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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. :)
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'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.
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
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.
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"
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!
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.
Why? I taught myself BASIC at 7 with an Apple IIgs' built in interpreter- I was a good 5 years from my first Algebra I class at that point.
Algebra is relevant for the manipulation of expressions with variables, but is completely unnecessary for the *evaluation* of expressions with variables, which is what programming really is. Higher math is generally required for complex algorithm creation, but for introductory programming assignments it's really unnecessary.
The ringing of the division bell has begun... -PF
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.
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