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

Thanks for the heads up; code.org looks like a nice aggregator.

Codea for iPad development looks interesting, and some other nice bits there. Hopefully they don't overpopularize the field and undermine DS's future earning potential.

I'm looking for something very introductory for my DD10 who loves Minecraft but has shown no interest in computers or programming.

Have any of you heard of or used CodeSpells?
https://sites.google.com/a/eng.ucsd.edu/codespells/home

I was reading this bit of PR, and it seems like something that might catch her interest.
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelea...velop_first_person_player_video_game_tha

This thread seemed to be the best place to ask for some opinions.

My DS9 has gotten into Codeacademy recently. When I was a kid, I had a book with a bunch of simple BASIC computer programs you could type in and play around with. It was called "What to do after you hit 'Return'".

I'd love to get him a book like that for Christmas (but ideally for a modern language yet beginner friendly language like Python or Javascript). Any ideas?

It was before Grails, at least. Never liked it myself, frankly.

For learning variables, flow of control and modularity almost any computer language will do the job. I have always liked the parsimony of C but each to their own.

I think that Code Academy looks like an interesting site - thanks Bostonian.

JavaScript is Not the same as Java the programming language. Java is a fine place to start learning to program, there is not need to start with C. In fact it's the language many universities use as a first language.

However JavaScript is a scripting language, used in HTML to add programming functionality to web-pages. They are NOT the same thing and learning one won't help learning the other.

Python is a great choice for a first programming language. There isn't as much ramp up learning all the nitty gritty details. It is in fact the language first introduced to Engineers at Berkley who have had no previous programming experience.

By the way this week is The Hour of Code... The idea being everyone should take an hour this week to learn a bit of coding. Many of the various code learning sites are offering free tutorials. Here's a good jump off point:
http://csedweek.org/

Even parents with no experience might like to try the Start link on that page and follow the first course which has video tutorials and uses a drag and drop language to solve tasks.

Thanks for posting this Zen Scanner!

DS7 has already done some basic coding before, but he just finished the Hour of Code a few minutes ago and really enjoyed it. It re-ignited his interest in learning to code. I know many of our kids are interested in learning to code, so I wanted to post again to make sure everyone knows about the Hour of Code Week!

Pi22

My son is currently doing codecademy. He is 8 and homeschooled. He chose to learn Python even though I thought he would want to do javascript (because of Minecraft?)
He really did not want to learn another visual block language, he wants to Type it in!

Anyway, I think it seems well designed. We just signed up and jumped in! He got his first two badges...

FYI, Minecraft is in Java, not Javascript. As mentioned before, they're very different languages entirely.

Javascript, originally developed by Netscape (now Mozilla), can basically be thought of as an add-on to HTML. It only runs in a browser, and it adds limited functionality to web pages.

Java, originally developed by Sun (acquired by Oracle), is a full-function, object-oriented programming language that can be used to write entire applications from the ground up. It runs within its own java virtual machine (JVM), which abstracts the application code from the OS and hardware of the machine it's running on. This makes any Java application fully portable from one machine type to another with no changes to the program code. You just have to install the correct JVM, and it interprets the program calls into the appropriate system calls.

Java is a pretty complicated beast to tackle, and as a first programming language, I'd recommend your DS's choice of Python over it.

And big kudos to him for deciding to learn to actually write programs!