Ask HN: Programming resources for people with poor reading comprehension

3 points by dqv 7y ago ↗ HN

Hi,

An acquaintance's daughter is on the Autism spectrum. She's brilliant at math, but has trouble with reading and writing words. She can communicate using spoken language just fine, however.

She'd really like to pursue game design. She took a course to learn, but had trouble making sense of the material. I assume (but don't know for sure) that the class focused on an object-oriented language and I figure that this probably caused her friction in making sense of programming.

I think she could benefit from functional programming exercises that just focus on showing math and programming. (think Duolingo with math -> programming instead of English -> programming)

I want her to be given the chance to succeed in programming and I hope maybe there are some resources that will allow her to excel.

Does anyone have any resources for this kind of learner? I know that everything is case-by-case with unique learning needs, but if you have anything, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks

2 comments

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LarryMade2 7y ago ↗

One of the things that encouraged my programming early on was modifying BASIC programs to do different things - all the hard work was done and I could experiment and learn how the various functions worked, sometimes even develop some new nifty things.

You might try finding a good language with some usable/interesting example source code that she can fiddle with to start. Possibly Python with pygame or Processing might be a couple good start. Besides the modding she might get interested in see how X was done and then she can google it and learn the functions she sees in action.

Cypher 7y ago ↗

Depends on her age, computer proficiency and how long she wants to purse this.

- Her ultimate goal is learn a language used by the industry like java\c#\c++ (specialization)

- A step before that would be an engine like Unity or Unreal Engine 4 (for full games)

- before that game marker and modifying other peoples games for (mutation, states and objectives)

- at the start. robotic turtles. Scripting, minecraft for (basic sequences, loops, lists)