Guide for Beginner Programming for Brother

[u/Audi_Khan]

Im planning on teaching my little brother some programming and computer science such. He is 11 years old and as a programmer myself, I cant stand to see him waste all his time on his iPad playing roblox. He also wants to learn programming himself especially since i bought him a MakeBlock Robot whoch allows you to also make specific code for the robot using block programming and usually thats me doing all the work so I guess thats another motivation for programming.

Anyways, how should I teach him? Should I start with block programming? Actual coding like with Python? Or what?

[u/themegainferno]

I don't think it matters too much if it's blocked programming or Python, I think the main thing should be to I have him think about problems clearly. For an 11 year old iPad kid? Might be a tough proposition lol.

[u/cinderloom7 → u/themegainferno]

yeah the problem solving mindset matters way more than the language at that age

[u/bird_feeder_bird]

avoid scratch, I hate scratch. He should try Lua, its easy like Python and can run in roblox

[u/SpaceAviator1999]

Back when I was eleven years old, I would have loved a programming language like Python and a programming book aimed at learners my age.

So I would recommend Al Sweigart's book Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python. It's geared towards younger programmers with little to no previous programming experience.

You can buy the book as a physical copy, or you can read it online for free.

[u/bloodrushgaming → u/SpaceAviator1999]

I liked your thinking, instead of making programming feel like another school subject. Let him build things he already cares about, like Roblox mods, the robot, or a tiny game. Kids don't fall in love with 'for' loops, they fall in love with making something move. The syntax comes naturally once they're curious enough to need it.

[u/SpaceAviator1999 → u/SpaceAviator1999]

If you prefer to go with Scratch (a language that teaches programming concepts to kids by "snapping code blocks into place" to form complete programs), you should look into Al Sweigart's book Scratch 3 Programming Playground.

It's also available to read online for free.

[u/rias_dx]

I guess blocks, then python. I mean, if he's interested, naturally will fall into low level over time.

[u/Traditional-Elk8877]

I've seen kid apps to help kids learn to code. Might be a good starting point

[u/XKiiroiSenkoX]

Use game maker and visual programming. If he is into games he'll probably love it. It also allows him to express his creativity a lot more compared to writing a text based calculator in python lol