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Learning how to program... but what's the best way?

Emile van Sebille emile at fenx.com
Wed Jul 10 08:24:49 EDT 2002 
"Hans Nowak" <wurmy at earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:3D2BB54C.90500 at earthlink.net...
>
> Hi,
>
> I know a 14-year-old who wants to learn programming.  Of course I'd
recommend
> Python, and I also know the way to all the tutorials, non-programmers
> introductions, etc.  But...
>
> The problem is, I don't expect my student to swoon over "hello world",
or to
> get excited about doing basic mathemathical computations.  Nor will
standard
> computer science stuff about bits, bytes, hexadecimal numbers etc be
appealing.
> Sure, those concepts are important, and will be dealt with in due
time, but
> what I'm looking for right now is a way to capture people's interest--
to do
> something funny, or cool, or useful even for someone who doesn't know
programming.
>
> To give an idea of what I have in mind: A good start could be, for
example,
> some kind of game that can be scripted in Python, and therefore
extended at
> will.  The "student" could say, "I want the game to do this-and-that",
then
> proceed to implement it.  Unfortunately, I know of no such game, and
have no
> time to write it <0.3 wink>.
>
> Besides this, does anyone have ideas about what would be a good
starting point
> here?
>


I had this come up last month with my older daughter, although she's 3
years
younger and that would make a difference.  I got her an account on
freezope last year and she's enjoyed playing with html, but now she
wants
to make games, like she plays on neopets.  If you don't know of neopets,
you're missing out on the new 'Barney', so no loss ;-)).

I put a copy of Solar Wolf (Thanks Pete!) on her system, and showed her
how she could make minor modifications.  I also got her started with
turtle,
specifically following along with the demo code.  Now I wait and see
when
the next set of questions come up.  With html it took about two-three
months
before I was asked about links, and a few months later about adding
sound.
At that point, I got her a hard copy tutorial she could follow.  This
time, when
it gets to that, I'll look to the newbies page at python.org for the
next step.

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

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