Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Recommend an online programming class?

I'm looking for an interesting, good quality computer programming course? Does anyone know of something they could recommend?

TIA

I can't recommend a specific online class.
A good first step would be to get familiar with ms-dos commands/batch files and/or UNIX/LINUX scripting. Batch files or scripts are often used by administrators to tell a computer when to start more complicated programs, do clean up, etc.
Experimenting in these areas can be a good way to get a feel for creating a logical step by step process, trouble shooting, etc.
Perhaps he has already taken this step.

Visual Basic is a pretty good first computer language to learn, still used a lot in business for small custom applications; Java allows for more sophisticated gui application creation.
C&C++ are used in biz for more back-end processing, just to give you some ideas of the languages out there.


I recently found this site for tutorials; if he is already actively self-teaching this might not seem too daunting. I do think a good class might help get the ball rolling faster and keep him from getting discouraged with just books and tutorials, and to give him more of an understanding of how a complex program is designed. That said, here it is.

http://www.roseindia.net/java/

This links to the java tutorial, but there are others as well. I am *trying* to learn about java/Struts, and the tutorial on this site was really really well done, imo. I liked that it gave a bit of background in addition to all the technical mumbo jumbo.
Also, the best part is: instructions and links for downloading software to just start writing code and compiling your programs!!
Actually, the more I read this site the better I like it

Good luck to your ds!

Your key question is what language he wants to learn first. If you pick something with an open-source implementation, there will be tutorials online: just google [language] tutorial. I would suggest Python first, because there are free implementations for every platform, lots of online documentation, and you can easily do cool stuff with it in very few lines of code. See e.g.
http://docs.python.org/tutorial/

I would think that a gifted 14yo would be fine with tutorials aimed at adults, I wouldn't bother looking for things specifically for children. However, if he likes the idea and it's in the budget you might consider getting an OLPC in the current give-one-get-one, see e.g.
http://www.amazon.com/One-Laptop-Child-OLPC-Give/dp/B001GB87EI
- this has a lot of very easy starting games/applications for learning Python (and it is linux underneath, so he can also use it for other things, in fact understanding how to go "under the hood" might be good in itself).

Or he could jump straight in with Java, using the Sun tutorials e.g.
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/

Or if he wants something that will stretch his brain in mathematical ways and seriously impress university admissions people, he could learn Haskell, see e.g.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4079/Yet-another-Haskell-tutorial

I would advise against shell and batch file stuff: it's not a good way to get the fundamentals of programming. I would very strongly advise against Visual Basic: hideous language, and platform specific too! A first language should be clean and well-designed, to start making the key ideas of programming plain. One can do the horrible but pragmatically useful stuff later. [Confession: yes, I teach this stuff in university.]

Hmmm..maybe that's why I never really dug VB.
I am surprised by your scripting comment, I think the logic skills (if then, etc.) are pretty paramount to programming. Sure they are structured differently, but I don't see how they couldn't help to get a feel for things.

Well, really, anything could help, I probably overstated. It's just that the scripting languages often have rather weird corners to their syntax, and people get hung up on that.

Probably what matters more is motivation. I know that, despite people trying to introduce me to it, I didn't really get interested in programming until I had a problem I wanted to solve but couldn't solve with paper and pencil, and then I used the first language that came to hand (which was C, probably not a great first language!)

I'm in a rush... but I now that Microsoft also has some good children-oriented programming resources:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/bb308754.aspx

is what I got very quickly. My children are too young to start, but I'm sure they'll get into programming with them time comes.

It depends what your child is interested in and wants to get out if. C# or Java are good places to start programming if they really want to learn the computer science aspects. (Although I wouldn't expect anyone to really learn object oriented programming without a lot of guidance.) I know that a lot of people tend to be down on Microsoft, but PCs are very popular and they do offer very good & free tools to the hobbyists.

VB, COBOL, scripting languages are all good for what they do, but I wouldn't recommend it to a hobbyist... Not the fun stuff IMO. StampBasic is something really consider too because you can build little robots and such and get a bit of exposure to hardware.

Also, the Alice program (http://www.alice.org/) is supposed to be good, but I haven't tried it. This is what Randy Pausch was working on.

JB

Alice is the same way, but it has Sims characters available for use.

Doesn't anyone use FORTRAN anymore?

I must be gettin' old...

Pascal? (I learned that in my high-school computer club)

Somebody's going to suggest COBOL next... :-)
(Seriously, Pascal is a nice first language, but Python is nicer, and nobody uses Pascal any more, so unless there was a specific reason for using Pascal, it wouldn't be a good choice.)