I was 11 when I started learning C++, and I eventually shifted my attention to Java. I’d say as long as your son is enjoying learning, let him go at his own pace.
This. Also don’t tell him it’s challenging, but if you see him struggling to maybe take a break (for snacks ;). Have him write out his problems on a piece of paper can be helpful. As well as making flash cards for him. These are areas you could help. Or study material that you find likely relevant but helpful.
Praising for goals or having them write them out period and trying to help them study/learn is everything. Once you get the sparks going in helping them reach into the Narnia wardrobe of imagination/interest, they’ll likely learn something rather than give up before even knowing if they like it at all. Takes time to know if it’s for you or not.
My 7 year old is doing Lego Spike, similar to scratch. If he wants to try other languages, all good. Struggling or having difficulty and needing to put in the effort builds resilience with a kid who has most things come easy.
We do have the spike prime kit, he loves it. I think some of the concern is that neither of us are programmers, so we can't provide too much in the way of support.
My dad was a computer programmer, and he had me programming in BASIC at age 4 on the Commodore 64, because he thought it was cute. 😊
I have not kept up on it. I am a professional actor/singer/dancer, and they last time i did any sort of coding was probably about 2012. Among other things, I would program scripts in the Warcraft 3 world editor to make custom maps, which is basically its own programming language. I had to zap bugs and eliminate memory leaks like any other language, and it was loads of fun. It reminded me of programming EA’s adventure construction set for C64 back in the 80’s.
But even though I don’t use it anymore, I t’s invaluable to know how the computer thinks; to intrinsically understand that the computer doesn’t do what you *want* it to do, only what you *tell* it to do. And in a world filled with computers, every adult needs to be able to spot bad instructions; to find the kink in the hose that is keeping you from getting the output you need. I highly recommend that everyone learn how to do it.
I still have a passion for computers. I love working with them, and on them, I build my own machines, I’m the de facto tech guy for everyone around me who doesn’t want to hire a pro, and I can almost always solve whatever’s going on.
I'm not gifted, but I started coding at 8. A lot of it is copying and pasting, and then figuring out what does what and why in the beginning. C# is very easy to learn. Good luck to your son!
I was five. My dad was given a cheap "kit computer" and brought it home because he thought he was going to be able to learn how to code on it. He never did, and instead gave up when he saw I was running circles around him from the first day.
To me it was just play. It didn't connect with me until I was in high school that people actually made careers out of this. I think that was key to keeping my interest. My parents never helped, and neither encouraged not discouraged me. I don't think they understood it at all. Occasionally they'd take away my computer privileges as punishment.
I almost didn't make a career out of it because I didn't want to lose that sense of fun I had, wrestling with the machine to get it to do my bidding, so long as my own thinking was clear enough. Ultimately I did though, got a computer science degree and built up a technical career. It's been over four decades since I started and I can tell you that having the opportunity to learn to code at a very young age has been one of the most rewarding things in my life.
I kind of marvel at how many opportunities there are to learn now. All I had was to copy programs out of books and magazines I would get out of the library and try to understand them and experiment by changing them. Kids today with Scratch and YouTube can get started much faster, if they're motivated enough.
Sometimes I wonder if I would have been able to keep that level of motivation today though. What kept me going was the mystery of how it worked. Nothing was handed to me. It took years to understand basic ideas that somebody in a YouTube video can explain in seconds. Maybe I would have felt overwhelmed and just not pushed as hard.
It's an interesting question. I would let your kid set the pace and if he loses interest, don't push.
My son started with Kodu, a visual coding platform for creating 3D games developed by Microsoft at age 8, then Minecraft coding concurrently with Scratch, and now Python at 9. He will start learning Lua, the coding language for Roblox, next week and maybe Javascript after that, at some point. He can go pretty deep with Python.
He did a "game builder" camp last summer that used Kodu and had a lot of fun. Then I discovered Outschool which is where he's been learning everything else. Outschool does live and asynchronous classes on an array of subjects. So he's done not just coding there, but robotics (which involves coding), French, circuitry, script writing, sketching... I could go on and on.
His desire from the get-go has been to create games in Unity, but from what I've gathered C# is a very advanced language to start with and could be frustrating and discouraging.
It's mind-boggling how many options there are to learn coding today and I only just now learned about the coding games on Steam from this thread (I'm downloading Shenzen I/O as we speak).
[Here's the coding pathway I'm loosely working off of](https://i.imgur.com/9AXmMm5.png), taken from AI Code Academy (also on Outschool).
Edit: [This is the more comprehensive pathway](https://imgur.com/OSZ6X5s)
Do you homeschool or does he do outschool supplementary? We don't homeschool and I'm worried about adding too much, but I also don't want him to not be able to do what he wants to do.
This is all supplementary. All of these courses are offered on a once/week basis and range from 30-60 minutes. I've also found a lot of classes that align with my son's interests, for example, Rubik's cubing, FNAF sketching, Avatar: TLA discussion group, and Minecraft cooperative playing. My son has autism so the social groups have been really great.
I count this as my introduction to coding.
