Naked Science Forum

Non Life Sciences => Technology => Topic started by: thedoc on 22/09/2013 15:27:40

Title: How can we get children writing computer programs?
Post by: thedoc on 22/09/2013 15:27:40

Google have teamed up with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to get make software development tools available to children.

Read the whole story on our  website by clicking here (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/news/news/1000323/)

  

Title: Re: How can we get children writing computer programs?
Post by: syhprum on 23/09/2013 06:49:34

Of course you have to define what is a child but I think a ten year old who was a competent reader could be introduced to Basic.

Title: Re: How can we get children writing computer programs?
Post by: CliffordK on 23/09/2013 21:55:31

Quote from: syhprum on 23/09/2013 06:49:34

Of course you have to define what is a child but I think a ten year old who was a competent reader could be introduced to Basic.

Did you miss a couple of generations?
The Commodore 64 is quite obsolete by now. [xx(]

But, perhaps that is also a sign of what is missing in modern society.  When the Commodore computers came out, they really wouldn't do much unless one learned how to program in Basic, and getting printers to do things like italics or underlining often involved learning the printer codes. 

Young kids can often be quite competent computer users (if only they paid a little attention to DOS scripts too).  However, there is a difference between the high level using of applications and the low level functions available in the Raspberry Pi.  We will need future children who are willing to get down to the BASICs.

Title: Re: How can we get children writing computer programs?
Post by: alancalverd on 23/09/2013 23:17:54

I've never quite understood the point of teaching people that computers are a problem, not a solution. Programming in binary is fun if you have a good reason to do it, but simply writing code of any type without a meaningful physical task or equation to evaluate seems as pointless as Sudoku.

Any programming language or operating system you learn today will be superseded in a few years, but the equations of motion won't, and nor will their analytic solutions.

I was concerned to meet a class of primary school kids who had successfully managed to get a robot to turn through 360 degrees. After a whole term's work they seriously believed that a circle was defined as 360 straight lines that join up. 

Title: Re: How can we get children writing computer programs?
Post by: RD on 23/09/2013 23:32:42

Quote from: CliffordK on 23/09/2013 21:55:31

The Commodore 64 is quite obsolete by now. [xx(]

There are emulators (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emulator#Types_of_emulators) ... http://www.zzap64.co.uk/c64/c64emulators.html

Title: Re: How can we get children writing computer programs?
Post by: syhprum on 24/09/2013 08:37:30

I don't need an emulator I have a perfectly serviceable CPM computer, a few years back when my brain was running a 10% instead of the present 1% I used to write BASIC programs to solve the NEW SCIENTIST Enigma problems.

PS my neighbours 4 year old loves using my computer to print out pages of garbage but I have keyboard problems because infants schools insist on giving letters etc phonetic names instead of their conventional ones.