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When is the best age or grade at which to show them real code?

 
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Hi Bryson,

I have done a little of introducing high school students to html and a bit of code. Now I was wondering if I could also do same for kids in primary school or could I just stick with visual aids like the 'Scratch'
Model used by folks at Code.org for example?

Now if I stick to the visual aid for those kids, would they really feel like they were programming a computer? What are your views on this?

Thanks
 
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Charlsy,
Great question! I've found that kids can really start writing code by themselves (in Python, at least) around age 8-10. Before that, just exploring by changing existing code and seeing the results can be fun, or using a block-based language like Scratch or Blockly is great (see this post: https://coderanch.com/t/651639/Jython-Python/Comparison-Jython-Python-visual-programming).
Kids with great reading and some math skills (generally by 3rd-5th grade) can really dig into coding with a clean, easy language like Python, or even JavaScript. By middle-school (~13 years old), student can handle more advanced concepts and more complex programs - even languages like Java ;), but I teach college freshmen through grad students in Python, Java, and web languages, and everybody has different tastes.
I would recommend showing your students an example of both approaches, block-based and text-based, and seeing which sparked the most interest. No Starch (my publisher) has great titles on Scratch, as well as Python, JavaScript and more, and there are loads of resources online.
Best wishes, and happy coding!
Bryson
 
charlsy chuks
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Yeah Bryson,

When I showed them HTML, the response was classic! I just went straight to HTML since they were almost done with high school.
The experience was priceless. However, I think the block styles would have laid a kind of foundation for them to eventually grasp the
basic concepts of programming.

The next challenge which may not be much of a challenge is disabusing their minds that this stuff is for nerds only or folks who are really good at
math or sciences. I have not really gotten that personally but it is a stereotype that needs to be changed.

I am sure you have had a share of your own experiences which you can share.
 
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