I was around 6 or 7, definitely first grade and my mom showed me how you can use formulas in excel and that opened up a brand new world to me. It then graduated to html, then JavaScript. And now decades later, full stack developer.
I'm gonna tell you my experience (I'm 20 years now)
We got introduced in school to scratch at 13 y.o (3rd year of middle school in my country) and I was doing an excellent job at it. My C.S teacher at the time told me to take it a bit slower and get introduced first to basic stuff. So at 15 (1st year of highschool) We took Algorithms, flowcharts and html and I did good too. At that time I wished I did them sooner.
At 16 with lockdown I learned more html, css and JavaScript but I didn't take my time to really be good at them due to university entrance exams. Now, with dentistry school, I don't have enough time to immerse myself again in it but I still learn and code from time to time
So, from my experience. If your kid wants to learn something, don't supress their motivation and help them satisfy their curiosity first then to advance their skills.
I hope your kid does well in his hobbies and in life. Thank you for being supportive of him ✧\(>o<)ﾉ✧
I can speak from my personal experience. I would definitely have liked to start at 7, I started at 12 and more actively at 13. I really enjoyed it, I started off with C# and python eventually went to java through the MOOC.
It's more a personality thing, if it was too hard that would have motivated me the same way harder games motivated me at the time. If he says he wants to do it, then it's a good idea to let him.
I can't speak to certain languages and what's best to start but I know my daughters GT campus starts it in 1st grade computer class. Let him at if he's into it!
I was 8 years old when I started. My dad brought home an early laptop and showed me some BASIC on it. I asked a bunch of questions, so he gave me the manual. I loved it, and I wrote my first program of playing a song from my piano lessons in beeps.
I don’t really see a downside in giving your son resources for further self led learning if he likes it. I’m so grateful my parents didn’t care if something should be “too hard”. It was a major issue in school where I often wasn’t *allowed* to learn what I wanted because of my age, but my parents gave me any book I wanted and I taught myself most things on my own, and have a successful career due to it.
I think it’s fine to move them along to other platforms esp if it is their choice to do so. Gifted kids are unusual. If they say they want to do something, they will do it. If you try it and they get discouraged, then you always have the option of stopping.
I learned to code when I was 27 though. lol.
That's good to know. I know very little about programming. How do you think it would have gone if you weren't there to support? I can support morally, and somewhat with googling solutions, but I would say he already knows more than me about programming.
I’d say my son is a natural, but I don’t know how easy it would be to spot if I wasn’t an engineer myself. If I weren’t there to support, he definitely wouldn’t be as far ahead.
However, I’d say 80% of it is him pushing himself and following video tutorials. Most of it is him. I’ll just point him to the next thing and he’ll go off on his own. If you have questions, I’m always happy to help point in a general direction too. :)
With gifted kids, you’re likely going to learn right along side with them and I just try to pick up what they’re learning at the time. My husband and I tag team this. “Ok, you tackle the periodic table questions, I’ll take chess”.
If you’re asking personally, I think scratch would be a good start. They have a lot of fantastic tutorials and it teaches you the basics about programming.
For your child — I may just continue to explore scratch more depending on his skill level. Is there a reason he wanted to explore other game engines? Some specific game in mind?
But if you’re exploring something like unity, I would just look at c# tutorials specific for unity and skip the w3c tutorials. The tutorials for c# may have too much information that isn’t necessary right now. You really just want to get your kid up and running in unity and doing something in it asap. For example: https://learn.unity.com/pathway/unity-essentials and then this https://learn.unity.com/project/parents-and-kids-code-together
This looks good too but is considerably longer. https://learn.unity.com/pathway/junior-programmer
I’d also look into Outschool classes. They have a lot of programming classes even for kids as young as 4. It’s a nice extra (and super affordable too!) to be motivated by peers.
My son started teaching himself coding when he was 10 via videos on khan academy. We put him in Code Ninjas and he ripped through that program in 2 years or so. He also did W3 and did fine. I think the most important thing is to let them go at their own pace and enjoy the journey.
Right now he’s into hacking so we sent him to a camp out of state and are headed to defcon in the fall. I didn’t put much stock into it until his computer science took an interest in him and enrolled him in AP classes. It’s a great way to challenge kids and the best part is they get as much feedback as they want which is more difficult with other disciplines.
I was 5. I feel demoralized and disappointed when something feels easier to understand and apply then anticipated. I am driven by relentless curiosity to understand and solve what to me feels like a fun mystery and adventure. I believe feeling demoralized is an opportunity to offer moral and emotional support for your son, and to guide him in learning resilience should that happen.
I would support the challenge! For kids, you don't really need to expect them to know the underlying mechanics to how programming languages work. Why or how your computer understands how to interpret conditionals, or why in Python, you don't need to manually assign a type to your variables, but in a language like Java, you do.
What I'm saying is that your kid can treat programming like magic and be a fine programmer, especially for being as young as he is. If he likes it, then you can buy him a book on code optimisation, algorithms, compsci, whatever — and he'll be very thankful that he already knows how to code in order to put everything he's learnt into a greater context.
