Friday, December 29, 2017

Teaching Kids to Code

I've been on the lookout for video tutorials that teach kids in upper elementary school the basics of coding.

Some of my requirements/biases are:
  • a general-purpose fully-featured language that one can grow with. Presumably, this is the start of a multi-year commitment. This eliminates awesome, but specialized, tools like Scratch.
  • a language with rich library support, so that one can get started quickly and start prototyping. This probably eliminates most fully featured compiled languages like C++ etc. 
  • A language that is cross-platform, and can do graphics well. Use art (mathematical perhaps) as the window.
Python seems like a potential choice.

I found a superb series of YouTube lectures, which caters directly to my requirements. Here is a link to the playlist from KidsCanCode.

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