Kids and Programming
Part of what interested me in computers at a young age and continues to interest me in them to this day is using the computer to create something. For me it does not get much better than when you want to do something with the computer and some code and you begin creating and seeing results. Over the years the biggest road block for me has been coming up with ideas of something I need to program. I would probably program a whole lot more if I could convince myself to reinvent the wheel more often. Sometimes I just like the wheel so much that I cannot bring myself to start from scratch on it, if you know what I mean. Still, a large part of the motivation to host a blog in the era of Facebook is that I created this place, right down to the software I blog with. It is sort of like the guy driving the car where he rebuilt the engine from scratch.
My first real exposure to computers was probably video games, somewhere along the line I decided I wanted to know how the games worked. The curiosity to know how to program computers occured right away and I am not sure why, I just wanted to know how to do it. This is a pretty common story for most of my friends that work in the IT field. Computers were not so common in the household when I was growing up. Most households did not have a personal computer, mine did not. My exposure was through my brother, the very few friends who had one and finally the terrible computer classes we had starting in Junior High. I wanted to know how to program the computer and I want my kids to at least have a basic understanding of what is behind that computer game, music player and web browser. Perhaps one or all the kids might actually decide they want to learn more and do some programming of their own. If not, that is cool too, but at least they will have had the opportunity.
Jake is the oldest at 7, which is probably just the right age to start introducing some basic programming concepts to him. He and Riley both love gaming, Riley got her own Leapster for Christmas this year. I stumbled upon a pretty interesting little game that teaches some very basic programming concepts, concepts I was certainly not exposed to at age 7. Light-Bot has some interesting puzzles that eventually require you to create functions for repetitive actions in order to complete the puzzle. Jake spent about an hour with Light-Bot and enjoyed the puzzles; at first the functions were confusing but he was using them after having them explained. For now this is a nice start as he and his sisters continue to master their keyboard and mouse skills. I have some other ideas to perhaps spur further interest later on, but I will wait until we venture down those paths.