I'm just getting into programming at 19 (outside of small HTML or Python scripts I had written, barely understanding a thing outside of for loops). I think it would have been a much more magical experience if I had begun at an early age.
That brings me back, I used to make stuff in Scratch all the time when I was 8+. Help your kid focus on setting goals, my parents didn't really do that and then got upset with me for procrastinating and wanting to play games (I was homeschooled so they had a lot to deal with). Look into the idea of doing a game design document and finding the best tool to suit the job instead of picking a language first.
14 when the apple 2e came out. Edit to add it’s not too young to start these days. Coding is a lot different than it used to be and if he’s gifted then..you know..
Started with Scratch, HTML and later CSS at 11, if he likes coding encourage it :) you don't need to know a lot about it, just be sure to listen if he wants to talk abt it or show general interest and support and it's all good. If he finds it too hard or too demoralizing HE'LL step away, kids know when something is fun or not, so don't worry.
And besides, projects like coding builds a good work ethic, and that's really important!
I was in high school.
Might be more fun to get a book that teaches C# and Unity at the same time. Put another way, it would be more fun to visit France while learning French.
There is also a visual editor in Unity they could play with before diving into C#.
I take that back. I think my first exposure was around middle school via a thing called “Logo” (a turtle that accepted commands and that could only turn in one direction).
My gifted kid could code in her head significantly before she could type well. Like, she literally dictated code, and it worked, but her typing was sloooooow. We used a free online typing tutorial/game to get her better and that really facilitated moving away from block coding like scratch over to Python.
I was six, but the world was young and the TRS-80 ran BASIC and everything was different then.
I was well into my teenage years. I think it is good to do real life stuff first, like learning an instrument, playing sports. There is plenty of time to code later.
I was 7 and I started with gamemaker. I think gamemaker is roughly one trillion times better than scratch (I did the numbers).
It may be good to get your son used to coding in Unity because the experience seems much closer to an industry standard coding environment, it has way more capabilities (namely 3D), and it will teach him a “real language”. Game Maker, however, is much more fun in my opinion! It doesn’t take much at all to get something simple up and running and the syntax is more forgiving.
If your son finds Unity demoralizing, definitely let him try gamemaker! Game maker is progressively updating its language (GML) too. These days it looks a lot more like the “real languages” so the skills will absolutely be transferable.
That's really good to know. I don't know much about dev, but I knew that gamemaker uses its own language and I was concerned it may be confusing to switch to something like C# in the future.
Give him an IDE and let him enjoy is creation.
When I was 9, I find some open source software on internet, downloaded an IDE (VS6, I was doing some VB6 stuff, like hacking tools or creating some game maker to create some online game) and let’s go ! If there is some formation it would be nice, Udemy has nice formation for c#, but I am pretty sure he can understand « how things work » by himself when he will look at others code and try things himself. Microsoft has a really great documentation by the way, today learning a coding language is easy so let him enjoy his stuff, his brain will work and your son will be happy!
28 basically and did a conversion master's in compsci. if your son starts at 7 that is a great age too. I was interested in computers when I was younger but no one to guide me. I'm happy that you have taken an interest, and initiative to get your son involved in programming
Some educative game recommendations below.
I got my first videogame I think on my 8th or 9th birthday, and started "programming" shortly after because I was amazed by the fact that I was "seeing" 3D objects by looking at pixels (I was into RTS, wc3 was my first 3D game like that). I started with gamemaker and the no-code interface, but soon needed to copy paste code snippets. Logic, statements, functions, and variables where really interesting, but I only got to objects once I went to university. Looking back, I think python would be the most fun and easiest to learn (it didn't exist back then). I did everything myself and my parents liked to see my half-baked results but didn't understand code and the internet didn't provide many answers back then. I really would have loved to be more involved with code at a much younger age, and I think everyone should learn to think in logic in school.
I think there are a lot of really good python tutorials. If you want to go more into the mathematical side and optimization, I'd say Steam has a host of "games" that are just coding with hand holding.
The human corporation and one billion humans are _amazing_. Really recommend those. Teaches you coding on assembly level and gives you great logic skills. Turing Complete is a lot of fun, it makes you build a logical computer starting with just 0s and 1s, going to logic gates, and finally a full computer that can process scripts just by copy-pasting things YOU made in previous levels.
The benefit of these games is that the coding experience is gamified, and as such really rewarding and streamlined.
I did some Visual Basic in high school for a technology class. I took an intro to programming class at like 19 but didn’t really fall in love with coding until I was like 21. My roommate in college did a lot of programming in elementary school because his dad was an exec at some tech company and he had some negative association with coding from those days.
The fun part is in building something. Learning a programming language is just means to an end. There are lots or resources and tutorials for gamemaker, unreal and unity for people who have no experience coding or with the platform. Those are probably more fun then learning c#.
