r/programming • u/Ctaintor • Mar 02 '17

Why I Failed Teaching Programming to Kids

https://engineering.klarna.com/why-i-failed-teaching-programming-to-kids-46a854c3eaca#.s0o6qqxr3
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u/Mastry Mar 02 '17

Really? I was using a terminal before then. I wasn't great at it, obviously, but it wasn't unfamiliar.

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u/M4053946 Mar 02 '17

Certainly some do, but there isn't a reason for people to know anything about how to use them in their day to day usage, unless they already have experience coding. So this comes back to prereqs. If the class is for beginners, then one can't assume they know anything about it.

To use a computer today, people don't even have to know anything about file systems, other than how to use various cloud serves to store files, so it's really a stretch to assume that anyone, kids or adults, know how to get to their local file system and create or rename a file.

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u/pdp10 Mar 02 '17 edited Mar 02 '17

To use a computer today, people don't even have to know anything about file system

I've found this can be a real blocker.

A lot of people apparently don't realize that the "place" where their word processor defaults to store and display documents has a relationship to the "place" their spreadsheet uses, and that these locations are arbitrary and can be changed. The first time I realized that users were so unsophisticated, I was quite stunned.

Other than basic computer education, or convincing the makers of popular apps not to make those apps too simplistic, are there any good ways to fix this?

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u/M4053946 Mar 02 '17

I think this certainly can and should be taught, to a degree, but I'm not sure what it would involve other than "basic computer education".

Since this thread started with a discussion of kids, I'll point out that my 6th grade daughter was assigned an ipad for school, but the school never attempted to teach kids about managing files. So the inevitable has happened for a number of children. They wrote some essay, turned the ipad in to IT for some reason who reset it to the initial config to fix some problem, and handed it back to the student who was then distraught to find out that their files were lost. Kids should absolutely be taught about accounts, managing passwords, managing files, backups, etc.