Ask HN: How to teach a kid of 15 Linux and programming

[mrprogrammerguy]

I have foster kids. The one is 15. This is kind of the age that I started with programming, hacking and linux. Things are very different now. How do I get him interested in the topic, how do I get him learning programming in a fun way? Please don't tell me to teach him scratch. I personally found scratch to be boring as hell.

[Hardliner66]

> how do I get him interested in the topic?

Does he actually want to learn programming or do you want him to want to learn programming?

If it’s the first, try programming games or give him his own little Linux box that you can put in a separate lan without internet.

If it’s the second, then you don’t. You can show him cool stuff that you can do by programming and if he likes it, he’ll start wanting to learn. And if he doesn’t, then that’s fine too. No need to force a hobby on a kid.

> I personally found scratch to be boring as hell.

It doesn’t really matter if YOU find it boring. If he’s fine with it, then it’s still a valid choice. Iirc there are even robots you can program in a scratch-like environment and it can reach plenty of the basics without all the noise from regular programming.

So just focus on making it fun for him. Either with something like scratch or screeps or maybe try building a Minecraft bot with mineslayer.

[wesapien]

Assemble a retro gaming computer. They have to be at the very least curious about the subject and you can generate interest. I spent a lot of time in school in shop class. That's how I got used to working in hobbies/projects. Working with your hands and following instruction list to build stuff. Having that DIY mindset.

Learners today have amazing tools like YouTube, Khan Academy, freecodecamp, Wikipedia, ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Bing Chat.

[latexr]

> how do I get him learning programming in a fun way?

Processing / P5.js can be pretty fun to learn. You use a real programming language to create art and animations. With little code you can get a circle on the screen, then making it move, then following the mouse cursor, then adding other shapes, then changing colour depending on some event… It’s conductive to experimentation and a way to gradually introduce concepts.

https://processing.org/

https://p5js.org/

https://thecodingtrain.com/

[sys42590]

If Scratch is too limiting, you can try to get them hooked on programming with developing games using Godot or Unity:

https://godotengine.org/ https://unity.com/download

For Linux, you have to think what the kids can gain by having a Linux box: A media center & streaming server, some home automation with a SBC (RPI, Arduino, etc.), your guess...

[informatimago]

Well, that's the point: you have to find a subject that doesn't bore the kid to death, and show him how he can explore it with programming. Any kind of programming. So what interests this kid?

[mrprogrammerguy]

Lol hacking Fifa on Xbox seems to interest him :)