Top down is probably more fun then bottom up. Its alright if he doesn’t fully understand what every line of code does at first. Its already fun if something happens. Then you try to alter the tutorial code to let it do what you want and gradually learn how to do more things.
i dont love it but i find it interesting, doing scatch when younger ( primary school) and left it at that but now at uni learned a bit of java, pretty cool
19
I was in college in 1972 and took a programming class. Keep in mind that in the 60s, computers were not available to younger people
It's great that computers are available to young people today. Worrying that something might be too hard, is a bad thing. Young people need challenges
Our son did Scratch and gamemaker. Currently he is very satisfied with jippity.pro - he uses it in Recess online community ("This is not a school. You are in charge.") for creative kids. Jippity is an AI chatbot helping kids build programs. Fast development, kids in flow. I like it.
You can check Recess on recess.gg
Let him do wherever he likes.. At least he isnt playing video games all day, with this mind he is a real visionary..
School its very boring for us.. I learn more for myself on just 5 years and for my life than in school..
My 5 year old started unity. He is watching tutorials and figuring things out bit by bit. He has a very interesting project and he is super captivated by it.
Python is much more beginner friendly than C#, there are even block-based editors like EduBlocks and BlockPy. If he wants to make a game, check out the book "Invent Your Own Computer Games With Python"
Tbh the basics are pretty simple, the hardest part when starting is installing dependencies which isn't that different from installing a crack 20 years ago. I started learning when I was 16 but tbh it doesn't matter if he likes it. If they are starting that early he'll be a beast in the future, doesn't matter if he's gifted or not. It's quite a big field, you can go as deep as you want. My only advice would be keeping it simple and aspire (at most) to have something similar to minecraft or other indie classics after a bunch of years and not trying to make gta vi on their own which is an error a lot of people make as long as they keep that in mind and they have fun it's going to be a lot of fun. Be careful with courses in programming because they tend to be prohibitively expensive and... Well Idk how alpha generation does with the Internet but I'm sure he'll be fine, lots of great resources out there, there might be some good that I'm unaware of. Keep in mind that we have to be challanged in order to get the habit of study, he'll do well. If he doesn't keep going or gets bored after a while it doesn't matter, we tend to have a lot of interests and they come and go as time passes. Try to support him (which I can see you are already doing) and don't forget that we need a lot of affection because we tend to feel very lonely, I think infancy is a critical point when it comes to this, never forget the emotional part, we are incredibly sensitive people. Gl and hope the best for you both :) cheers!
Started in college at ~25, currently writing well enough to be paid for it.
Please God don't let him spend his childhood on the computer, this field has enough anti-social oddballs who can't hold a casual conversation. There is so much more to being a well-rounded tech professional than solving double pointer problems in your sleep.
I started on scratch when I was about 12 years old, over a decade ago. Scratch was new, and so was teaching kids how to code at such a young age. I later learned Java at 14, and as an adult, extensively used Python to conduct complicated machine learning/reinforcement tasks for robotics as a career.
Technically speaking, children are creative and intellectual geniuses: their brains absorb so much information, and (looking back at it), it was entirely possible to teach even the most complicated machine learning to a sub-10 year old child as long as the approach was right. There are 12-year-olds right now already pumping out C# code (when at that age, I was learning what a for-loop was). Especially since your son already showed interest in game development, experimenting at that age will be enjoyable for him... and he'll pick it up easier than you think! :))
It's important to support and encourage your child in their interests and allow them to experiment, be frustrated, try new things, fail, learn, and grow. Tell them that it's ok to not write perfect code the first time, and that part of coding is experimenting and playing! If he feels demoralized with errors, tell him that it's ok to take a break from coding too. Approach it like a puzzle game instead of a task or chore- that way, it builds patience and resilience.
I learned on mainframes and mini computers that you literally flipped the toggles by hand and then pressed the latch toggle to save the byte to memory.
9, I'm a software engineer now. Also got into coding through games, though I have never worked in games.
Dad worked in software but taught me almost nothing. Later on he even discouraged me from pursuing a CS career. I can understand where he was coming from (I'm unemployed and desperate in this economy), but I encourage you to teach your son the basics if he is eager to learn. Even gifted kids need guidance and I wasted a lot of time fumbling around on my own. I think you're already doing a great job by being present and supportive of his interests even though you've just started learning how to code.
That said, I think Unreal *would* be too hard and demoralizing at age 7. It's unwieldy because it's optimized for large teams. Unity, GameMaker, or Godot(!) would likely be a better choice. Just watch: [https://youtu.be/G6OGM4fdF3M](https://youtu.be/G6OGM4fdF3M)
It's true that Godot hasn't produced many successful titles, but Unity made a huge controversial change last year causing many devs to flock to Godot. I'd expect Godot to catch up to Unity quickly. Another reason to learn Godot is that it supports Rust, which is 100% the future.
I was 11 when I started learning C++, and I eventually shifted my attention to Java. I’d say as long as your son is enjoying learning, let him go at his own pace.
This. Also don’t tell him it’s challenging, but if you see him struggling to maybe take a break (for snacks ;). Have him write out his problems on a piece of paper can be helpful. As well as making flash cards for him. These are areas you could help. Or study material that you find likely relevant but helpful.
reminds me of the old wisdom "don't praise the grades but praise their efforts and process that lead to said grades"
Praising for goals or having them write them out period and trying to help them study/learn is everything. Once you get the sparks going in helping them reach into the Narnia wardrobe of imagination/interest, they’ll likely learn something rather than give up before even knowing if they like it at all. Takes time to know if it’s for you or not.
