Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Codecademy (learning to program in Javascript)

Well, yes. But if you are writing web apps it is pretty much the name of the game.

Java actually has a good record of backwards compatibility, and such considerations are not a good way to choose an instructional programming language anyway. Java is not merely "a marketing tool"-- such statements should be ignored.

Nor is C# an object-oriented superset of C; its syntax is far more Java-like than anything else. Javascript is not "less of a language", but merely a different beast, a much more loosely typed browser scripting language.

Austin, I'm guessing you work in a Microsoft shop, am I right? Broaden your focus a bit. Bostonian is right in any event about the choice of a child's first language being unimportant in terms of long-term programming choice. What's more important is that the instruction is clear and provides a strong conceptual foundation.

Khan Academy will be teaching JavaScript as a first programming language, for reasons explained at http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-as-a-first-language/ . A recent book with good Amazon reviews on teaching programming with JavaScript is "Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programming" by Marijn Haverbeke.

CodingBat http://codingbat.com/ has online exercises in Java and Python. "CodingBat is a free site of live coding problems to build coding skill in Java, and now in Python (example problem), created by Nick Parlante who is computer science lecturer at Stanford. The coding problems give immediate feedback, so it's an opportunity to practice and solidify understanding of the concepts. The problems could be used as homework, or for self-study practice, or in a lab, or as live lecture examples. The problems, all listed off the CodingBat home, have low overhead: short problem statements (like an exam) and immediate feedback in the browser. The idea for CodingBat came from my experience teaching CS at Stanford combined with seeing how student's used unit-tests in more advanced courses, and crystalized when I saw an Owen Astrachan demo of a unit-testing thing he uses with his Duke students."

Google Code University http://code.google.com/edu/languages/index.html has tutorials for several programming languages.

MS .NET is the only valid competitor in the field with Java for "run on any platform" apps, except that full functionality dot-net only runs on one platform, which makes it the total joke of this conversation. It's just another marketing tool by MS to try to maintain itself as a proprietary monopoly, and they "borrowed" heavily from the Java design.

Enterprise application architecture has been moving slowly but inexorably to web services-based interfaces for the last decade or so, and the overwhelming majority of those services are running on a JVM... which is why Java programmers are a hot commodity at the moment.

Now Python has been added http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/python . AOPS also offers Python courses, for a fee. For the adventurous, try Haskell http://tryhaskell.org/ . I found it interesting but already have some programming experience.

Thanks for the reference, DS6 has poked around with Scratch and got a book on BASIC he was into. Python would be an awesome start for him (and I've been wanting to pick it up myself.)

Just remembered Logo and the turtle, was popular back in 80s when I worked at the education computer lab in college when we used Super Pilot to make CAI programs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/education/mechanical-mooc-to-rely-on-free-learning-sites.html
Free Online Course Will Rely on Multiple Sites
By TAMAR LEWIN
New York Times
August 21, 2012

A group of online-learning ventures is collaborating on a new kind of free class to be offered this fall, known as a mechanical MOOC (for “massive open online course”), that will teach a computer-programming language by patching together existing resources from open-learning sites.

Unlike courses already available online, the new class will not require a traditional instructor, or a large start-up investment.

The new course, “A Gentle Introduction to Python,” will blend content from M.I.T.’s OpenCourseWare, instant-feedback exercises and quizzes from Codecademy, and study groups organized by OpenStudy, and will be coordinated through an e-mail list operated by Peer 2 Peer University.

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I will mention this to my son, and if he learns from the MOOC, great. But a compiler/interpreter, a book, motivation, and brains is all that is really needed to learn programming.

Thought I'd pop back into the thread as DS6 has finally got his hands on the codecademy Python unit. What I thought might be a pop in and out thing, had him tied to the PC for hours over the weekend. Along with basics of programming, his keyboarding was improving, and he wrapped his head around the concept of variables and exponents.

Two minor criticisms on their Python course is the onsite interpreter is a little sluggish and unresponsive at times (tried on Chrome and Firefox) and some of the explanation texts are a little bit sprawly for a younger learner. On the other hand DS would skim to the exercise and have to go back and read more carefully when the exercise wasn't going right.

Thanks again for the reference.

The NYT has an article

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/...-icons-promote-youth-coding-in-new-film/
FEBRUARY 26, 2013
Gates, Zuckerberg, Other Tech Icons Promote Youth Coding in New Film
By NICK WINGFIELD

mentioning the site code.org , which seems to be an aggregator of other programming sites, including Codecademy .