Okay here we go; where do I start

I learned Pascal and C in HS; but it was in a classroom setting. I even started out as a comp sci major at A&M and got through some Java but alas I moved on to another major to finish out my bachelors...

Anyhow; where do I start with a 12 year old who is interested? I see there's some junior coding websites that teach very basic fundamentals of coding logic but do these mature into actually writing code and compiling into programs?

They seem "too childish" to me.

Good starting languages are Python (because it's easy to use) and JavaScript (if she wants to go the route of making a personal webpage and enhancing it).

Or, for the type of kid who gets bored in math class, the TI-8x graphing calculators have a built-in "Basic" language that can be used to program games.

Thanks, I've leaned into Python with her and got the free trial of codemonkey to start her off....

I do recall making my own basic games and a "Screensaver" in Basic on the TI; in fact it was when she was doing her math homework, and using a basic calculator and I said "hey when you get to algebra in a couple of months, I have a TI-83 graphing calculator" at work I can let her use. Then proceeded to brag that I used to write my own games on it in high school..... she was fascinated by the coding part and that's what kicked this off...

I went through these two programs:

https://cs50.harvard.edu/x/
https://cs50.harvard.edu/python/

I enjoyed them a lot, and the instructor makes the concepts very easy to understand and follow. There's also a ton of resources out there that will walk you through the projects in both of those courses if you get stuck, as well.

Neither are hand holding courses. She will most likely get stuck at some point. That might be a bad thing for some people, but they get you into the habit of learning how to find the answer and work through a problem by googling and learning new concepts.

I'm not a programmer, but I have to write scripts a lot for my job and both helped me out tremendously.

Edit: forgot to add that both are free unless you want a pretty certificate at the end.

SpreadsheetAg said:

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Thanks, I've leaned into Python with her and got the free trial of codemonkey to start her off....

I do recall making my own basic games and a "Screensaver" in Basic on the TI; in fact it was when she was doing her math homework, and using a basic calculator and I said "hey when you get to algebra in a couple of months, I have a TI-83 graphing calculator" at work I can let her use. Then proceeded to brag that I used to write my own games on it in high school..... she was fascinated by the coding part and that's what kicked this off...

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I agree on Python, it's a nice way to start and will run anywhere. Maybe dig into what she might want to code at a very high level. Does she want to play around with web apps, maybe also wrap it into building a standalone web server on Docker on an old machine in the house (lots of Youtube videos to follow), or more of building mobile apps or standalone apps? Probably just see if there is an area that really sounds like a lot of fun (even if it's extremely small, just like scanning for files, or finding things on the internet, or renaming something through automation) and then building off of that with a language that will fit.

I remember back in the 90s that I wanted to "build programs" but I had no clue what that actually meant (especially in the 90s), it would have been nice to kind of conceptualize what I liked about it. So I always give this advice for kids starting on the journey.

The two Harvard classes are a must imo. Personally I would start with Python since it is a more straight forward language but will still force you to learn how to structure things correctly. Once you have the syntax down moving to other languages is not as hard as when you first start.

The main thing is to stay with one language and not bounce around at first. You will be overwhelmed and confuse yourself. Use tutorials as that, but also work to build your own code off of it so you are forcing yourself to write. Use AI to help check your code and when it finds errors ask it to explain why it was wrong and give you advice on fixing it. Don't be afraid to fail and write code that breaks. It happens.

Choose our IDE and not only write in it, but learn how to use to help you. IntelliJ and Cursor are both good and have free editions. Even the paid are not that much monthly.

I have used these and enjoy their teaching styles. Coursera also has a lot of great classes that you can work with on a simple monthly sub.

Bro Code Youtube Channel
Code With Mosh

SpreadsheetAg said:

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Thanks, I've leaned into Python with her and got the free trial of codemonkey to start her off....

I do recall making my own basic games and a "Screensaver" in Basic on the TI; in fact it was when she was doing her math homework, and using a basic calculator and I said "hey when you get to algebra in a couple of months, I have a TI-83 graphing calculator" at work I can let her use. Then proceeded to brag that I used to write my own games on it in high school..... she was fascinated by the coding part and that's what kicked this off...

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I'm still in ticalc.org's top 100 most downloaded authors of all time, despite not having uploaded anything in years.

Nice! haha

For us Excel nerds, VBA is great.

I even write Excel macros that scraped my TexAgs post history, loaded it into the spreadsheet, and could mass edit old posts.

TexAgs implemented captcha if you made too many edits and it killed the tool. I guess TexAgs didn't want people pr0n blasting thousands of old posts.

OP, check out udemy.com where you can find lots of programming courses. Minimal investment - often courses are sold for $10-$20 on very modern tech stacks. There are very likely appropriate beginner courses for Java, JavaScript, C#, or Node.js.