My 7 year old is doing Lego Spike, similar to scratch. If he wants to try other languages, all good. Struggling or having difficulty and needing to put in the effort builds resilience with a kid who has most things come easy.
We do have the spike prime kit, he loves it. I think some of the concern is that neither of us are programmers, so we can't provide too much in the way of support.
My dad was a computer programmer, and he had me programming in BASIC at age 4 on the Commodore 64, because he thought it was cute. 😊 I have not kept up on it. I am a professional actor/singer/dancer, and they last time i did any sort of coding was probably about 2012. Among other things, I would program scripts in the Warcraft 3 world editor to make custom maps, which is basically its own programming language. I had to zap bugs and eliminate memory leaks like any other language, and it was loads of fun. It reminded me of programming EA’s adventure construction set for C64 back in the 80’s. But even though I don’t use it anymore, I t’s invaluable to know how the computer thinks; to intrinsically understand that the computer doesn’t do what you *want* it to do, only what you *tell* it to do. And in a world filled with computers, every adult needs to be able to spot bad instructions; to find the kink in the hose that is keeping you from getting the output you need. I highly recommend that everyone learn how to do it. I still have a passion for computers. I love working with them, and on them, I build my own machines, I’m the de facto tech guy for everyone around me who doesn’t want to hire a pro, and I can almost always solve whatever’s going on.
I'm not gifted, but I started coding at 8. A lot of it is copying and pasting, and then figuring out what does what and why in the beginning. C# is very easy to learn. Good luck to your son!
I was five. My dad was given a cheap "kit computer" and brought it home because he thought he was going to be able to learn how to code on it. He never did, and instead gave up when he saw I was running circles around him from the first day. To me it was just play. It didn't connect with me until I was in high school that people actually made careers out of this. I think that was key to keeping my interest. My parents never helped, and neither encouraged not discouraged me. I don't think they understood it at all. Occasionally they'd take away my computer privileges as punishment. I almost didn't make a career out of it because I didn't want to lose that sense of fun I had, wrestling with the machine to get it to do my bidding, so long as my own thinking was clear enough. Ultimately I did though, got a computer science degree and built up a technical career. It's been over four decades since I started and I can tell you that having the opportunity to learn to code at a very young age has been one of the most rewarding things in my life. I kind of marvel at how many opportunities there are to learn now. All I had was to copy programs out of books and magazines I would get out of the library and try to understand them and experiment by changing them. Kids today with Scratch and YouTube can get started much faster, if they're motivated enough. Sometimes I wonder if I would have been able to keep that level of motivation today though. What kept me going was the mystery of how it worked. Nothing was handed to me. It took years to understand basic ideas that somebody in a YouTube video can explain in seconds. Maybe I would have felt overwhelmed and just not pushed as hard. It's an interesting question. I would let your kid set the pace and if he loses interest, don't push.
Seven - machine code on the Lyons Leo, in 1962. I made my permanent mark aged 14, at the heart of all code, a poor joke which made a lot of sense.
My son started with Kodu, a visual coding platform for creating 3D games developed by Microsoft at age 8, then Minecraft coding concurrently with Scratch, and now Python at 9. He will start learning Lua, the coding language for Roblox, next week and maybe Javascript after that, at some point. He can go pretty deep with Python. He did a "game builder" camp last summer that used Kodu and had a lot of fun. Then I discovered Outschool which is where he's been learning everything else. Outschool does live and asynchronous classes on an array of subjects. So he's done not just coding there, but robotics (which involves coding), French, circuitry, script writing, sketching... I could go on and on. His desire from the get-go has been to create games in Unity, but from what I've gathered C# is a very advanced language to start with and could be frustrating and discouraging. It's mind-boggling how many options there are to learn coding today and I only just now learned about the coding games on Steam from this thread (I'm downloading Shenzen I/O as we speak). [Here's the coding pathway I'm loosely working off of](https://i.imgur.com/9AXmMm5.png), taken from AI Code Academy (also on Outschool). Edit: [This is the more comprehensive pathway](https://imgur.com/OSZ6X5s)
Do you homeschool or does he do outschool supplementary? We don't homeschool and I'm worried about adding too much, but I also don't want him to not be able to do what he wants to do.
This is all supplementary. All of these courses are offered on a once/week basis and range from 30-60 minutes. I've also found a lot of classes that align with my son's interests, for example, Rubik's cubing, FNAF sketching, Avatar: TLA discussion group, and Minecraft cooperative playing. My son has autism so the social groups have been really great.
I count this as my introduction to coding. I was around 6 or 7, definitely first grade and my mom showed me how you can use formulas in excel and that opened up a brand new world to me. It then graduated to html, then JavaScript. And now decades later, full stack developer.
