How To Get a Game-Obsessed Teenager Into Coding? 704
looseBits writes "I have a friend whose 14-year-old son spends all his time gaming, like any normal teenager. However, my friend would like to find a more productive interest for him and asked me how to get him into coding. When I started coding, it was on the Apple II, and one could quickly write code that was almost as interesting as commercially available software. Now, times have changed and it would probably take years of study if starting from scratch to write something anyone would find mildly interesting. Does anyone have experience in getting their children into programming? How did you keep them interested if the only thing they can do after a week is make the computer count to 10 and dump it on the screen?"
Think outside of the box (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How do you get a kid to play football? (Score:5, Funny)
How do you get a kid into coding? Guess.
Mind altering drugs?
Same way you get better lock-pickers: (Score:1, Funny)
Lock him out of his games with a script that will require his learning to code in order to circumvent.
Re:Give him a really crappy computer..... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How do you get a kid to play football? (Score:5, Funny)
How do you get a kid into coding? Guess.
Take them outside, throw an exception to them and ask them to throw it back?
Re:Same way you get your kids interested in gaming (Score:5, Funny)
10 PRINT "FUCK"
20 GOTO 10
Re:Same way you get your kids interested in gaming (Score:3, Funny)
10 PRINT "FUCK" 20 GOTO 10
That's a great way to learn about a text to speach api.
Re:How do you get a kid to play football? (Score:3, Funny)
But teach him to never silently swallow exceptions either, at least not without producing a log once in a while...
Rgds
Damon
Re:Same way you get your kids interested in gaming (Score:2, Funny)
Since X and Y are the representations for the sex chromosome, I think "X will do Y" soon enough. Better talk about condoms than programming.
Re:You don't (Score:5, Funny)
I'd say "the touch of a woman," but that's probably insurmountable for you, too.
You're right. I tried with your mom, but she was quite insurmountable.
Re:You don't (Score:5, Funny)
I was in a programming class once and a fellow student asked me how I had solved a particularly difficult programming problem we had been given. I excitedly told him how I had come up with a clever solution that I was particularly proud of and about how I had awoken my roommate jumping up and down with delight when I did it. My fellow student just stared at me blankly, clearing not getting why I had been so excited at coming up with a unique solution to the problem. And that is when I knew that I was meant to be a programmer and he wasn't.
Your classmate was probably staring blankly because they didn't understand your answer, and thus was unable to copy it properly.
Re:Same way you get your kids interested in gaming (Score:5, Funny)
Tell him under no circumstances is he allowed to program. Should work with most teenagers.
Re:Same way you get your kids interested in gaming (Score:4, Funny)
NOOOOOOOOOOOO! "GOTO" is EEEEEEVILLLLLLLLLL!
while (1) {
print "FUCK";
}
Re:Same way you get your kids interested in gaming (Score:5, Funny)
10 INPUT "What is your name? : ", U$
20 PRINT "Fuck you "; U$
30 GOTO 20
Re:Same way you get your kids interested in gaming (Score:3, Funny)
Whoa now, big fella. First, get him a slashdot account, have him read, post some good comments, maybe submit a story, then he can start modding.