Is programming really appropriate for a seven-year-old?

http://blog.reindel.com/2008/12/16/is-programming-really-appropriate-for-a-seven-year-old/

by epall • 18 years ago

12 48 18 years ago

blog.reindel.com

domnit• 18 years ago

Reading is another activity done in sedentary solitude. A seven-year old shouldn't spend all day reading or coding, and most wouldn't want to.

I wouldn't fret about how young to introduce programming to a kid. I learned to program when my dad worked from home one day and I asked him what he was doing.

newsycaccount2• 18 years ago

Careful or we'll never have another Einstein.

Shamiq• 18 years ago

don't worry. it's hard to fend off one of those.

ahoyhere2• 18 years ago

I think the whole post is needlessly inflammatory.

Sex isn't appropriate for a 7-year-old.

Programming? Whatever.

(Not to mention he assumes that any interest in programming comes from the parent leading the kid to do it. I discovered programming on my own at 6, thanks.)

qqq4• 18 years ago

Why is sex inappropriate for young people?

I'm not trying to troll. I've genuinely never heard a good, logical answer. It seems to be a feeling people have, and I'm curious if there is a reason behind it. Of course there are dangers like adult pedophiles, but supposing those were avoided... Perhaps it's better to consider just the case of seeing sex, not participating, and having play/pause/stop buttons in the child's control. People loathe that, but I'm not quite sure what harm is done besides the vague idea of "loss of innocence".

Hexstream• 18 years ago

Was I the only one to think sex was disgusting and immoral when I was young? (like, 5 years old)

mechanical_fish2• 18 years ago

there are dangers like adult pedophiles, but supposing those were avoided...

When trying to explain why the cultural taboo exists, I'm not sure you get to elide that problem. How do you "avoid" these dangers? Societies try to do so by inventing cultural taboos!

Sex is inappropriate for children because (society presumes) most of them are not equipped to say no and make it stick. They lack the emotional, financial, and legal resources to "break up" with abusive or manipulative lovers -- particularly if those lovers are adults, and most particularly if those adults are family members.

(Note that, by this logic, sex is also inappropriate for a lot of adults. And there might be some people who are legally "children" who are nonetheless responsible and wise enough for sex (I certainly wasn't one, and I can't say that I've ever seen any, but it is theoretically possible... :) Like many societies, American society tries to deal with this ambiguity by defining a magic calendar age at which children legally and morally become adults. Alhough nobody ever said that this was a particularly realistic model, it's the one we've got. We do tinker with it occasionally, on a case-by-case basis.)

Why sex and not, say, football? (It's a good question -- a lot of kids get hurt when they're pressured into playing football.) Probably because sex carries a particularly heavy set of practical, social, and emotional consequences that are difficult to separate from it. (Birth control helps a lot, but it is not enough, as many AIDS patients and stalking victims know.)

ahoyhere2• 18 years ago

I meant as "the having of sex" not "being aware of / seeing images of sex". I found out about sex at an early age too (thanks, Internet!) and it didn't twist me.

I'm with you on the general demonisation of sex-under-18. But I don't think I'd want my 7yo having sex. Not even with another 7yo. If that were possible.

gruseom3• 18 years ago

Not to mention he assumes that any interest in programming comes from the parent leading the kid to do it. I discovered programming on my own at 6, thanks.

Right. I have a nephew who is 8 or so and has been begging to learn how to program for at least a year. I almost got him an OLPC when they came out, but his father decided to hold off for a while.

I'm pretty sure that if I had run across computers at that age, instead of a few years later, I'd have felt the same way.

thorax• 18 years ago

I got one for my stepson (7) last year. He's had a lot of fun making random Weewar maps and looking up Zelda online, but the programming interest hasn't grown. Though he keeps wanting to "do a deal with Lucas and Nintendo" to write a Zelda and Star Wars game.

I started programming silliness at 12. I would have probably been fine getting into it earlier, but I'm not so sure I would have given it much mindshare earlier than that.

psyklic2• 18 years ago

I agree, it's a bit shock-jockish. His point isn't really that PROGRAMMING isn't appropriate, but that parents shouldn't force things on their kids too early.

tjr• 18 years ago

I started programming when I was about 11.

I don't remember which one of us found out about it first, but a friend of mine and I came to the realization that the Apple IIe computer in our school classroom had this thing called a BASIC Interpreter on it, and we could write files of instructions to tell the computer what to do.

We loved playing the Infocom text adventure games, and we figured out that we could use BASIC to do text input and output, and put in IF lines to direct the computer to print out this line or that line based on what the user typed in. So we started writing our own text adventure games. Very simple, of course, but we loved it.

