Localized (Visual) Programming Language For Kids? 185
First time accepted submitter jimshatt writes "I want my kids to play around with programming languages. To teach them basic concepts like loops and subroutines and the likes. My 8-year-old daughter in particular. I've tried Scratch and some other visual languages, but I think she might be turned off by the English language. Having to learn English as well as a programming language at the same time might be just a little too much.
I'd really like to have a programming language that is easy to learn, and localized or localizable. Preferably cross-platform, or browser-based, so she can show her work at school (Windows) as well as work on in at home (Debian Linux).
By the way, she speaks Dutch and Danish, so preferably one of those languages (but if it's localizable I can translate it myself).
Any suggestions?"
The only way to do it (Score:4, Interesting)
Kay worked at just that, at Xerox PARC. It was not visual, but let's be honest here; Xerox fscking PARC.
You should check this out:
http://squeak.org/About/ [squeak.org]
No... It is better.
Logo (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as I know most dialects of Logo are localized or localizable, both keywords and variables. But I don't know its domain (a drawing turtle) is interesting to your daughter.
Lego Mindstorm (Score:5, Interesting)
Lego Mindstorm might be a nice approach. It's available both in Dutch and Danish, and uses a graphical language with a great graphical interface dedicated to kids. I use it to teach (Dutch) programing and robotics to kids and it's amazing easy for them to make and modify the software.
The main drawbacks is that, although the software is free, you need to get a 200€ lego robot to make it useful. It also has only a Windows (and probably Mac) version. IMHO, the robot has the advantage to bring additional interest to the kids. It makes programming much less abstract.
To try the software before buying, look for the lego mindstorm nxt 2 iso on the lego website (it's a bit hidden).
Play with them (Score:5, Interesting)
If your kids are strongly visual, and want to work with graphics manipulation, then Scratch is ok. If they like robotics and want to work in the real world, then Lego mindstorms is alright (for simple projects) both choices the kids will be involved in as much non-programming as coding - as design (2d or 3d) will absorb their time.
Logo is a pure programming language, which is going to encourage good application design, but it's really important to find a good guide for them - it's also nice (but not necessary by any means) if you can find a turtle. At education college we were encouraged to teach logo, and it was a position that I agree on. The only potential issue is that it is not 'C'-like but that's a syntax issue.
There are also programming games which help develop Logo skills - not computer games - family games - such as you being a robot, and asking the kids to give you orders to do something - you can give them a starting lexicon of very few commands, and ask them to take you to the kitchen. Note that angles are often best addressed with quarter-turns: left, right, turn-around, etc. Then later on introduce something like 'bit-left' or 'little-left'. So a lexicon of forward,back,left,right,stop is often a good start. Then parameterising forward: eg forward 50..
The primary advantages are that they get time to have fun with their Dad, (and you with them) and you can design the language fluidly according to their ability. Later on you can easily add function definitions using eg "to": eg. "Dad, to square, repeat 4 times forward 5 right"
AFAIK none of them have very good debugging tools, and IMO debugging is where most early coders find out if they have enough stamina to want to code, so games like above help you to give suggestions. Likewise, with logo (turtle graphics) - at first anyway- you can act out the programme which can help.
Logo isn't just graphics - it's a simplified form of lisp.
Re:Stop (Score:4, Interesting)
I taught myself programming when I was about 10 years old and I'm not a native English speaker and my language is written in non-latin characters. I can tell you how I did it but many of you are not going to like it:
I started with BASIC in the pre-structured era. I wrote stuff like this:
10 PRINT "HELLO"
20 SOUND 512 5
(forgive if syntax is wrong)
I spent a lot of time drawing pictures and making music without knowing anything about conditionals or loops. Then I graduated to GOTO, which in retrospect was a lot easier to understand for a 10 year old than a structured conditional block or a loop.
When I finally started with structured programming languages, making the transition took only a little time. If I had started with it at age 10, it might have overwhelmed me. The explicit representation of sequence (the line labels), conditions and iteration (the GOTO) was easier for me to understand as a kid. Especially since my English was very limited back then.
Plus I never bothered with math (I hadn't learned to love it yet). As I said, I drew pictures and made music with the PC speaker (so I was using only a few functions built into the language). Maybe that's an approach to think about, for starters.
Re:Just "Learn English" (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd rather learn a new language at 8 than at 48... just saying, its probably a very good thing to teach her English right now than have her struggle to learn it later (apparently kids are much more adaptable to language, starting off with nothing and having to learn 1 it kind of makes sense somehow)
All my Danish friends say that they all speak English anyway, 5 million Danes on the planet and no-one else speaks Danish makes it almost mandatory for them to speak something else, and Danish is a close common ancestor of English anyway (ie I really don't speak Danish, but I can understand the meaning of danish text) having its roots in the settlement era of the dark ages when you guys came over in the longships.