[TriLUG] Teaching Kids to Program

[Nikolas Everett via TriLUG]

Python is a great choice:
1. No compile, link, Makefile, or Maven style woes.
2. Reasonably good set of batteries included. No hunting down external
libraries. When you have to do so life gets harder.
3. Actually used in industry. Its "real" programming. Not a "toy".
4. Language itself is comparatively intuitive.

The only other option I'd recommend is JavaScript. Its less intuitive to
learn but it has the advantage of being available to run on any modern
browser. And its external libraries story is better than python's (no
fighting with os packaged version of libraries or messing around with
virtual env). But I think its more difficult to reason about. I imagine
that choice is between which one the teacher knows better and whether the
learner wants to "do things in their computer" or "do things in web pages".

Nik

On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 8:34 AM, Mike Viscount via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org
> wrote:

> While I have not done Python to date I'll just toss out that it's the first
> mentioned way to go with Raspberry PI so if you were to go that route it
> would open up the ready to go next step if you were interested in that.
> Lot's of projects and easy to do teaching stuff avail in that regard as
> well.
>
> Just a thought... hope it helps....
>
> Mike
>
> On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 11:21 AM, Joseph Mack NA3T via TriLUG <
> trilug at trilug.org> wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 17 Aug 2015, Ken MacKenzie via TriLUG wrote:
> >
> > So if you were going to teach your kids some starter programming, what
> >>>> language and/or ide would you use?
> >>>>
> >>>
> > I taught a 12yr old python for about 2yrs.
> >
> > http://www.austintek.com/#computer_class
> >
> > Alice is a gui oriented way of teaching programming. It was designed for
> > teaching girls as mostly you're manipulating images of people in daily
> life.
> > Susan Roger at Duke teaches it in summer courses (or she used to).
> >
> > Joe
> >
> > --
> > Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
> > jmack (at) austintek (dot) com - azimuthal equidistant
> > map generator at http://www.wm7d.net/azproj.shtml
> > Homepage http://www.austintek.com/ It's GNU/Linux!
> >
> > --
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