Variably, one or two other people would hang out at the computer with us, offering suggestions and trying out some lines of BASIC. We decided that programming the computer was more fun than going outside to play at recess, so we began to stay inside when the other kids went out. At first there was no problem, but eventually our teacher became concerned that we needed more social time outside with the other kids, but agreed to let us stay inside to program every other day.

A kid who spends time programming probably isn't on the path to being a social butterfly, but very likely wasn't on that path in the first place anyway. Programming is not inherintly "anti-social" or (completely) "solitary", but it may be harder at a young age to happen upon peers who are interested in it as well.

Tichy3• 18 years ago

Why not just let the kids do what they want to do? Also, at 7 they already have maths at school. Why not throw in some LOGO exercises, too.

flashgordon2• 18 years ago

actually thats a good idea, but it has to be complemented with balance (ie for other activities too)... kids (like anyone else) may get too comfortable with routine and what they find easy, if they are not put in an environment that challenges all aspects of their behaviours and/or psyche.

dimitar• 18 years ago

Pair programming. Teamwork, tolerance, communication, patience. Not bad for children.

What bothers me is that computers are a lot less accessible today than in the 80s. I almost feel jealous that I didn't have an 8bit computer when I was a preteen :-).

I used to spend a big chunk of my free time then reading books in the library along with a couple of girls. We would then discuss with the other kids what cool books we had found. Reading and discussing texts is extraordinarily fun and it sparked my interest in reading. Programming can also be popularized the same way.

newsycaccount2• 18 years ago

Javascript?

VonGuard• 18 years ago

I think it's appropriate, but you have to start small. Get him or her a set of Lego Mindstorm. That's a bit over the kids head, but I'm sure you won't mind having to spend time playing with Legos to help the kid understand.

Robotics is great for teaching programming. Alternatively, get the kid a copy of the board game "Robo Rally."

gruseom3• 18 years ago

I worked with a guy who is a very good programmer, who told me that from about age 11, he would come home from school and program his TRS-80 until 1 AM or so every day. "And I did that," he said, "for about seven years." I was shocked: did your parents know? "Oh yes." And they didn't mind? "No, why would they?" Well, didn't they think you needed to go outside or something? "No, I guess not."

He's a very sweet, quiet and introverted guy whom some people think of as a little, uh, inaccessible. But as someone else commented, there's no way of determining cause and effect here. I'm inclined to believe he's just the way he is, and programming had little to do with it.

A story from the same project: we were designing something at a whiteboard and I said, about a sort of messaging sequence: It's like a game of frozen tag... when this thingy gets a message, it has to wait until another thingy comes along and starts it again. He said, "Frozen what?" Frozen tag. You know frozen tag? "No, what's that?" Well, you know what tag is, right? The kids' game called tag? "No. What's tag?"

I had to explain what "tag" was.

flashgordon2• 18 years ago

actually i am not quite so sure about "programming had very little to do with it"...

programming may have appealed to him given his personality, but that doesnt mean his personality is/was fixed and could not have changed... classic model is the TRD (Triadic Reciprocality Determinism) where the personality, behaviours and environment affect each other...

so in this case, he may have been mildly introverted, so the computer (the environment) offered temporary solace to his preference to introversion (personality) resulting in increasing usage (behaviors)...

now i am not saying there is anything wrong with introversion or doing what you enjoy, but you can always argue the benefits of such a choice on lifestyle and how it affects other parts of his life..

the worrying bit is the parents not thinking it was important to "go outside or something"...

ConradHex• 18 years ago

>I had to explain what "tag" was.

That's really scary. I can imagine the conversation. "It's a game that children play." "Chil...dren?"

axod• 18 years ago

In the UK it's commonly referred to as "it". Was he from the US?

patio11• 18 years ago

I spent a large portion of my childhood sitting in a corner with a book called Make Your Own Videogames, which taught Basic. I had no computer -- family wasn't doing well back in those days -- but I had a notebook, a pencil, a whole lot of patience, and a cheerful disregard for the notion that the fun part of playing videogames was playing them.

Nobody believes me when I say I had three years programming experience before I first touched a computer...

(I can so relate to not knowing what tag is. In my case, it was Star Wars. There was an immigrant in my high school at Spanish class who asked me about it -- eff if I knew -- so we went to another kid and said "Hey, Li here has never heard of Star Wars and all I know is the name, can you fill him in?" "Wait, you've never seen Star Wars." "Something to do with a Death Star, I know." "What country do YOU come from?!")

psyklic2• 18 years ago

I came home from school each day and programmed late into the night too. Unlike your friend, my parents DID think I "needed to go outside or something." haha

cubicle67• 18 years ago

I started programming when I was about 9.

