Suggestions for someone new to programming

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raynman68

Limp Gawd
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Aug 8, 2004
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My 10 year old daughter has expressed an interest in learning programming. Having not done any programming since learning C in 1990, I am looking for suggestions for a good programming language for someone with no prior programming experience.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.
 
HTML to start. Then get into Javascript, and then maybe Ruby or Python.

If she is still interested, then Java, C++, or C#.
 
I would start her out with Visual Studio and C#. Visual Studio will let you drag and drop controls onto the creation area, and while you may need to help her set the environment up, or show her were to put code into, how to build/compile/execute the program, and maybe even show her stackoverflow - that visual feedback on creating something and resulting visual reward (once something works) will be all the fuel her creativity needs.

What you really should do is make a little demo with her watching - perhaps a button that loads a picture into another control on the screen, and when you click the button - it loads the picture. She will experience that formative "omg, magic!" moment and the rest will be history.

That type of moment is what got me when i was around that age. A family friend had brought over Visual Basic 3.0 (stack of SDK books + the 150 3.5" installation floppies), and after installing it, showed me how to drag and drop controls onto the screen and what not - but then he put some code into one of the buttons so that if you clicked it, it would move a shape control a couple pixels over to the right and down. I was utterly amazed and thought it was bar-none the coolest thing I had ever seen in the entire world. I've been coding ever since.

Edit: Check out Tutorialspoint for online (emulated) terminals for tons of languages. She could immediately start building out console stuff through one of the supported languages
 
Do you know why your daughter wants to learn programming? I'd figure out what her goals and interests are, and try to come up with a plan that kindles her desire.

Also, kids learn differently than adults. I ain't no developmental psychologists, but kids are a lot more interested in playing and discovery. Me, if I was to learn something, I'd want to get a book on it and learn it as fast as possible, as directly as possible. When I was younger, I was happy to have books and tools and parts and stuff, and just play. Maybe your daughter would be more receptive to one approach than the other.
 
Thanks for the recommendations. In the end I ended up talking to a CS teacher at a local community college where I tutor math on occasion and brought the subject up with him. He suggested grabbing a selection of books from the library and finding one that caught her interest and then throw in some online content. We grabbed some books on HTML, C++, and Java, with an older version of Beginning C++ through Game Programming getting most of her attention. Much of the online content I have found so far is pretty poor, but that is to be expected as anyone with a web cam can be a self-proclaimed programming guru on YouTube. :rolleyes: I have taken it upon myself to start learning so I can answer most of the questions she might have and am looking at current books to buy if looks like she is going to stick with it for a while.

As for what is driving her desire to learn programming? Her school's principal is big on exposing students to the STEM fields. One of the way he does this is to bring people in these career fields to talk about what they do and answer the students questions. Apparently a few weeks back they brought a programmer in and what ever she said got her interested in programming. I have no idea if she will remain interested, but just like a musical instrument or sport I will offer her encouragement and support.

As for the LEGOS and things of that nature she hasn't had much interest in LEGOS and things of that nature. We have a play room where I have my old LEGOS and she has never had an desire to play with them. This leads me to believe she will become the bain of mechanics everywhere, an engineer who designs things without having any idea of what a pain in the ass it will be to work on.:D
 
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