Ask HN: What's the “best” way for a senior to begin learning how to code? My mother told me her 72 year old friend wants to learn "how to code" and that she mentioned Python. She's starting from zero, so my first thought was that could be prohibitively complicated to get to "Hello World". I'm interested in suggestions about what language/platform/resources I should suggest. Something she could show off to my mom and their friends would probably have value to her. |
Once you log in, it's one click to choose python (or another language), one click to 'Create repl', and you can start typing code. One click to run it.
There's also tutorials, various templates to start from and other people's code to learn from.
Ugh, that's a high bar. I was going to suggest path "typewriter - print 'Hello world' - other commands - concept of memory etc.", but to have something nice-looking another path should be taken.
How about a simple web page? It can later be expanded. To have something good-looking in simple Python... hmm...
It seems to me that if she can’t install Python then she may not in general be a good candidate.
In my experience a whole lot of programming jobs involves things not directly linked to programming, such as installing languages, deploying projects, dealing with internal tools, and so on. If you lack the wherewithal to install and run python after reading or watching a few tutorials, you may not be cut out for the job.
I say this as a guy who learns very very slowly and who has to work extra hard to get the basics.
They said, the 72 year old woman is starting from zero. She may not have done anything at all yet (perhaps for lack of knowledge on where to start).
It is highly likely that she just thinks she wants to code, and will give up during the first step into the thicket of incomprehensibility involved in starting from zero. But the same exact thing could be said about a 12 year old starting out, and absolutely nobody would suggest that the 12 year old should be discouraged from trying. Rather, most everyone would cheer on the 12 year old and throw resources at them. (Pretty much the same ones people have already suggested here, so I won't add more.)
Bit of a pet peeve to me -- the older people get, the faster people will jump to say that they shouldn't do something new. Not that you were necessarily saying that, but it happens quite often.
> Bit of a pet peeve to me -- the older people get, the faster people will jump to say that they shouldn't do something new. Not that you were necessarily saying that, but it happens quite often.
I am also old and I am always trying things that take me out of my comfort zone. My answer was specifically meant for someone who wanted to be on track to work as a programming professional (which was nowhere near what OP mentioned). Age had nothing to do with my answer, by the way.
My dad (also 72) has been learning to play guitar lately. He's not very good, and his progress is slow, but he's thoroughly enjoying it.
In that case I was completely out of line. I think things like Codea or Codecademy would be fantastic.
I was an extremely good student who had all kinds of accolades but I'm also seriously handicapped. I've wanted to learn how to code for more than a decade and I've had people tell me I'm simply not really interested (because I'm not succeeding).
That's not true.
I don't know what piece I'm missing to get traction on the learning process, but I seriously want to learn.
I will add that at age 72, if she just uses it as a time filler and "never accomplishes anything," it's her time to fill as she sees fit. Why should anyone care if she studies and studies and never produces a single thing?
They did! I was way off: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31358958
Furthermore I think casual coding would be a fantastic way to spend some extra time.
> I will add that at age 72, if she just uses it as a time filler and "never accomplishes anything," it's her time to fill as she sees fit. Why should anyone care if she studies and studies and never produces a single thing?
You are completely right of course. I made up out of whole cloth the idea that she might be trying to do this professionally.
If you are helping, you could get her set up, and set up also PIP. A simple web scraping project could help her get started.
Bite-sized pieces, sensible order of presenting concepts, everything you need is in the browser.
Works in browser.
Also, Racket/Dr Racket is a very nice app with a lower learning curve and very very good tutorials.
I'm also day dreaming about programs that define knitting and yarning patterns as a follow up. The ageism.