Hi all,

My 8 year old is asking if he can learn how to program. He has asked specifically if I could set him up with a ‘programming kit with lessons’ for a Christmas present. I’d like to support this, and it seems like it’s not a transient interest as he’s been all over scratch, and using things like minecraft commands for the last year. I have an old (pre 2017) MacBook Air I can set up for this. How do I / what would you advise I set up for him, to a) keep him safe online (he’s 8!) and b) give him the tools he needs in a structured way.

I am not a programmer. I know enough bash/shell and basic unix stuff to be dangerous and I was a front end dev a very long time ago, but I wouldn’t call myself a programmer and don’t know what concepts he needs to learn first.

Hugely appreciate any advice, thanks.

Edit: So I posted this then had a busy family day and came back to so many comments! I will methodically go through these all, thanks so much.

A couple of things on resources: he has expressed interest in 3D worlds and I noticed comments on engines, but wonder if that’s too advanced?

Totally agree with the short feedback loop rather than projects that take days.

He has an iPad 6 and I’m happy to pop a Linux distro on the Air, so certainly open to that.

So many links to research. Hugely grateful.

  • @IAm_A_Complete_Idiot
    28•9 months ago

    See if you can find a book on python, and work through it a bit. Sit down with him once you know some and try making something basic with turtle or the likes. Your goal is to keep his interest up and not make it a “studying” thing. For a kid the most important part is that he needs to be able to see results of what he’s making. Drawing simple shapes, cool patterns, etc. in python is a nice way to start and it can teach all the basic initial things he needs to know.

    There’s also simple robot kits for kids that could be fun to play with, which he could eventually move on to basic electronics to after from.

    W.r.t. safe browsing, I’d try blocking egregiously bad stuff with some DNS blocker that you either buy or host using something like pihole. Use it to block ads and well known “bad” domain names. Also have a conversation about it. (I’m not sure how much this helps here considering he’s 8… but better then nothing.)