Ask HN: What is the best way to start teaching my 9 year old son programming

Does he even know fractions yet? It sounds like you're setting him up to hate programming.

why do you need to know fractions to program? There is a myriad of things that can be accomplished without knowing fractions. It is more important that they have a grasp of logic and cause and effect. And or just a curiosity as to how things work, if I do x then I get y.

danjoc 8y ago ↗

>why do you need to know fractions to program?

Try explaining a float to him if he doesn't understand division. You're pushing rope. The kid will learn programming, if he's interested in it, when he's ready.

timthorn 8y ago ↗

Not all languages have the distinction between floats and ints. A whole generation grew up on BASIC!

Jemmeh 8y ago ↗

You don't need to start that advanced, they can learn concepts and simple things like HTML easily.

subhashp 8y ago ↗

Fractions have been thought. But, I understand what you are saying and will cover basic stuff. e.g. Print, variables, loops and so on.

Jemmeh 8y ago ↗

I really like some of the coding "games" that teach the concepts. For example https://www.tynker.com/hour-of-code/ but there's a bunch out there. I think it's important for kids to have fun with it so that they're motivated to keep learning.

Also Scratch: https://scratch.mit.edu/parents/ (Aimed at 8-16 years old)

subhashp 8y ago ↗

Thank you everyone for your feedback. I will keep everything simple and stop. Cover advanced stuff later on. I will follow links mentioned by Jemmeh.