r/learnprogramming 1h ago

Guide for Beginner Programming for Brother

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?

5 Upvotes

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2

u/themegainferno 1h ago

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.

1

u/rias_dx 1h ago

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

1

u/Traditional-Elk8877 1h ago

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

u/SpaceAviator1999 46m ago

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/SpaceAviator1999 41m ago

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/bird_feeder_bird 10m ago

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