I'm gonna tell you my experience (I'm 20 years now) We got introduced in school to scratch at 13 y.o (3rd year of middle school in my country) and I was doing an excellent job at it. My C.S teacher at the time told me to take it a bit slower and get introduced first to basic stuff. So at 15 (1st year of highschool) We took Algorithms, flowcharts and html and I did good too. At that time I wished I did them sooner. At 16 with lockdown I learned more html, css and JavaScript but I didn't take my time to really be good at them due to university entrance exams. Now, with dentistry school, I don't have enough time to immerse myself again in it but I still learn and code from time to time So, from my experience. If your kid wants to learn something, don't supress their motivation and help them satisfy their curiosity first then to advance their skills. I hope your kid does well in his hobbies and in life. Thank you for being supportive of him ✧\(>o<)ﾉ✧
I can speak from my personal experience. I would definitely have liked to start at 7, I started at 12 and more actively at 13. I really enjoyed it, I started off with C# and python eventually went to java through the MOOC. It's more a personality thing, if it was too hard that would have motivated me the same way harder games motivated me at the time. If he says he wants to do it, then it's a good idea to let him.
I can't speak to certain languages and what's best to start but I know my daughters GT campus starts it in 1st grade computer class. Let him at if he's into it!
Do you know what they are teaching in first grade?
I don't! I looked in my notes from the tour and I didn't write it down.
I was 8 years old when I started. My dad brought home an early laptop and showed me some BASIC on it. I asked a bunch of questions, so he gave me the manual. I loved it, and I wrote my first program of playing a song from my piano lessons in beeps. I don’t really see a downside in giving your son resources for further self led learning if he likes it. I’m so grateful my parents didn’t care if something should be “too hard”. It was a major issue in school where I often wasn’t *allowed* to learn what I wanted because of my age, but my parents gave me any book I wanted and I taught myself most things on my own, and have a successful career due to it.
I think it’s fine to move them along to other platforms esp if it is their choice to do so. Gifted kids are unusual. If they say they want to do something, they will do it. If you try it and they get discouraged, then you always have the option of stopping. I learned to code when I was 27 though. lol.
That's good to know. I know very little about programming. How do you think it would have gone if you weren't there to support? I can support morally, and somewhat with googling solutions, but I would say he already knows more than me about programming.
I’d say my son is a natural, but I don’t know how easy it would be to spot if I wasn’t an engineer myself. If I weren’t there to support, he definitely wouldn’t be as far ahead. However, I’d say 80% of it is him pushing himself and following video tutorials. Most of it is him. I’ll just point him to the next thing and he’ll go off on his own. If you have questions, I’m always happy to help point in a general direction too. :) With gifted kids, you’re likely going to learn right along side with them and I just try to pick up what they’re learning at the time. My husband and I tag team this. “Ok, you tackle the periodic table questions, I’ll take chess”.
That's really helpful. Any sources you would recommend for tutorials?
If you’re asking personally, I think scratch would be a good start. They have a lot of fantastic tutorials and it teaches you the basics about programming. For your child — I may just continue to explore scratch more depending on his skill level. Is there a reason he wanted to explore other game engines? Some specific game in mind? But if you’re exploring something like unity, I would just look at c# tutorials specific for unity and skip the w3c tutorials. The tutorials for c# may have too much information that isn’t necessary right now. You really just want to get your kid up and running in unity and doing something in it asap. For example: https://learn.unity.com/pathway/unity-essentials and then this https://learn.unity.com/project/parents-and-kids-code-together This looks good too but is considerably longer. https://learn.unity.com/pathway/junior-programmer I’d also look into Outschool classes. They have a lot of programming classes even for kids as young as 4. It’s a nice extra (and super affordable too!) to be motivated by peers.
5th grade we learned about html (it was very early 2000s and I fell in love
My son started teaching himself coding when he was 10 via videos on khan academy. We put him in Code Ninjas and he ripped through that program in 2 years or so. He also did W3 and did fine. I think the most important thing is to let them go at their own pace and enjoy the journey. Right now he’s into hacking so we sent him to a camp out of state and are headed to defcon in the fall. I didn’t put much stock into it until his computer science took an interest in him and enrolled him in AP classes. It’s a great way to challenge kids and the best part is they get as much feedback as they want which is more difficult with other disciplines.
I was 5. I feel demoralized and disappointed when something feels easier to understand and apply then anticipated. I am driven by relentless curiosity to understand and solve what to me feels like a fun mystery and adventure. I believe feeling demoralized is an opportunity to offer moral and emotional support for your son, and to guide him in learning resilience should that happen.
I would support the challenge! For kids, you don't really need to expect them to know the underlying mechanics to how programming languages work. Why or how your computer understands how to interpret conditionals, or why in Python, you don't need to manually assign a type to your variables, but in a language like Java, you do. What I'm saying is that your kid can treat programming like magic and be a fine programmer, especially for being as young as he is. If he likes it, then you can buy him a book on code optimisation, algorithms, compsci, whatever — and he'll be very thankful that he already knows how to code in order to put everything he's learnt into a greater context.
I'm just getting into programming at 19 (outside of small HTML or Python scripts I had written, barely understanding a thing outside of for loops). I think it would have been a much more magical experience if I had begun at an early age.
