I haven't given my boys any pressure to code yet (they are only 8, 6, and 3) but the oldest one has a natural interest, it seems, and that seems to be making the middle one interested too.
The oldest got his start with a local after-school class where they make robots out of lego-like blocks with motors and program simple behaviors like driving around, drawing pictures. Then his brother also wanted to. The older one has now graduated to writing 2D platformer games with Scratch at that class — one day I noticed they were just logging into the regular free Scratch, and he knew his login and password, so he now logs in from home after school to work on it sometimes.
That class is still like "drag blocks around to make loops and conditionals" but he later found the Swift Playgrounds app on iPad and worked through those exercises. That is a lot more textual, and you learn basic constructs like variables, for loops, if/else, and functions.
And he learned somehow very quick that there is a high success rate of postponing bedtime by saying, "OK, but wait, just let me debug this bug in my program a bit more." ;-)
His 6-year-old brother seems to be following in his footsteps, not interested in Swift Playgrounds yet (if ever) but keenly interested in replicating and then improving on his older brother's Mario Maker levels, and he is interested in the games his older brother is making at the class (where he himself is still doing the robot making course) and he intends to do that same course next year.
The 3-year-old's programming is still limited to standing in front of the TV and shouting "HEY SIRI TV OFFFFFF!!!!!"
I'm a life-long software engineer and intend to keep doing that, so it is gratifying to see them doing this. As some other people have said in this thread, as a parent you can't (or shouldn't) try to "make them become software engineers" but at the same time, demanding basic competence in programming (e.g. being able to write a program to do some kind of calculations on a CVS credit card statement, and debug that in a graphical debugger) seems to me akin to, say, making sure your kids learn how to swim.
My kids understand (well, the older two at least, the little one maybe later) that they will be expected to be able to swim competently, read rudimentary sheet music and be able to reproduce it on a piano keyboard, ride a bicycle, safely operate an automobile, and write software programs at a competent level for their age.
They don't need to be spectacular at any of those, or pursue a career relating to them; they don't even need to be interested. But I think those are basic human competencies, and it is fine to require your kids to achieve them.
- Scratch (https://scratch.mit.edu)
- Swift Playgrounds for iPad
- Mario Maker (Nintendo Switch version)
I haven't given my boys any pressure to code yet (they are only 8, 6, and 3) but the oldest one has a natural interest, it seems, and that seems to be making the middle one interested too.
The oldest got his start with a local after-school class where they make robots out of lego-like blocks with motors and program simple behaviors like driving around, drawing pictures. Then his brother also wanted to. The older one has now graduated to writing 2D platformer games with Scratch at that class — one day I noticed they were just logging into the regular free Scratch, and he knew his login and password, so he now logs in from home after school to work on it sometimes.
That class is still like "drag blocks around to make loops and conditionals" but he later found the Swift Playgrounds app on iPad and worked through those exercises. That is a lot more textual, and you learn basic constructs like variables, for loops, if/else, and functions.
And he learned somehow very quick that there is a high success rate of postponing bedtime by saying, "OK, but wait, just let me debug this bug in my program a bit more." ;-)
His 6-year-old brother seems to be following in his footsteps, not interested in Swift Playgrounds yet (if ever) but keenly interested in replicating and then improving on his older brother's Mario Maker levels, and he is interested in the games his older brother is making at the class (where he himself is still doing the robot making course) and he intends to do that same course next year.
The 3-year-old's programming is still limited to standing in front of the TV and shouting "HEY SIRI TV OFFFFFF!!!!!"
I'm a life-long software engineer and intend to keep doing that, so it is gratifying to see them doing this. As some other people have said in this thread, as a parent you can't (or shouldn't) try to "make them become software engineers" but at the same time, demanding basic competence in programming (e.g. being able to write a program to do some kind of calculations on a CVS credit card statement, and debug that in a graphical debugger) seems to me akin to, say, making sure your kids learn how to swim.
My kids understand (well, the older two at least, the little one maybe later) that they will be expected to be able to swim competently, read rudimentary sheet music and be able to reproduce it on a piano keyboard, ride a bicycle, safely operate an automobile, and write software programs at a competent level for their age.
They don't need to be spectacular at any of those, or pursue a career relating to them; they don't even need to be interested. But I think those are basic human competencies, and it is fine to require your kids to achieve them.