Hi,
I know a 14-year-old who wants to learn programming. Of course I'd recommend
Python, and I also know the way to all the tutorials, non-programmers
introductions, etc. But...
The problem is, I don't expect my student to swoon over "hello world", or to
get excited about doing basic mathemathical computations. Nor will standard
computer science stuff about bits, bytes, hexadecimal numbers etc be appealing.
Sure, those concepts are important, and will be dealt with in due time, but
what I'm looking for right now is a way to capture people's interest-- to do
something funny, or cool, or useful even for someone who doesn't know programming.
To give an idea of what I have in mind: A good start could be, for example,
some kind of game that can be scripted in Python, and therefore extended at
will. The "student" could say, "I want the game to do this-and-that", then
proceed to implement it. Unfortunately, I know of no such game, and have no
time to write it <0.3 wink>.
Besides this, does anyone have ideas about what would be a good starting point
here?
TIA,
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