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How To Teach a 12-Year-Old To Program?

Posted by timothy on from the hypnotherapy-might-work dept.

thelordx writes "I've got a much younger brother who I'd like to teach how to program. When I was younger, you'd often start off with something like BASIC or Apple BASIC, maybe move on to Pascal, and eventually get to C and Java. Is something like Pascal still a dominant teaching language? I'd love to get low-level with him, and I firmly believe that C is the best language to eventually learn, but I'm not sure how to get him there. Can anyone recommend a language I can start to teach him that is simple enough to learn quickly, but powerful enough to do interesting things and lead him down a path towards C/C++?"

4 of 799 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Programming by cjonslashdot · · Score: 0, Troll

    If you want him to grow up to be a hacker with little system design discipline, teach him C.

    If you want him to grow up with trade skills for writing corporate business code, teach him an OO language such as Java or Ruby, as these are the Cobol of tomorrow.

    If you want him to grow up to be a designer of rock solid systems, teach him scala or another functional language, and encourage him to think in terms of algorithms and patterns instead of code.

  2. Windoze by omb · · Score: 0, Troll

    Don't use Windoze or any M$ tools unless you have to, though they look simple, they bring endless unnecessary complexity all caused by M$ trying to screw its customers, use Fedora, SuSE, Debian or derivatives and, when the install is done you have an OS and full tool chain

    Editors: vi, xemacs, gedit ...

    Compilers: C, C++, Fortran, Pascal, Ada

    Managed: Perl, Python, Java

    IDE: Eclipse ... ddd, gdb, valgrind ...

    If you have to do it on a Windoze box, Virtualize, or as a last resort use cygwin.

    1. Re:Windoze by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 1, Troll

      Oh yes, obviously EMACs and vi are so much easier and less complex than the *free* Visual Studio Express you can get on Windows.

      --
      Comment of the year
  3. Re:Python by AigariusDebian · · Score: 0, Troll

    Yeah, right. Sell him to the slave drivers early on. While QuickBasic was a useful educational tool, VB is nothing more than a dead old factory for producing business software in Windows, for Windows. There is no fun in it.

    Follow the original posters suggestion - Python all the way. It is much more readable and much more flexible than any basic ever was. AND it does not tie you to the Microsoft universe with a rusty ball and chain.