Ask HN: How do you teach you kids about computers and coding?
I think it depends on your objectives. What abstractions are you trying to have your kids develop?<p>* Are you trying to teach your kids simple blinky-light programming?
* Maybe you want them to develop into C++ coders?
* Do you want your kids to understand underlying computer architecture constructs (bits, bytes, cores, caches, etc.)?<p>I learned LOGO as a 7 year old &amp; Lisp shortly thereafter. Later we got a TRS-80 w&#x2F; a built in BASIC interpreter and out of a mix of necessity and curiosity taught myself Z-80 Assembly and eventually started playing around with ALUs &amp; 7400 series logic on breadboards.<p>My offspring isn&#x27;t interested in the low level details, but was VERY interested in making art on the computer. We started with MS-PAINT-a-likes, moved on to Gimp &amp; eventually to Blender, using Python to automate some processes.<p>So... my advice is to think about what you&#x27;re trying to accomplish. If your kid is interested in low level stuff, maybe start with a soldering iron. If they like art, think about the tools they&#x27;ll use to model the abstractions they want to work with (Gimp, Blender, Maya, Adobe CS, etc.) and then look at the languages that are easy to integrate w&#x2F; those tools.<p>Also, remember that modern spreadsheets are a powerful data-flow modeling system.<p>Modern educators tend to follow the Constructivist model, a simplification might be: &quot;Give your kids some tools and see what they do with them, possibly nudging them towards techniques or solutions when they identify a specific intent or goal.&quot; Constructivist educators would probably tell you the interaction between the learner, the educator and the tool is probably more important than the specific tool.<p>Constructionalism takes constructivism a bit further and seeks to support the creation of mental models and abstractions by the learner. LOGO, eToys &amp; Scratch were built by teams that were largely influenced by Seymour Papert &amp; his constructionalist ideas. In education circles, there&#x27;s a little bit of debate over constructionalism, but it&#x27;s definitely produced some great tools. And heck, I&#x27;ve had a pretty decent career as a software engineer, so learning LOGO at MIT as a 7 year old in the early 70s seemed to have worked out well for me.<p>I&#x27;m personally less of a fan of Scratch than I am of TI LOGO running on an old TI-99&#x2F;4, but that&#x27;s probably because I find Scratch MUCH too cluttered. But YMMV. Scratch is definitely worth checking out.<p>So to sum up my advice:<p>* try a bunch of things to figure out what your kids interests are.
* understand the tools you present your kid(s) with so you can help solve problems when they&#x27;re blocked.
* show your kids a few simple things and let them discover the rest (and then unblock them if they get in a jam)
* if your kids are mentally checking out, it&#x27;s time to try a different approach.
* don&#x27;t be afraid to let your kids &quot;waste time&quot; on things they enjoy, even if it doesn&#x27;t immediately seem like they&#x27;re learning something (my offspring knows boolean logic ONLY because we found some youtube videos about redstone circuits in minecraft.)<p>Also, you can buy a copy of Papert&#x27;s &quot;Mindstorms&quot; book online (or heck, it might be available as a free download by now somewhere.) It&#x27;s a tiny bit controversial in education circles, but it&#x27;s relatively short and it&#x27;s a decent intro to Constructivist ideas.<p>So... all that being said... I was pretty impressed with how cheap &amp; fast it was to set up Scratch on a RasPi w&#x2F; Raspbian. Under $200 even with a new mouse, keyboard &amp; video screen.<p>The LEGO Mindstorm products all seemed to be a little overpriced to me, but if you don&#x27;t want to spend the afternoon hobbling together a cheaper educational robot system, they&#x27;re probably not that bad. Seymour Papert was really big on getting kids to interact with physical objects, so if you buy into Constructionalism, this is definitely the tool for you.<p>I&#x27;m a fan of the LittleBits electronic toys. My offspring ignored them after five minutes, but I&#x27;ve seen other kids spend hours putting blinky light creations together w&#x2F; them.<p>If you&#x27;re handy with a soldering iron, it&#x27;s a snap to put one of these pencil circuit tools together. I personally love it. My offspring liked it for a while before disappearing into the purple cloud of sullen adolescence. It was also a bit of a hit w&#x2F; my niece.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;makezine.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;build-electronic-audio-game-pencil-paper-conductive-ink&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;makezine.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;build-electronic-audio-game-pe...</a><p>I tried to make sense of the Dash robot, but honestly, I couldn&#x27;t figure out how it was supposed to be educational. YMMV.<p>Ditto for Cubelets. At $26 per cube, they were a little pricey for a system that seemed to come with waaay too few instructions.<p>I really want to try the makeblock drone airblock system, but I&#x27;m probably projecting my own desires on this one. Still, I used an early version of the makeblock neuron system and it was at least as good as the littlebits (though littlebits in-box documentation was better.)