Ask HN: Gift for a 11-year-old hacker 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? |
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?
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
#!/usr/bin/env ruby
def hello(name)
puts "Good morning, #{name}"
end
There's this book which is rather playful: http://poignant.guide/book/chapter-1.html
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.
LOL. Why? What are the advantages over the multitude of other mechanical keyboards out there these days?