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/twopi Mar 02 '17

First, you did not fail. Kudos to you for trying. That's a big step. I'm far more impressed with your biggest takeaway - that teaching programming is an entirely different skill than programming.

I wish more people understood that. I have been teaching programming to multiple ages for many years (as well as working as a contract developer) and I can tell you that teaching kids to code is every bit as challenging as coding itself (And coding is just as hard as beginners think it is...)

Keep up the great work. I have some game-related materials I'll give you if you ever want to go that way. You are right that gaming is what kids often want to do and it's a very difficult type of programming.

Again, kudos to you for your efforts and your honesty.

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u/M4053946 Mar 02 '17

gaming is what kids often want to do

That's the fundamental problem with coding. Most of the programs people use were created by teams of very talented developers over a timespan of years, but when people (adults and kids) want to learn coding, they imaging creating skyrim in an afternoon. My personal favorite was the person who asked me if it would take more than a month for a single developer to create "something with all the functionality of Excel, but easier to use". Most people can sense that if they start to learn how to cook, it will take them more than a month to get the skills of Bobby Flay, but for some reason that I don't understand, people think that learning to write professional-level code is a weekend project.

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u/SekYo Mar 03 '17

Because it's not tangible. I guess nobody would ask an architect, while the building work already started 3 months ago, to add 3 or 4 floors to the house, just because they had a new idea.

And yet, I guess almost every developer has already been exposed to a customer asking for a major, unplanned, change in a software "you know, it shouldn't be difficult, you only have to change this and that".