned with "hastily" doing anything at all. In my experience things done hastily is usually done badly. Are there better strategies for putting applications on the web than PHP. Absolutely, various Java technologies for one. Ruby (which has been available for that long, but not with Rails) is another.
The problem is that hastily done stuff usually ends up with a much longer life span than was intended when it was hastily put together, and in the long run the cost of ownership is significanly higher than would have been the case if it was built a little less hastily from the get-go.
I have seen a lot of what has hastily been put together with PHP and MySQL (for example) and it is usually put together by people who don't even know what normalized means. Friends of mine have twice walked away from lucurative contracts because they were not allowed to do the only sane thing, which wast throw out everything that was written and start from scratch.
Enabling "developers" with tools that encourage hastily throwing things together means that a lot of people who should never be allowed to write SQL are given tasks they are not qualified for.
Wow, he already answered the question himself:
I will be teaching an enrichment programming course to 11-14 year old gifted children in the Spring
Spring it is!
I disagree, and I'll tell you why.
An introductory course in programming does not have the purpose of teaching people how to program, or to learn good practices etc. It should help the students to decide whether or not programming is something they are interested in pursuing. Further, those students who decide not to go further, should walk away with some value that enriches their lives anyhow.
I've taught several introductory courses and I use VB as the vehicle. In only 3 hours of classroom work I can teach complete beginners how to create a rudimentary Pong game. The students squeal with delight when they see the results of their effort come alive.
Graphics and the motion are appealing to students. They are also the best way I know to teach students how something seemingly real can arise from such abstract things such as program statements. For this use, VB is the best tool I can imagine. Logo would be my second choice.
Using the Pong example, I've been able to teach many novices the central lesson of the course which is, "Programming is not magic. It is something that even I could understand and master if I so choose."
Students who choose not to go further lose much of their fear and incomprehension of things digital for the rest of their lives.
Students who do choose to go further can then go to a programming 101 course that picks a more appropriate language and concentrates on methods. Do not confuse programming 101 with introductory programming.
I skipped kindergarden and my parents and myself ended up regretting it later. I was almost always the youngest in the class, and some of my classmates resented me for having the "nerve" to be smart enough to start regular grade school early. I got so tired of getting picked on for making good grades, I stopped trying as hard and my grades suffered because of it. I also became lazy, but I'm not sure if that was a result of all of that, or just because I have a natural aversion to work.
Actually, VB.NET is sort of okay (it's little more than C# with a verbose syntax +/- a few extra minor features). Most of the flak that VB gets is from the days of VB6 and before, where it was indeed a monstrosity, QBASIC++ (I speak this as one who actually developed production apps in VB6).