This is how you get started in coding (from Linda Liukas)

[mundens]

Finding the right product or motivation for your kid is the key. Some kids love making games. Others enjoy writing stories. One little boy I taught got very excited about "hacking" existing websites with Chrome Inspect Element tool. Another girl wanted to learn Java to make Minecraft mods.

You don't need to be a professional developer to get

Comments

[tatjna]

My forays into coding have revealed to me that it's not the language and syntax that mess with my brain, but the way in which I can't assume anything about what the machine will already know. It knows nothing, I have to tell it. For someone mostly trained in communication with humans and animals, this has been the most difficult bit to get my head around. I can't tell it to see before I've told it to open its eyes. And what eyes are. And where they are. And how to open them. And what 'open' means.

Like Dr Wheel says, it's abstractions all the way down, and that's a unique style of thinking that I reckon it pays to learn early if you can.

[tcpip]

Try a largely declarative programming paradigm language instead (e.g., SQL).

[tatjna]

Maybe. The thing is, I can see how learning to think in that way is ultimately very useful once you get the hang of it. To me, it seems that once I get my head into that frame, solving the type of problems that come with the work I'm trying to do gets easier. And what I'm learning through doing it with Dr Wheel in this way is making a lot of my (admittedly Dick and Jane level) code simple to change and scale. Even if it does make me tear my hair out at the time.