What Language for a kid

[Ben Scott]

On Dec 24, 2015 12:47, "Paul Beaudet" <inof8or at gmail.com> wrote:
> Pointing to the training wheel equivalent here alarms me we may be
overlooking the key objective, which is inspiration for a young person.

Conversely, if you give a ten-speed racing bike to someone who has not yet
learned to crawl, that will be pretty discouraging.  I remember seeing such
a bike as a very young kid, and not having a clue what all those levers
did.  Having to learn all that while also learning to get my legs to drive
the pedals while also learning how to balance would have been much more
difficult for me.  I'm glad I started with my single-speed coaster-braked
bike.

> Codeacademy and Khan start and such a basic level it's hard to see the
forest through the trees.  Here me right, I think they are great tools, I
just personally found them frustrating because of the great amount of time
taken mucking through the weeds or things that were already understood.

Things like proper syntax, rules of scoping, function definitions, and so
on can be weeds for some.

The advantage of things like LOGO, Scratch, and the like, is they get
people thinking about decomposing a problem into algorithms, variables,
debugging, and so on, without having to know what any of those things are.
The visual metaphors tap into basic skills we learn playing with blocks as
toddlers.  For some people, that can be a huge enabler.

There's no one solution that's right for everyone.

-- Ben
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.gnhlug.org/pipermail/gnhlug-discuss/attachments/20151228/a6328f9d/attachment.html