::: warning This chapter is for parents, kids skip to the next one. day 0 - the computer :::
I think modern education treats programming as 'career path', I think of that to be wrong. I treat it as literacy. Being literate lets to experience a different world than those who aren't. It is not about having a job, I can't even explain it, being literate just allows you to see the fabric of what everything is made of.
Imagine schools were teaching violin en masse, how would that go? How many kids will be able to make a decent sound? How many will drop out because they are stuck and the rest have to move on because the tests say so?
Sometimes my daughter doesn't like to code, or to read for that matter, of course the rest of the internet is so much more interesting. We are competing with hundreds of thousands of developers in Supercell and Facebook and TikTok and Netflix that train billion parameters models so they can squeeze every last bit of attention from our kids. Of course it is going to be difficult. But, I thought to myself, does that mean I should not try? So a change of approach is needed, completely individualistic and personal approach.
Maybe she will grow hating it, or even hating me. Parenting is difficult.
We are more than year and a half in, and so far she doesn't hate me.
This book is for parents who know how to code and for kids who don't, but especially for parents and kids who can spend 30 minutes per day, every day. I am writing this book as I am teaching my daughter (10), and you know how in some cooking shows, they skip the part where the food is cooking? I wont do that. The book will be longer than it should.
Again, if your children are older, or younger, this book might not work, you could of course still find pieces that work for you.
This is more of a log of my experience so far. I am writing it as if I am talking to my daughter, so the style might be weird, but for you it should be more of an pool of examples you could use, and maybe just get ideas from the text. Try to avoid giving the book to your child and say "do this chapter", but in is also good experience to be able to do something alone.
Also its nice to print a copy so they don't just copy paste.
What you need:
- Computer
- Patience
- Internet
- Patience
If you don't have a you can buy raspberry pi 400 for 70$ or so, or something similar that you attach to your TV. If you don't have patience, buy some chamomile tea. You don't need internet subscription, but you would need a bit of internet to download python and do few google searches.
In most of the weeks you also go back, waaay back, every day you re-iterate variables and for loops, print the numbers from one to 10 forever, ask how many times to be printed, etc.
The emphasis on HTML helps with understanding hierarchy, tr is child of table, table is child of body body is child of html, td is a sister to td and both are children of tr etc, it helped a lot with my daughter understanding how the else is sibling to the if and how both are children to while.
Also it is very easy to debug, and inspect, and get immediate feedback. There are many 'hackers' now on tiktok or youtube that shows you how to get a lot robux(money) in roblox by inspecting the page and modifying the HTML, so I think HTML is very important to be understood, not only because it teaches hierarchy, but also it is the canvas of the web.
Play other games as well, https://tomorrowcorporation.com/ has some brilliant games, Human Resource Machine is great way to learn loops and conditional jumps, and 7 Billion Humans is amazing for high level concepts, including variables, recursion and sorting. Before we started with HTML we spent about 1 month with those games. They are just incredible and well worth their money.
The Robot Turtles game is amazing as well, you can find it here: https://www.thinkfun.com/products/robot-turtles/
Scratch works for some kids, mine didn't enjoy it much.
Buy few Arduino NANOs (cheap clones from amazon work as well, but you need to install ch340 driver), and some servo motors and write few super basic programs that turn the servo slowly in one direction or another. Connect black/brown wire to gnd, red wire to 5v and orange wire to D9, and run:
#include <Servo.h>
#define SERVO_PIN 9
Servo s;
void setup() {
s.attach(SERVO_PIN, 1000, 2000);
}
void loop() {
s.write(0);
delay(500);
s.write(60);
delay(500);
s.write(120);
delay(500);
}
Sometimes there is very little motivation. Kids are super tired from school and playdates and extracurricular activities, makes it hard to spend 30 minutes per day on something. Netflix and YouTube and etc are so much more interesting than what I have to offer, it is a rigged game.. Sad that I have to compete with billion parameter models, but here we are.
Anything worth doing, is worth doing poorly. If you cant spend 30 minutes, spend 15, spend 5 minutes if you have to, or even 1. It is all worth it.
I try to spend time in the morning, at least on the weekends, and first thing after school on school days. Luckily now it is a bit easier while we work from home during the pandemic. We tried to setup time before or after dinner, and it doesn't go well.
Sometimes material incentives are also very helpful, e.g. a promise 5$ gift card, but I think you will have to find out what works for your kids.