A friends child is struggling to cope with many aspects of life but is showing great abilities with computers. May be learning a computer language would be beneficial. What would be a good starting language and are there any teaching methods that would be suitable to the situation.
2007-04-01 11:32:28 · 5 answers · asked by HoundDog 2 in Computers & Internet ➔ Programming & Design
I don't think there is a simple answer. There are many different programming language styles, and you may have to experiment to see what style of programming the child attaches to.
The most popular are the procedural (a.k.a. imperative) object-oriented languages, such as Java and C#. Procedural means you have steps, like a recipe, telling the computer, do this, then do that, then do the next thing. Object-oriented means trying to model the real-world problem using a computer concept of object, which encapsulates the data with the behaviour (i.e. the procedural steps.) Alternative styles include functional (as in the Haskell programming language) and declarative/logic languages such as Prolog. Then there are the languages that aren't programming languages, but specialized for particular purposes, e.g. HTML for creating web pages.
2007-04-01 12:52:30 · answer #1 · answered by Klint 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Visual Basic is often a good place to start for programmers. I started with it when I was about 8. The current version, Visual Basic .NET, is even easier to use. You can download the express version of the development environment for free from Microsoft. There are countless books on the language, and Microsoft offers many, many tutorials and such. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/ to get started.
FYI, HTML is not a programming language. So, I wouldn't really recommend that unless the child is interested in creating web pages. But if s/he is, try Creating Web Pages for Dummies (http://www.amazon.com/Creating-Web-Pages-Dummies/dp/0470080302/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-0496350-3588743?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1175467516&sr=8-1 )
2007-04-01 18:42:48 · answer #2 · answered by Rex M 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
HTML
it's simple
i just read a little book on html
and then got a reference book of all the tags for 20$ from a local book store.
trust me, HTML is a simple, easy to use language understood by all web browsers.
2007-04-01 18:42:23 · answer #3 · answered by Bob, Computer ADDICT. 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Different programming languages do different things.
If he's interested in robotics have him get Lego Mindstorms, and he can program those.
If he's interested in web stuff, HTML and JavaScript are fairly simple to learn.
Another pretty simple and "all around" programming language is Python. Someone else would need to help him get it set up, but it's pretty easy to learn.
2007-04-01 18:40:45 · answer #4 · answered by Darth Revan 1 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Logo, the best intro language in the world. :)
2007-04-01 19:34:27 · answer #5 · answered by Kasey C 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