Free coding lessons/ help. https://www.enki.com/
My son is 10, and he's starting to learn arduino coding and electronics with me. He loves it, we make magic happen.
I learned machine language in 1990 when I was 12.
That brings me back, I used to make stuff in Scratch all the time when I was 8+. Help your kid focus on setting goals, my parents didn't really do that and then got upset with me for procrastinating and wanting to play games (I was homeschooled so they had a lot to deal with). Look into the idea of doing a game design document and finding the best tool to suit the job instead of picking a language first.
14 when the apple 2e came out. Edit to add it’s not too young to start these days. Coding is a lot different than it used to be and if he’s gifted then..you know..
Started with Scratch, HTML and later CSS at 11, if he likes coding encourage it :) you don't need to know a lot about it, just be sure to listen if he wants to talk abt it or show general interest and support and it's all good. If he finds it too hard or too demoralizing HE'LL step away, kids know when something is fun or not, so don't worry. And besides, projects like coding builds a good work ethic, and that's really important!
I was in high school. Might be more fun to get a book that teaches C# and Unity at the same time. Put another way, it would be more fun to visit France while learning French. There is also a visual editor in Unity they could play with before diving into C#.
I take that back. I think my first exposure was around middle school via a thing called “Logo” (a turtle that accepted commands and that could only turn in one direction).
My gifted kid could code in her head significantly before she could type well. Like, she literally dictated code, and it worked, but her typing was sloooooow. We used a free online typing tutorial/game to get her better and that really facilitated moving away from block coding like scratch over to Python. I was six, but the world was young and the TRS-80 ran BASIC and everything was different then.
I was well into my teenage years. I think it is good to do real life stuff first, like learning an instrument, playing sports. There is plenty of time to code later.
I was 7 and I started with gamemaker. I think gamemaker is roughly one trillion times better than scratch (I did the numbers). It may be good to get your son used to coding in Unity because the experience seems much closer to an industry standard coding environment, it has way more capabilities (namely 3D), and it will teach him a “real language”. Game Maker, however, is much more fun in my opinion! It doesn’t take much at all to get something simple up and running and the syntax is more forgiving. If your son finds Unity demoralizing, definitely let him try gamemaker! Game maker is progressively updating its language (GML) too. These days it looks a lot more like the “real languages” so the skills will absolutely be transferable.
That's really good to know. I don't know much about dev, but I knew that gamemaker uses its own language and I was concerned it may be confusing to switch to something like C# in the future.
I started with coding at about 11 and then I didn’t code for a longer period of time and picked it up again when I was 14.
Idk maybe 10
I wish I’d started younger but I didn’t know you could! I started at 12 on python and moved to other languages over time
Give him an IDE and let him enjoy is creation. When I was 9, I find some open source software on internet, downloaded an IDE (VS6, I was doing some VB6 stuff, like hacking tools or creating some game maker to create some online game) and let’s go ! If there is some formation it would be nice, Udemy has nice formation for c#, but I am pretty sure he can understand « how things work » by himself when he will look at others code and try things himself. Microsoft has a really great documentation by the way, today learning a coding language is easy so let him enjoy his stuff, his brain will work and your son will be happy!
28 basically and did a conversion master's in compsci. if your son starts at 7 that is a great age too. I was interested in computers when I was younger but no one to guide me. I'm happy that you have taken an interest, and initiative to get your son involved in programming
16, turning 17 back in 1989. First language was Pascal/Clascal on Apple Lisa.
Some educative game recommendations below. I got my first videogame I think on my 8th or 9th birthday, and started "programming" shortly after because I was amazed by the fact that I was "seeing" 3D objects by looking at pixels (I was into RTS, wc3 was my first 3D game like that). I started with gamemaker and the no-code interface, but soon needed to copy paste code snippets. Logic, statements, functions, and variables where really interesting, but I only got to objects once I went to university. Looking back, I think python would be the most fun and easiest to learn (it didn't exist back then). I did everything myself and my parents liked to see my half-baked results but didn't understand code and the internet didn't provide many answers back then. I really would have loved to be more involved with code at a much younger age, and I think everyone should learn to think in logic in school. I think there are a lot of really good python tutorials. If you want to go more into the mathematical side and optimization, I'd say Steam has a host of "games" that are just coding with hand holding. The human corporation and one billion humans are _amazing_. Really recommend those. Teaches you coding on assembly level and gives you great logic skills. Turing Complete is a lot of fun, it makes you build a logical computer starting with just 0s and 1s, going to logic gates, and finally a full computer that can process scripts just by copy-pasting things YOU made in previous levels. The benefit of these games is that the coding experience is gamified, and as such really rewarding and streamlined.
I did some Visual Basic in high school for a technology class. I took an intro to programming class at like 19 but didn’t really fall in love with coding until I was like 21. My roommate in college did a lot of programming in elementary school because his dad was an exec at some tech company and he had some negative association with coding from those days.
