Re: [seul-edu] Language to teach 10 year olds

["Alex Chekholko" <chekh@nyc.rr.com>]

> >> This is
> >> because it is much easier to "learn" a new language if you have a basic
> >> understanding of the key "abstract" concepts that are common between
> >> languages.  Nor would CS / CIS degree plans include more "theoretical"
> >> courses (such as Networking, Database Systems, Operating Systems,
>>>and so

While all the points in this discussion are valid, you have to remember
first and most of all that these are 10 Y/O KIDS!   Are they interested in
learning programming theory, networking or algorithms?  The stuff that you
ppl consider basic cause you learned it in freshman year of college or so is
way too advanced for the 10 year olds.  It's like you're talking about
differential equations when the kids still have to learn polynomials.  I am
18, with several years of programming experience, first in BASIC(7th grade),
then in C++(10-11), then in C(12), and i really find programming boring
unless I'm working on some very interesting program, like a game of some
sort.
When you're 10, you want to learn something in a few hours, and then use it
to create stuff with immediate, usable, results.  The language doesn't
matter, the projects do.  I remember the first things we did with BASIC in
7th grade were a hangman game and a maze game, and even those seemed a bit
boring/difficult to write.

Also, has anyone mentioned Ruby?  It's supposed to be a really nice
language, comparable to Python. http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=ruby