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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.
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.....
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.
http://scratch.mit.edu/ Scratch is very cool, comes with an educational program for kids. It's an mit/ucla project
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
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.
I'll heartily second that. Visual Basic is totally inappropriate for a budding programmer.
Make them use vanilla Basic. I suggest using a C64 emulator (or, if you're feeling perverse, a VIC-20 emulator).
What? I had to use line numbers, so should they.
I'd also suggest making them use a cassette tape drive, or even a reel-to-reel drive, to ensure that they understand why bloated code is bad.
Oh, and while you are at it, make sure to supply them with a limitless supply of Tang (no, not 'tang, you'll get in trouble for that) and store-brand potato chips.
Finally, make sure that whatever they do, they need to write out their programs in pencil for review first, then enter the code verbatim once it's been signed off on.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
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
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.