Hi all,
My 8 year old is asking if he can learn how to program. He has asked specifically if I could set him up with a ‘programming kit with lessons’ for a Christmas present. I’d like to support this, and it seems like it’s not a transient interest as he’s been all over scratch, and using things like minecraft commands for the last year. I have an old (pre 2017) MacBook Air I can set up for this. How do I / what would you advise I set up for him, to a) keep him safe online (he’s 8!) and b) give him the tools he needs in a structured way.
I am not a programmer. I know enough bash/shell and basic unix stuff to be dangerous and I was a front end dev a very long time ago, but I wouldn’t call myself a programmer and don’t know what concepts he needs to learn first.
Hugely appreciate any advice, thanks.
Edit: So I posted this then had a busy family day and came back to so many comments! I will methodically go through these all, thanks so much.
A couple of things on resources: he has expressed interest in 3D worlds and I noticed comments on engines, but wonder if that’s too advanced?
Totally agree with the short feedback loop rather than projects that take days.
He has an iPad 6 and I’m happy to pop a Linux distro on the Air, so certainly open to that.
So many links to research. Hugely grateful.
Everyone else’s suggestions are great.
Get them a copy of Factorio, it’s a game, but it’s all about computer science fundamentals, architecture, pipelining, busing, data integrity, etc. It’s a visual game, but it’ll scratch the itch of programming. It’ll get them to think.
Buy the hardware projects, the little ones with either a pic, an Arduino, something that does something physical. A little bit of programming. To make a thing happen. So they can experiment.
Look at the software robot competitions, there’s a couple on steam, there’s couple elsewhere, you can do it as a family project, whiteboard out the logic of what your robot will do, and you can write it together. And see how it acts.
Just make sure anything you get, has a very small feedback loop, so they can iterate very quickly. That’ll keep them engaged and exploring. You don’t want to get a daunting project that’s going to take weeks to see any output. You want things on the order of minutes, or even seconds to see what happens
Ah, haven’t thought about factorio. On that matter 7 Billion Humans is a cool game that can teach the basic logic behind programming.
Don’t worry about Linux, and don’t try to over complicate things. If you are set on going the Linux route, get a Raspberry Pi. It will give him something really flexible and cheap to experiment with later on.
Look into modded Minecraft. There is a mod called Computer Craft where you can write programs in Lua. One of the things that makes scratch so good for kids is that the results are instantly visible. This is important for kids.
https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/cc-tweaked
There are programs to control your reactor > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9fC3khXuj8
Unmodded Minecraft has Redstone where you can build logic gates.
Outside of what you already have check into a maker space or a computer club at school. Here in Atlanta there is https://www.codeninjas.com. Maybe there is something similar in your area.
