Programming language for children

[Tony Baldwin]

Kjetil Halvorsen wrote:
> I want to try to learn my daughters some programming language. (they
> are 13,14 years)
> In earlier times I would have thought about logo. What programming
> language, available in ubuntu,
> would you propose for this in our time?
> 
> Kjetil
> 

I think you're looking for something like turtle or kturtle, and 
education Logo language IDE program, but, were I you, I would skip that.
If you want to learn 'em right, don't mess with an IDE.
Use a text editor and a bash shell and start them off with bash 
scripting and something relatively simple like tcl/tk, or perl or 
python. (IMHO, tcl/tk is about the easiest language to start learning 
programming, but ESR recommends python...could be that tcl is so easy, 
one develops bad habits?).

Additionally, you might even start them off writing html pages (in an 
editor, not in some bloated website editing monstrosity).  I know that's 
not programming, but they will begin to see the direct relationship 
between writing "code" and the visual results.  Even ESR says this is a 
good idea.

Mind you, I only started learning programming about a year and a half 
ago, with bash scripts and tcl/tk, but I've already released some 
moderately useful stuff to the community in that time...In tcl/tk.
I'm now learning some perl and python, but it's going slowly in 
comparison to tcl/tk.

/tony

-- 
http://www.baldwinsoftware.com
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