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I have started feeling indifferent to this topic. How can you teach a seven year old to program? Kids of that age are hardly learning to add, subtract, multipl

I have started feeling indifferent to this topic. How can you teach a seven year old to program? Kids of that age are hardly learning to add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers. How difficult would it be for a kid to grasp concept of function - in context of both math and programming. Teaching kids how to program is not as easy and logical as it sounds. My opinion is to let a kid grasp and understand the basics - which are math, science and logic at an abstract level. Such a rush to throw everything at a kid is overkill IMHO.

georgieporgie 15y ago
I agree with you (almost) entirely. My family got a Commodore VIC-20 when I was 8. I started "programming" immediately. Except that my "programs" were actually a series of PRINT statements, with an occasional input required for pagination. I was just writing stories, but doing it in BASIC. I distinctly recall being confused by the meaning of 'string' (the metaphor for stringing characters made no sense to my young brain). I played with computers non-stop, however. To the best of my recollection, my first real programs started around the age of 12 or 13. Changing the way we teach mathematics would probably do much, much more to improve our future than pushing programming on younger students.
brudgers 15y ago
These discussions often remind me of Little League parents debating the best way to teach preteens how to throw a curveball. Teaching teens a bit of programming is another matter in some cases, but regardless of approach, most won't care enough about it to pursue it as an adult. Exposing young people to programming is as important as exposing them to Faulkner, but probably not much more important.
victorhn 15y ago
I think you are underestimating the capabilities of some children. Take for example Gennady Korotkevich, at the age of 6 he was starting to program, and at the age of 11 he was already competing in IOI and also winning a silver medal, his programming (specially algorithmic ability) skill was already beyond of what your average programmer may get in his lifetime. Maybe he is an extreme example, and he was born gifted, but i do think that there are many children which with proper guidance and encouragement can achieve levels of mastery in some topic like programming.
blake8086 15y ago
I feel like a seven year old could play http://armorgames.com/play/2205/light-bot http://armorgames.com/play/2205/light-bot and that's just programming.
- JoshTriplett 15y ago
  Check out the very awesome Runestone Wisp for a similar idea: https://runestonewisp.appspot.com/ https://runestonewisp.appspot.com/ It presents various "arcane runestones" like "look ahead" and "look left", which send out "magic" over "threads of silk" to power other runes like "walk forward" and "turn left". The harder puzzles introduce AND and OR gates, and later on something similar to flip-flops to store "magic" and send it out later.
JoshTriplett 15y ago
> How can you teach a seven year old to program? Kids of that age are hardly learning to add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers. Leaving aside the various educational bugs that lead to that situation... For one thing, the earliest concepts of programming don't depend on math; that comes later. Think about something like LOGO here: the simplest bits just involve giving instructions to a computer like "go forward" and "turn left". More complex instructions like those used in fractal snowflakes represent a natural progression, and suggest the basics of functions and repetition. Similarly, think about LEGO robots: "go forward until you hit something, then back up and turn". You don't have to understand advanced math to implement that. At some point around that age, I came across a simplistic algorithm in a geology book for identifying rocks, which provided a series of questions that amounted to a flowchart: does it split into layers, what color of streak does it leave if you rub it on glass, etc. I turned that algorithm into a simplistic pile of C, using printf to print questions, getch or similar to prompt for answers, and if/else to figure out what to do next. I had no concept of modularity or code reuse, open-coded the prompting logic for every question, and nested the conditionals to an absurd depth, but it worked, and triumphantly printed the kind of rock you had. :)

georgieporgie 15y ago

I agree with you (almost) entirely. My family got a Commodore VIC-20 when I was 8. I started "programming" immediately. Except that my "programs" were actually a series of PRINT statements, with an occasional input required for pagination. I was just writing stories, but doing it in BASIC. I distinctly recall being confused by the meaning of 'string' (the metaphor for stringing characters made no sense to my young brain). I played with computers non-stop, however. To the best of my recollection, my first real programs started around the age of 12 or 13. Changing the way we teach mathematics would probably do much, much more to improve our future than pushing programming on younger students.

brudgers 15y ago

These discussions often remind me of Little League parents debating the best way to teach preteens how to throw a curveball. Teaching teens a bit of programming is another matter in some cases, but regardless of approach, most won't care enough about it to pursue it as an adult. Exposing young people to programming is as important as exposing them to Faulkner, but probably not much more important.

victorhn 15y ago

I think you are underestimating the capabilities of some children. Take for example Gennady Korotkevich, at the age of 6 he was starting to program, and at the age of 11 he was already competing in IOI and also winning a silver medal, his programming (specially algorithmic ability) skill was already beyond of what your average programmer may get in his lifetime. Maybe he is an extreme example, and he was born gifted, but i do think that there are many children which with proper guidance and encouragement can achieve levels of mastery in some topic like programming.

blake8086 15y ago

I feel like a seven year old could play http://armorgames.com/play/2205/light-bot http://armorgames.com/play/2205/light-bot and that's just programming.

JoshTriplett 15y ago
Check out the very awesome Runestone Wisp for a similar idea: https://runestonewisp.appspot.com/ https://runestonewisp.appspot.com/ It presents various "arcane runestones" like "look ahead" and "look left", which send out "magic" over "threads of silk" to power other runes like "walk forward" and "turn left". The harder puzzles introduce AND and OR gates, and later on something similar to flip-flops to store "magic" and send it out later.

JoshTriplett 15y ago

> How can you teach a seven year old to program? Kids of that age are hardly learning to add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers. Leaving aside the various educational bugs that lead to that situation... For one thing, the earliest concepts of programming don't depend on math; that comes later. Think about something like LOGO here: the simplest bits just involve giving instructions to a computer like "go forward" and "turn left". More complex instructions like those used in fractal snowflakes represent a natural progression, and suggest the basics of functions and repetition. Similarly, think about LEGO robots: "go forward until you hit something, then back up and turn". You don't have to understand advanced math to implement that. At some point around that age, I came across a simplistic algorithm in a geology book for identifying rocks, which provided a series of questions that amounted to a flowchart: does it split into layers, what color of streak does it leave if you rub it on glass, etc. I turned that algorithm into a simplistic pile of C, using printf to print questions, getch or similar to prompt for answers, and if/else to figure out what to do next. I had no concept of modularity or code reuse, open-coded the prompting logic for every question, and nested the conditionals to an absurd depth, but it worked, and triumphantly printed the kind of rock you had. :)