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Ask HN: Gift for a 11-year-old hacker

6 points by saturnian ↗ HN
My sister is a bright, self-motivated, girl that has taught herself HTML and CSS, but hasn't learned a real programming language yet. She still doesn't grasp the concept of a function, which is understandable at her age. There's lots of books on CS that I'd love to give her, but that she's too young for. Any suggestions?

7 comments

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atmosx
Not sure if this is going to work, but instead of trying to explain what a function is at a theoretical level - which is a difficult concept to grasp at that age - why not show her the code without too much theory?

I'm not a programmer by profession, so take everything I say with a grain of salt, why not trying to show what a ruby add/multiply function looks like:

    #!/usr/bin/env ruby
    
    def add(x,y)
        b = x + y
        return b # could be just "b" or omitted but I consider verbosity a *virtue* here
    end
Of something like:

    #!/usr/bin/env ruby
    
    def hello(name)
       puts "Good morning, #{name}"
    end
I believe Ruby is a better choice than Python because it can be more verbose, closer to English and doesn't rely on indentation. Javascript might be another option, but explaining the difference between class and function in JS to a novice might be problematic.

There's this book which is rather playful: http://poignant.guide/book/chapter-1.html

babyrainbow
Try to explain programs as a to do list for computers. This might be hard since her fist exposure to computers is HTML/CSS. kind of sad actually. How did that happen? Just curious...

Maybe show her that she can put dots of any colors on screen using html canvas and javascript. Show her how to draw lines. How to draw circles and color them. Show her how to move them....That should be enough to get her off from Html/Css and move to real computer programs...

May be just leave her alone..encourage her to spend less time with computers and go out and play with other kids..She is 10 year old, right?

randack
I purchased a BitsBox subscription for my nieces/nephews, and they love it. https://bitsbox.com/

It's not cheap, but I'm a big believer in encouraging this kind of learning, and I feel like it's been worth it. They range from 7-13 yrs.