Programmer Musings

Programming for/by Kids

My son has talked several times about learning to program, but he's young enough that the normal programming approaches bore him. I had tried implementations of Logo in the past, without much success.

A couple months ago, I was checking the Make magazine blog and stumbled upon an article about a Scrolling Mario game in Scratch. A little checking of the Scratch site left me convinced that this might work for a 9 year-old.

For an old programmer like myself, the graphical nature of the language is pure pain. I want to type in the expressions and code I need, instead of snapping together little blocks. The graphical nature of the thing is like programming with both hands tied behind my back. On the other hand, these same features make it much easier for the little boy. We went through the tutorial in about half an hour and he's been coding ever since. So far, I've been impressed with what he can put together.

The biggest surprise for me is what he is working on. When I started coding (much later in life than 9) I was building programs to solve problems and control things. I expected (from his other interests) that he would quickly get into games. Instead, he seems to be mostly building animated stories. Some of them quite good for the amount of time he spends on them.

If you know a young child who has some interest in programming and who doesn't have the patience for traditional languages, give Scratch a try. You may be surprised (and impressed) at the results.