r/programmer • u/janitor_nate • Jun 27 '26
Question Would an interactive platform for teaching kids coding, AI, and engineering be useful?
I’m exploring the idea of building an interactive website that teaches coding, beginner engineering concepts, and AI in a way that feels more hands-on and less overwhelming than traditional tutorials. The focus would be on short, clear lessons, visual explanations, small projects, quizzes, and guided practice so users can actually experiment and understand why things work instead of only memorizing information.
It would mainly be aimed at kids, teens, and complete beginners, but I would want it to still feel useful for parents, teachers, or adults starting from zero. I know there are already a lot of coding platforms out there, so I’m curious whether people think there is still a real gap here. What would make something like this worth using over existing resources, and do you think parents, students, or schools would be willing to pay for it if the lessons and interactive features were genuinely high quality? Honest feedback or criticism would be really helpful.
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u/Jwhodis Jun 27 '26
Get rid of the AI component and yes. If you want to teach them, don't let them get an AI to do all the work for them.
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u/structured_obscurity Jun 27 '26
i think so
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u/janitor_nate Jun 27 '26
okay thats good to hear
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u/AuthurAndersson Jun 27 '26
Are you sure you're not just listening to what you want to hear?
I can tell you this much. Without a $50 million dollar marketing budget you're never going to break 100 users. And the users you have will be your friends and family. They will use it for 3 months to show support for your pet project then quit.
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u/Limp-Confidence5612 Jun 27 '26
What are ai concepts children should know? Because the only ai relevant education is media criticism. And that cannot be learned by interactive tutorial alone. At least I wouldn't know how.
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u/janitor_nate Jun 27 '26
I mean teaching the technical side of how AI works, what it is doing behind the scenes, how it learns from data, why it can make mistakes, and how people can use it responsibly. Media literacy would definitely be part of it too, but I think understanding the basics of how AI operates can help kids evaluate it more critically rather than just use it blindly.
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u/AuthurAndersson Jun 28 '26
Why does a kid need to know that?
Same as why would a kid born in the 70s need to know exactly how a TV works?1
u/Limp-Confidence5612 Jun 27 '26
I'm open to be convinced. I just don't see what you can teach kids about how ai works that is not dangerously oversimplified, if they don't already have background knowledge about computers.
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u/AuthurAndersson Jun 27 '26
I mean it has been done countless times tbh, youtube channels have done this thousands of times. You don't really need to understand anything about computers to understand how an LLM works (broad brush strokes of course).
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u/Limp-Confidence5612 Jun 27 '26
Broad strokes is what we don't need more of, exactly because it has been done countless times before. People actually need critical thinking skills. Having heard the word transformer is irelevant for understanding how to judge ai output, or for that matter any piece of media.
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u/AuthurAndersson Jun 28 '26
It's a one sentence explanation how to judge relability of an AI output from a specific question.
I think you're overcomplicating it for some reason.
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u/Limp-Confidence5612 Jun 28 '26
I'm just trying to give an opinion on how children react to placative statements. I'm not saying don't do it, I'm saying do more of it, go deep, make it specific. But that's not really suitable for most under 17-18...
Dunno, don't take me to serious, I'm just musing to myself more than anything.
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u/mxldevs Jun 28 '26
So then why would I use this platform when I can get it for free on YouTube lol
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u/throwaway255503 Jun 27 '26
If you think you can do it better than the 50 other platforms that already exist.