So what IDE, or development setup, what language with what framework would you give into the hands of a child, to let it play around? Even what OS? All computers in our appartement are Linux or MacOS.
I learned programming basically on my own using QBasic, and then later my dad gave me a simple example app he did at work using Visual Basic 3 (only 20 lines of code or so), and then I got a Visual Basic 3 book, and that's how I learned.
In school, in knew a few other kids learned Delphi instead of VB. I don't know but I assume the learning curve is higher, so many childs maybe would lose interest too soon?
Another friend directly learned C and graphics programming as a child. But he is probably a rare exception.
For Delphi, we have a modern variant as Lazarus.
For VB, I'm not sure. Maybe this sVB, or maybe the mentioned Gambas.
I'm just not sure that the Basic language is really relevant anymore. Object Pascal is maybe slightly better but still very exotic nowadays.
Maybe frameworks like Löve? Not sure about Lua.
Or Python? But what framework? Sth like Pygame? Python maybe is as easy as Basic, but Pygame maybe requires a slightly higher learning curve than Visual Basic? And also, the VB IDE is probably way more beginner friendly than anything for Python?
Or Javascript? Is there a nice beginner friendly framework, to write simple games or so? And again, what IDE?
For my 9-year-old boy, I picked QB64 [1] and things are going very well. The experience is identical to old QBasic, but with a saner language that encourages to declare the type of variables.
At the moment we are following [2], which seems perfect for a child of that age.
[1] https://github.com/QB64Official/qb64 is the repo to follow: after the dramatic split of the dev community happened in 2022, the older one is not used anymore.
I did not follow the events closely, but it seems that one guy, not particularly involved in the development, took charge of the repo and the website and essentially locked it from all the core developers. The story is told here, very interesting read!
I was turned off when it said I needed to create an account to download it. $400 for the basic cross-platform license ($800 for the one I'd actually want to use) with annual renewal is a non-starter IMHO.
Depends on the kid and their interest, but I wouldn't overlook either CircuitPython or Arduino. There's a certain instant gratification from making a program that causes something physical to happen. And it doesn't come with the expectation of being able to make something slick and professional right away.
We had great fun with https://www.glbasic.com in our family. Simple basic for game creation mainly but I did use it for processing data at work for a while :-)
Really tricky, I've recently been trying to work out what language to do with my 12 year old son. In the past we have played around with things like scratch ( https://scratch.mit.edu/ ) which is a great introduction. I went along to an after school programming school to see what they were doing and they were using things like https://www.codemonkey.com/ and Python. They were also using Minecraft and Roblox. My son is really interested in Roblox and I've spent a bit of time looking at Roblox Studio ( quite impressive really ) which uses Lua. In the end I decided to start with C# and Console programs, I was nervous about whether the console would be too boring, but actually, it's going really well. My plan is to really thoroughly cover the concept of basic types, variables, loops, conditionals, scopes, functions, and objects. I've watched a lot of people learn programming on twitch and noticed so many tend to get constantly stuck as they don't have this basic working understanding of the fundamentals and try to advance too quickly. We will then do some GUI stuff, then do some Web stuff, some Roblox Studio, and some embedded/electronics stuff. As part of this I want to teach him about windows and linux inner workings (we also have a mac, but only really care he knows how to use it). So at the end I hope he appreciates multiple languages and multiple OS's and that you can write software for all kinds of things.
For Python, I'd encourage you to look at the BeeWare suite. BeeWare allows you to write GUI's once and build for desktop and mobile (and eventually, web, again). It's still writing a GUI instead of working visually, but for basic to intermediate apps, you don't have to get into the nitty gritty of UI design, know anything about Qt (wooooo), and build a nice, capable GUI app.
I've had some luck teaching middle schoolers Python using the turtle module. (I think we used IDLE.) I think it depends on the child and their interests, ultimately. I once taught a middle school student who was already building websites in Python using Flask and mostly needed me to get him unstuck sometimes.
Delphi was a little higher learning curve but not much and worth it for the fast dependency free exe at the end, I think nothing can beat the ease of Basic for beginners
I learned programming basically on my own using QBasic, and then later my dad gave me a simple example app he did at work using Visual Basic 3 (only 20 lines of code or so), and then I got a Visual Basic 3 book, and that's how I learned.
In school, in knew a few other kids learned Delphi instead of VB. I don't know but I assume the learning curve is higher, so many childs maybe would lose interest too soon?
Another friend directly learned C and graphics programming as a child. But he is probably a rare exception.
For Delphi, we have a modern variant as Lazarus.
For VB, I'm not sure. Maybe this sVB, or maybe the mentioned Gambas.
I'm just not sure that the Basic language is really relevant anymore. Object Pascal is maybe slightly better but still very exotic nowadays.
Maybe frameworks like Löve? Not sure about Lua.
Or Python? But what framework? Sth like Pygame? Python maybe is as easy as Basic, but Pygame maybe requires a slightly higher learning curve than Visual Basic? And also, the VB IDE is probably way more beginner friendly than anything for Python?
Or Javascript? Is there a nice beginner friendly framework, to write simple games or so? And again, what IDE?