Ask HN: How to best teach a group of children how to code?
I've done this for several years. Here's what I've learned.<p>TLDR: Focus on getting them to have fun & enjoy learning about 'code'. Don't care so much on how well they learn it.<p>Every kid is unique & will respond to different things.<p>Social & mentors are awesome. It's usually more fun to build with others if possible. Also they will want to easily share & show off their creations with others.<p>Show them how to "hack" Google with the browser's dev inspector tools. Wins them over every time.<p>Give them simple partially completed programs that they can modify. I've had a lot of success with a simple trivia game that lets them start by modifying the questions/answers & the replies it gives. A great first lesson in how to use strings & gets them looking at the code. They can then share what they created with others (social aspect) & have them play their game.<p>Do NOT lecture to them or try to do long demos. They often listen to teachers lecture all day long. They want to have fun & explore. They also don't care about types or any other computer science terms until they've created a lot of things & are trying to figure out why they don't work.<p>I've had decent results with Scratch. For pure beginners though, still start them off with a semi-completed program.