I was at a friends place and he was showing me this new Vic20 his parents had bought him. I don't recall ever having anything to do with computers before, but he spent a while showing me how you can programme it. That was it. I was hooked.

I still have my Vic20 User Guide sitting on the bookshelf here. It's well worn, the back cover fell off years ago, but there's no way I'm getting rid of it.

petercooper• 18 years ago

It's important to note that starting early does not necessarily make you a good programmer as an adult.

I do not remember ever not programming. My first programming memories were at 6 but I have no memories before then anyway. I have pictures and my parents say I started with simple BASIC programs at about age 4. I started 6502 assembler at about 7, and C at 9. I was pretty good at C by 11, then went to Pascal, and so on and so forth.

Now? I'm formally a mediocre programmer at best - despite doing it for some 23 years now on and off. In this sense, I think programming early is no different to "drawing" or "writing" early.. just because you start early doesn't mean you'll be a top artist or author one day. If drawing and writing are appropriate for a seven year old, then why not programming?

a-priori2• 18 years ago

My brother and I both started programming around age 5 or 6 when we discovered QBasic. We switched to Visual Basic years later, then he lost interest. I picked up C++ and kept going from there.

Today, I'm a software developer and he's a network administrator. He has no interest in programming.

dangrover• 18 years ago

I started programming when I was 7 years old. I used this goofy thing called TrueBASIC, which was the result of the guys from Dartmouth who did the original BASIC trying to go back and modernize it. Then I moved onto HyperCard and a bunch of other languages like that.

It gave me a headstart in my field, but not proportional to the time spent.

What I did learn from these experiences making games and little apps with other kids online was that it's perfectly natural to put a ton of effort into something that no one else is expecting you to do. That you can actually have fun working and learning. That having real pride in your work is a motivator like no other.

This seems pretty common to us HN folks, but I know so many people who are afraid to do anything outside of school/work because the either the concept of intrinsic motivation is alien or because they're afraid to invest effort into something "unsanctioned" that they could fail at.

Eliezer• 18 years ago

I think I wrote my first programs at the age of five, on a ZX81 my uncle had put together.

Despite this exposure to BASIC, my programming abilities seem to have survived. So I would say - if they can hack it, GO!

viggity• 18 years ago

yes

known• 18 years ago

Programming = Practicing a New Religion

wjy• 18 years ago

Amen. That's exactly how it was for me. I think I was 10 or 11 when I got the Vic-20 I'd been begging for. I was hooked immediately.

jjs• 18 years ago

I would have done anything to program at seven. I knew that computer games were made by people (and sometimes, by a single person), and I was determined to do it, but nobody around knew how to get me started.

It wasn't till I was ten or eleven that a friend announced to me that he had found a program on his computer that would allow us to make video games (qbasic).

I think the thing I missed out on most is having a few more years of wildly creative programming without being encumbered by any ideas about the right way to program.

elviejo• 18 years ago

You don't want your child programming in six years.

You want her PLAYING... And she can PLAY with: Logo, Lego weDO, Lego MindStorms MIT Scratch, CMU Alice SmallTalk Etoys and OpenCorquet..

pretty entertaining, and educative... but most of all FUN

Retric• 18 years ago

Programming can be fun. Playing is also a form of learning. At 8 I had little interest in programming but once I figured out how to draw graphics using QBasic I was hooked. Point, Lines, Loops, a little math, and now my rocket ship has smoke rings as it moves across the screen.

ieatpaste• 18 years ago

Did anyone else start programming on TI calculators? I was 11 when I got a TI-83, which is essentially a portable editor and compiler. Not only could you write TI-Basic and z80 assembly, you could write pseudo-assembly with the Basic commands due to bad syntax checking - and you could do it anywhere! Oh the nostalgia. I lament the day my 83 died.

But was this to the detriment of my personality? I say no. Not only did it encourage relationships with like-minded peers, it also helped me understand the social attitudes through design (products for people's needs). I would like to think that I came out alright - socially-competent in respects. In fact, I'm not even the type that you would peg as a programmer.

jhancock2• 18 years ago

My boy will either start with Haskell or nothing at all. None of this imperative side-effect BS. Go functional or go home will be the word around my house!!! ;)

Tichy3• 18 years ago

Except that "go home" would be your house, right?

jhancock2• 18 years ago

;)

Is programming really appropriate for a seven-year-old?

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