Thanks guys (and gals); much appreciated

My opinion is that FatZilla's idea is best, followed by the Harvard free offerings. The programming language isn't important for starters. Instead, it's developing ability to problem solve using incremental steps. Involving a robot (or some sort of tangible aspect to the problem/solution) improves learning by from visualization or real world experience in the endeavor.

dr_java said:

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My opinion is that FatZilla's idea is best, followed by the Harvard free offerings. The programming language isn't important for starters. Instead, it's developing ability to problem solve using incremental steps. Involving a robot (or some sort of tangible aspect to the problem/solution) improves learning by from visualization or real world experience in the endeavor.

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Username checks out

Hey, he could be referring to coffee

Honestly have him learn about prompts and AI, computer science is changing like crazy software engineers probably will be doing less "coding" in the future and more integrating.

FatZilla said:

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adamsbq06 said:

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Honestly have him learn about prompts and AI, computer science is changing like crazy software engineers probably will be doing less "coding" in the future and more integrating.

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Realistically, this is a terrible idea. I cant tell you how many kids now coming out of college to our career fairs for IT/coding, boasting their skills yet it's all prompy based garbage they used to do their classwork for them. They never learned how to built/write code let alone debug it. Learn a base language, not prompt coding. It will not get you a job. Its at best an ancillary tool. Just learning how to write Java in college has helped me for 15+ years now. I never had to code a day in my career but i can read and understand it and most languages just by reading it over in a debug tool because of that base understanding of java. I can talk directly with developers as they demo work to me before it makes its way to the client. Being able to spot issues in the code and offer suggestions is critical.

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You have earned yourself a diamond and Morgan Freeman

I manage two different development teams. One is a backend team, the other is a full stack team along with a mobile app. AI has improved greatly, but if you take someone that doesn't know how to code and ask them to do something, especially when trying to integrate that code into an existing code base, it will be a disaster.

AI is usually pretty good when you have someone that knows what they are doing prompting it. However, it's not always right. If you don't have the skills to recognize what it got wrong, then you're screwed.

These last three posts are spot on. While it's important to understand and know how to effectively use AI with the way that software engineering is proceeding, it is far more important to know how to code so that you can spot errors when AI inevitably hallucinates or flat out gets it wrong. This is akin to handing a kid a calculator to do math without first teaching the kid to add, subtract, multiply, or divide.

I work for a software consulting company that is going heavily with AI. But one does not get hired there if they only know prompting (which in and of itself it not really enough; you need to also understand how to give the AI proper context, among other things). I came to this role with years of experience engineering software solutions in languages from Visual Basic and Delphi to C# and Java, with a lot of SQL and Oracle mixed in there as well. To that I have added AI in recent years, and today am starting a new project to modernize a client's code base from COBOL to Java with AI acceleration. I would not be on this project without my previous experience.

Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

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These last three posts are spot on. While it's important to understand and know how to effectively use AI with the way that software engineering is proceeding, it is far more important to know how to code so that you can spot errors when AI inevitably hallucinates or flat out gets it wrong. This is akin to handing a kid a calculator to do math without first teaching the kid to add, subtract, multiply, or divide.

I work for a software consulting company that is going heavily with AI. But one does not get hired there if they only know prompting (which in and of itself it not really enough; you need to also understand how to give the AI proper context, among other things). I came to this role with years of experience engineering software solutions in languages from Visual Basic and Delphi to C# and Java, with a lot of SQL and Oracle mixed in there as well. To that I have added AI in recent years, and today am starting a new project to modernize a client's code base from COBOL to Java with AI acceleration. I would not be on this project without my previous experience.

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I feel for you, had a similar experience modernizing a coalition of states tax integration backend to the feds and it was all in COBOL. We didn't have AI back in 2015 doing this and it was a royal PITA finding people who could read COBOL and translate its instructions to Java. The source code was literally 2 text files with millions of lines between them. Whoever they got to do it definitely got paid big moolah because everyone who programmed in it was pretty much retired by then lol

FatZilla said:

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Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

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These last three posts are spot on. While it's important to understand and know how to effectively use AI with the way that software engineering is proceeding, it is far more important to know how to code so that you can spot errors when AI inevitably hallucinates or flat out gets it wrong. This is akin to handing a kid a calculator to do math without first teaching the kid to add, subtract, multiply, or divide.

I work for a software consulting company that is going heavily with AI. But one does not get hired there if they only know prompting (which in and of itself it not really enough; you need to also understand how to give the AI proper context, among other things). I came to this role with years of experience engineering software solutions in languages from Visual Basic and Delphi to C# and Java, with a lot of SQL and Oracle mixed in there as well. To that I have added AI in recent years, and today am starting a new project to modernize a client's code base from COBOL to Java with AI acceleration. I would not be on this project without my previous experience.

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I feel for you, had a similar experience modernizing a coalition of states tax integration backend to the feds and it was all in COBOL. We didn't have AI back in 2015 doing this and it was a royal PITA finding people who could read COBOL and translate its instructions to Java. The source code was literally 2 text files with millions of lines between them. Whoever they got to do to definitely got paid big moolahb because everyone who programmed in it was pretty much retired by then lol

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I have actually done Cobol professionally, although that was 30-something years ago.