Just need your insights, or any input is greatly appreciated.

I've got a primary kid, he had seen me written some small program and maybe he's also watching me scratching my head trying to figure out how to get the program up and running.

At first he got motivated in learning programming, because he got some idea elsewhere that if you're good in programming you might earn some big bucks along the way. A work in progress trying to prove to him that programming will indeed bring in some few bucks. LOL.

But now it seems that he changed his mind and keep telling me that programming is hard.

He's quite good in solving games and puzzles which I think most kids do.

Question is, how do you motivate a kid to learn and be interested in programming?

If the kid is interested what should be the basic steps to get him on board to the world of programming?

What are the software for kids that is quite similar to the real world programming?Books, simulators, etc..

Thank you.

I guess the kid's too big to fit in the Skinner box by now, so you'll have to find something that piques their interest.

Python is an ok beginning language. Depending on the age, PyQt might be useful. Qt has a lot of easy to use tools for building nice user interfaces. It will come close to building the application for you and has hooks for several languages.

Are Android or Chrome relevant? If so, then it might be fun for you two to figure out some small app to show off on the phone or tablet. At this stage it wouldn't have to do much more than run.

Also, how is your or his interest or ability with hardware? There are a lot of rpi and beaglebone projects and kits out there that need various amounts of wiring.

Dunno ... "don't push, Dad." If he's truly interested in programming, for reasons other than "big bucks," he'll come back to it. (As for me, I found the subject irresistible, long before "personal" computers existed. I still do ...)

Programming is hard. Lots of people don't appreciate how hard it is, because it looks easy.

Sounds like it may be a lost cause, you may want to move on to the Secondary kid. KIDDING! I just found the use of the term "Primary Kid" unusual for my perceptions. Likely just different ways people say stuff, no offense intended.

I have three kids who are grown. And unfortunately my stories are more to the tune of "you can bring the horse to water, but you can't make them drink it" variety.

One of them would seem to be highly capable and proficient at being an engineer. They're not. They've been given the offerings of tools and options, many times along the way. Unfortunately his engagement with puzzle solving is truly gaming oriented, and the puzzles he wishes to solve are to get to nirvana and have tackled the game entirely, for his own self satisfaction, etc. He alone among my kids has the natural abilities to perceive solutions at what I call a second level. I.e. in chess you play so many moves ahead in time? Same thing, my son here is capable of reaching deductive conclusions early and being able to replicate that, also adapt it to other things. For instance I told him at a very young age, to add 9, you can add 10 which is very easy, and go back 1. He figured out adding by 5's, which is easy; but not to those who don't even wish to put in any brain power at all towards it. So to see a grade school aged kid just learning math, actually "get it" fast, is good. But he's resisted taking any further steps.

Another one of my kids self deprecated their self a lot saying they were not good at classes. They got near to trouble with grades, enough so that progression through school was a potential issue. Therefore tutoring, assistance, and a lot of parental attention. They ended up making the honor role within a year and were very please with their self. I mentioned "See? You CAN do it!" It's just not easy. Ultimately they started college, but withdrew.

And not discounting my third kid, they're in a special situation and work/school are not in play for them.

Unfortunately I don't know the secret sauce here. I grew up in a typically dysfunctional family, lost a parent, went to work at like 10 or 11 when kids could actually do paper routes on their bikes, and went to formal work at 15 by lying and saying I was 16. When I went to college it was because I WANTED too, I felt it was mandatory and since I knew that advanced placement from high school benefited me at the college level or placement, I did 2 1/2 years of Math my senior year and placed out of college Chemistry and the first year of college Math. Did my first all-nighter the evening before the A/P test so that I could succeed at it. I can't say what gave me and my closest sister our drives to make our lives what they are, and believe me if I knew; I'd try to impart that to my kids. Honestly, no one guided me, our family was split around and all working, so maybe as kids we looked at that and decided to want more.

A problem these days is social online stuff as well as availability of everything else. There obviously were no cell phones and the internet didn't truly exist when I was a kid, plus cable TV wasn't there. So you got our of high school, got an apartment, and your two or three biggest things were rent, electricity, and phone.

Hah-Hah!

What sundialsvcs said! Just I said a LOT more!

It's difficult to tell how old your son is so it is difficult to recommend anything beyond the basics. Certainly game programming is both fun for most kids and aalso a huge industry that is not likely to ever dry up, but I am thinking even more fundamental than that. I would like to suggest books ort any media that exposes people to the crystalline beauty of Mathematics, the code under the code.

Hi guys, thank you so much for all your reply.

I actually introduce "Scratch" to him, and he seems interested and started doing it. But due to the fact that I need to find food for the table so I wasn't able to keep track of his progress. Now he's scared of programming already I'm not sure what happened along the way.

But I guess some valuable insight here that "you can bring the horse to water, but you can't make them drink it".

Yup, I think kids nowadays are just quite hard to understand.

Parents work too hard to give them a good life, and the result is they come out with a thinking that life is too easy because parents are there to support them. And therefore got no interest when something hard gets on the way.

I think only time can tell what gets on but I will still try to influence him with what I think is best for him.


Thank you guys.

Well said.

I think kids who like to take things apart have more chance to enjoy to learn how to program rather than those who just like playing and solving games.

I'm not sure if you were referring to my post but regardless please note that some games come with software to program/alter levels. Almost all games can be altered with some specific software and LUA coding is common to many games and allows for creating new games. There are free game engines available for budding coders and for the TLDR Generation the ability to see fun results almost immediately is very seductive.

Not to say it for them, but my interpretation of what keefaz was saying was that in general, anyone who is inclined to take stuff apart and figure out what makes it work, this type of person is a self starter at learning and thus they would be inclined to be more successful and durable over time as far as dealing with setbacks. My whole profession is electronics and engineering and basically if you send a prototype to our company for analysis, we're going to take it apart with the thinking that you wish us to fix it, re-design it, reverse engineer it, improve it, etc. So the local joke is our question upon receiving something from a client "So are we or are we not taking this apart?!?" I was that way with bikes when I was a kid, with cars when I started driving, with "The Amazing Eject O'case!" (Fridge beer dispenser) in college, and so forth.

Yes that's the spirit

@enorbet, I agree with what you're saying but I was thinking in a general perpective, a kid having curiosity in how things work, not just playing with what is presented

Same as learning a violin, you make them then they love it!

True. I have no solid idea if Erector Sets and Astronomy books changed me or I loved them because I was already wired that way.... but they surely didn't hurt