programming books

ivrytwr3 · 14 Oct 2013 at 06:38

Little lad (9) is loving minecraft, so much so that he has bought the book and in it the designer said he started programming at about 9.

Little lad now wants to learn! Any advice on books etc i could get him for Chrimbo?

Slyman2k4 · 14 Oct 2013 at 06:59

The Art Of Computer Programming would be a good start or The Gang of Four book.

gregorius · 14 Oct 2013 at 07:40

Al Sweigart's books are pretty good for that age.

Invent with Python

Wang Computer · 14 Oct 2013 at 07:48

Slyman2k4 said:
The Art Of Computer Programming would be a good start or The Gang of Four book.

I think these titles would be a far too complex and dry for a 9 year old beginner.

Having perused Amazon for a few moments, there appears to be a number of child-centric programming books available. Of course I wouldn't know which is best. Perhaps start him off with a book for Python or an interpreted language like that?

AHarvey · 14 Oct 2013 at 08:10

Head First books - python

Head first books are great, massive amounts of info out there for kids programming python.

JHeaton · 14 Oct 2013 at 08:10

I agree with the suggestion of an interpreted language. Being able to get instant results, especially when you're young, is helpful to keep motivation up, and Python is a good suggestion as there are plenty of resources for children available.

I almost want to suggest Lua, as this is a nice little language used by the ComputerCraft mod, so learning this would also allow your son to put programming to work in the Minecraft world. However, it's not as easy to get hold of the same amount of child-friendly tutorials for Lua, as far as I can tell and the official Programming in Lua book is mainly a demonstration of the language itself, rather than covering programming concepts as well, so isn't really a good introduction to programming on its own.

uniQ · 14 Oct 2013 at 08:25

Python for Kids

AHarvey · 14 Oct 2013 at 09:21

Also, get him over to CodeAcademy...free online lessons and some very good lessons

Chaos · 14 Oct 2013 at 15:40

Could get him a raspberry pi and use this -

http://arghbox.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/minecraftbook.pdf

ivrytwr3 · 14 Oct 2013 at 17:57

Thanks guys - that python stuff looks like what i was after!

D.P. · 16 Oct 2013 at 15:59

Python has a strong community supporting children. A colleague quit their job and has initiated a start-up that aims to develop software and books to teach programming to kids, python is the language of choice with some more visual stuff for the younger ones.