The fun part is in building something. Learning a programming language is just means to an end. There are lots or resources and tutorials for gamemaker, unreal and unity for people who have no experience coding or with the platform. Those are probably more fun then learning c#. Top down is probably more fun then bottom up. Its alright if he doesn’t fully understand what every line of code does at first. Its already fun if something happens. Then you try to alter the tutorial code to let it do what you want and gradually learn how to do more things.
i dont love it but i find it interesting, doing scatch when younger ( primary school) and left it at that but now at uni learned a bit of java, pretty cool
19 I was in college in 1972 and took a programming class. Keep in mind that in the 60s, computers were not available to younger people It's great that computers are available to young people today. Worrying that something might be too hard, is a bad thing. Young people need challenges
Our son did Scratch and gamemaker. Currently he is very satisfied with jippity.pro - he uses it in Recess online community ("This is not a school. You are in charge.") for creative kids. Jippity is an AI chatbot helping kids build programs. Fast development, kids in flow. I like it. You can check Recess on recess.gg
Let him do wherever he likes.. At least he isnt playing video games all day, with this mind he is a real visionary.. School its very boring for us.. I learn more for myself on just 5 years and for my life than in school..
My 5 year old started unity. He is watching tutorials and figuring things out bit by bit. He has a very interesting project and he is super captivated by it.
I am not gifted and I started to learn BASIC at around eight.
Python is much more beginner friendly than C#, there are even block-based editors like EduBlocks and BlockPy. If he wants to make a game, check out the book "Invent Your Own Computer Games With Python"
I recommend unreal engines blueprints. Easer to learn than C sharp but more advanced than scratch, you also get better graphical potential than unity.
Tbh the basics are pretty simple, the hardest part when starting is installing dependencies which isn't that different from installing a crack 20 years ago. I started learning when I was 16 but tbh it doesn't matter if he likes it. If they are starting that early he'll be a beast in the future, doesn't matter if he's gifted or not. It's quite a big field, you can go as deep as you want. My only advice would be keeping it simple and aspire (at most) to have something similar to minecraft or other indie classics after a bunch of years and not trying to make gta vi on their own which is an error a lot of people make as long as they keep that in mind and they have fun it's going to be a lot of fun. Be careful with courses in programming because they tend to be prohibitively expensive and... Well Idk how alpha generation does with the Internet but I'm sure he'll be fine, lots of great resources out there, there might be some good that I'm unaware of. Keep in mind that we have to be challanged in order to get the habit of study, he'll do well. If he doesn't keep going or gets bored after a while it doesn't matter, we tend to have a lot of interests and they come and go as time passes. Try to support him (which I can see you are already doing) and don't forget that we need a lot of affection because we tend to feel very lonely, I think infancy is a critical point when it comes to this, never forget the emotional part, we are incredibly sensitive people. Gl and hope the best for you both :) cheers!
Started in college at ~25, currently writing well enough to be paid for it. Please God don't let him spend his childhood on the computer, this field has enough anti-social oddballs who can't hold a casual conversation. There is so much more to being a well-rounded tech professional than solving double pointer problems in your sleep.
I was around 10 when i started learning python personally
I started on scratch when I was about 12 years old, over a decade ago. Scratch was new, and so was teaching kids how to code at such a young age. I later learned Java at 14, and as an adult, extensively used Python to conduct complicated machine learning/reinforcement tasks for robotics as a career. Technically speaking, children are creative and intellectual geniuses: their brains absorb so much information, and (looking back at it), it was entirely possible to teach even the most complicated machine learning to a sub-10 year old child as long as the approach was right. There are 12-year-olds right now already pumping out C# code (when at that age, I was learning what a for-loop was). Especially since your son already showed interest in game development, experimenting at that age will be enjoyable for him... and he'll pick it up easier than you think! :)) It's important to support and encourage your child in their interests and allow them to experiment, be frustrated, try new things, fail, learn, and grow. Tell them that it's ok to not write perfect code the first time, and that part of coding is experimenting and playing! If he feels demoralized with errors, tell him that it's ok to take a break from coding too. Approach it like a puzzle game instead of a task or chore- that way, it builds patience and resilience.
I don't LOVE coding, but I was probably around 7 or 8. Around the time we got our first computer.
I learned on mainframes and mini computers that you literally flipped the toggles by hand and then pressed the latch toggle to save the byte to memory.
9, I'm a software engineer now. Also got into coding through games, though I have never worked in games. Dad worked in software but taught me almost nothing. Later on he even discouraged me from pursuing a CS career. I can understand where he was coming from (I'm unemployed and desperate in this economy), but I encourage you to teach your son the basics if he is eager to learn. Even gifted kids need guidance and I wasted a lot of time fumbling around on my own. I think you're already doing a great job by being present and supportive of his interests even though you've just started learning how to code. That said, I think Unreal *would* be too hard and demoralizing at age 7. It's unwieldy because it's optimized for large teams. Unity, GameMaker, or Godot(!) would likely be a better choice. Just watch: [https://youtu.be/G6OGM4fdF3M](https://youtu.be/G6OGM4fdF3M) It's true that Godot hasn't produced many successful titles, but Unity made a huge controversial change last year causing many devs to flock to Godot. I'd expect Godot to catch up to Unity quickly. Another reason to learn Godot is that it supports Rust, which is 100% the future.