Ask HN: Home schooled boys got elective approval to work on crypto

3 points by andrewhillman 5 years ago | 4 comments

Really frustrated. We home school our boys. They will be in 6th grade next sept. The school believes they are 2 grades ahead of their peers in math and science. They are bored. We submitted a proposal to teach the basics of crypto and stock trading. They wrote a paper for the school for why they should be able to study what they have interest in. We were denied 3x, but finally got approved after a recent school committee hearing... provided I follow guideline which are basically meaningless. My boys know php+ python, Go, rust, obj-c and learning solidity. Their first assignment is to create an Erc20 SMART CONTRACT to do whatever they want. FROM STEP 1. Does YouTube have a step by step tutorial on how a basic contract is made so they can learn with hacking which is what the do or do I need to buy a book on Amazon. I’ve been in crypto since 2012. I own crypto but I need to be supportive of their elective. Any tips links resources.

chrispeel 5 years ago |

You emphasized your boys' focus on math and science. One approach which might be appealing to them and to the school is to change the focus from cryptocurrency to cryptography. You can google "cryptography for kids" or aim them at the "Illustrated Theory of Numbers" which covers prime factorization in chapter 2. Cryptography is the foundation of all blockchain and cryptocurrency tech and (I believe) will only grow in importance in the future.

(BTW, there are some communities, r/crypto [2] for example, which don't like the use of "crypto" to mean "cryptocurrency")

[1] http://illustratedtheoryofnumbers.com/

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/crypto/

beforeolives 5 years ago |

I'm skeptical of a couple of things here.

> They will be in 6th grade next sept.

> My boys know php+ python, Go, rust, obj-c and learning solidity.

That's so impressive for a 5th grader that I'm questioning whether it's true. It takes years to know all of these languages. And if it were true, they likely aren't focusing their time well, both with regards to coding and other school material. Learning more than a couple of languages doesn't do much at that age.

Also, if they are ahead of their peers, why not give them more 7-8 grade material? The idea that they should be learning smart contracts and stock trading before they learn high school algebra is absurd. There are much more appropriate electives that you can pick at that level.

If your kids really are talented and ahead, let them get further ahead and give them opportunities to learn. And by learn I don't mean redundant programming languages and cryptocurrencies. Otherwise you're modelling your kids after a middle-aged developer who wants to buff up his CV so he can get a coding interview.

ttyprintk 5 years ago |

Step 1, whether taken from a book or various blogs, will be something like a tutorial from the remix IDE. See its source code on GitHub.

Alternatively, WebStorm has a Solidity plugin and exposure to that IDE is useful for other Jetbrains products.

Solidity is not a general-purpose language like the ones listed. So, step 2 would be familiarity with tools and workflow.

For people with golang experience, I wonder if HN would recommend Geth as a reference implementation. Step 3 might be to embed Geth in a golang project they already know well, with smart contracts wrapping transactions in that app.

ttyprintk 5 years ago |

For the algorithmic trading course, Quantopian is perhaps the biggest useful site for beginners. It relies on Python fundamentals.

Algorithmic trading is an offshoot of AI with (at least at first) ML. With a math and science background, AI/ML will be more useful than networking-protocol-heavy cryptocurrency.

Sites like Kaggle are gentler introductions to AI/ML than algorithmic trading, in my opinion. For math and science, Kaggle might look better on a college application.