pouët.net

The explanation is reduced nicely into a form where I wouldn't be surprised if even Adok has no clue what he's talking about. :D

Java is not sexy for 6-10 yo. Give them something that doesn't require some crazy init.

When I was 5-9 I learnt to code on vic20 and Amstrad in Basic. No weird shit needed to get started. Type "auto" and bam! a bunch of locate, print, draw and you had something cool on screen.

In the "computer club" I went on Saturday afternoon, the man in charge gave the kids a simple task ( e.g. draw a house, display a pyramid/diamond of "*", make a guess the number game, ... ) they had to work on during one hour before being allowed to play games. Some of the kids struggled on these tasks. So I really doubt Java is the way to go with young kids.

waffle: Thank you for your feedback. Tell me how you imagine it should be done. I'm interested and will include it in the tutorial.

p01: I agree with you. That's why I converted the QBasic tutorial to Creative Basic. Creative Basic is free, everybody can download it from the Internet. The German version of the tutorial is already located at http://www.students.meduniwien.ac.at/~n0102122/index_computer.htm. I'm translating it to English now.

Remove the paragraph about Eclipse, IDE and shit. You can't seriously expect/ask 6-10yo to go on the net and install the JDK and Eclipse, can you ?

Give them a machine with everything they need to start.

I second p01. You have to grasp the basic concepts first. For people that don't have a fucking clue about programming yet, even the concept of a "variable" is something they need to understand first.
Let them learn in really easy steps having instant results. This is really important to keep them motivated. People need rewards.
If they're fast learners you can always throw more stuff at them explaining new concepts as you go...

don't know what you are talking about here, just wanted to make 256th post

i would take my kids from school if i'd know adok is responsable for a fraction of their education :(

would explain some of the school shootings at least.

Oh and commands/functions should be explained BEFORE throwing a source code at the kids.

Wow, I read a bit more of the Java tutorial. pff. It'll go miles over the kids' head. You take way too many things for granted and try to explain things they don't really need to understand.


And JSYK "{" and "}" are called curly braces, not brackets. Even "[" and "]" are not called just brackets, but square brackets.

Seriously, Java was developed as being a platform independent, object oriented language close to c/c++ syntax with the benefit of a garbage collection.
If my children wanna learn something about programming... they won't need any of those features. Seriously, what's the need for children to care about object oriented programming and big frameworks?

Show them how to draw Lines on the Screen in Basic/Pascal/Whatever, show them how to do loops and if-statements... impress them!!!! All the rest comes pretty much by digging through examples, coded by others.

Maali: Wait until you have your kids. I want to make the kids smarter than their parents. :)

Gargaj: Occupation with programming will prevent school shootings. Instead of weapons, the kids would take their computers to school.

p01: You're right. I'll consider that in the Java tutorial and I will loosen it up. Thanks about the curly braces. English is not my first language so I'm grateful for such information.

hashdash: As said I've adapted the QBasic tutorial to Creative Basic. It's only in German so far but I'm working hard on getting it translated to English.

pah, im already mensa, i will blame the wife for ruining my good sperm then!

Maali: So search for a wife that suits you. :)

i'll post this in the newspaper: HOT, STUDLY MALE (OR MAALI) LOOKING FOR WIFE; NONSMOKER; NO KIDS FROM PREVIOUS MARRIAGE; IQ>135; BASIC OR JAVA KNOWLEDGE MANDATORY; LIVING IN VICINITY OF AUSTRIA

i seriously think the only way to make the geek kids smarter than their geek parents, in this context, is by making them start with functional programming. the only reason functional programming is done so little is because nobody is used to it, and after all it all started with imperative programming so that's what people learnt, so that's what people taught. and teach.

i'm pretty sure that if you'd make someone start on something functional (say, this "dumbed down" version of haskell that blala proposes, or maybe even a functional programming designed for teaching its concepts), he'd think all imperative languages (object oriented or not) are stupid. which is a good thing. going from functional to imperative is a lot easier than the other way around, while the concepts of functional programming are not at all more difficult as long as small steps are taken.

a classmate of mine who started out doing any "serious" programming with haskell, just by chance, was pretty disappointed when the professor took 1 hour lecturing the formal proof of an imperative program that calculated the factorial of n. the idea was, of course, not that calculating a factorial is difficult, but to give a simple example of proving algorithms, but i can completely understand that my friend thought it was complete bogus; after all, the math that the professor took so much effort proving was equal to the source code, is in haskell the source code itself. if functional programming becomes the de facto standard, software quality will rise, and be delivered faster. i really think so.

</rant>

Maali: And where do you want to publish that? :)

skrebbel: I have no clue about functional programming yet, I got to learn that.

wow, skrebbel is my new soulmate!
uncurse the trolls, code in haskell, and the world will be instantly better :)

seriously though, it is really easy to write imperative programs in haskell if you really want to do that, and still having the benefits of type-safety, while the opposite is not quite true. haskell ftw!

logo is functional, btw. And please, everybody, forget Java, for god's sake, quick quick!

:D I think I'll never get tired of this one.

^^ wtf

"Those who can, do... those who can't, teach."

kids want to drink beer and chill out instead of programming. I've got personal experience.