Hi!
I'm looking for resources to teach a teenager how to start programming. I prefer something related to Microsoft tools because this is my background
Any suggestions?
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Top comments (7)
Personal bias here, but I think web development is super fun and can get younger people and newbies hooked on writing code faster than some other stuff. For that, I would start out with codeacademy and move up from there to Wes Bos stuff or other tutorials along that student's interests.
I would also say to merge their interests with code -- if they like music, show them tone.js and apps built to make music, if they like art show them P5.js or Processing for Python, if they love math try something like D3 or Pandas, if they love makeup show them Sephora's steps into tech, if they love gaming show them Phaser etc.
Feel free to reach out for more specific resources! I have teaching experience with a lot of different aged of coders!
After some basic knowledge of web,
Wes Bos courses
+1
"Learn Python 3 the Hard Way" by Zed Shaw is a superb introduction to programming. Python is a very good language to start with, and Shaw works hard to help new coders develop healthy habits that will aid them later.
This is a little later in the process (after learning basics), but "Game Programming Patterns" by Robert Nystrom elegantly covers essential design patterns in a fun, approachable, and beginner-friendly way. The book is free on his site, but it's worth buying! gameprogrammingpatterns.com/
By and large, one is best off learning coding from a platform-agnostic standpoint. To start out learning it from a "Microsoft" perspective, an "Apple" perspective, or a "Linux" perspective just means you're comfortable with one and not on the others; that becomes a severe hindrance to further learning. Thus, I'd strongly recommend learning how to code with cross-platform languages like Python, and then moving to semi-portable languages like C++.
I would highly recommend Mosh Hamedani's C# Basics for Beginners course on Udemy.
He provides free video previews for both his Udemy and YouTube channels, like this one: youtu.be/gfkTfcpWqAY
I think this is heavily dependent on what the student is already interested in. A math enthusiast may happily dive into algorithms & raw command-line stuff, but lots of students find that... dry.
If they're into gardening, figure out how to build an automated watering system. If they like motorcycles (or mountain bikes), strap some Bluetooth accelerometers to your bike and write some code to digest the data and tune the suspension. I'm a mountain biker, and a lot of my favorite code that I've written stems from that.
The more you can make programming just an extension of some other, greater interest, the more fun it'll be to learn.
I always thought Mark Myers' A Smarter Way to Learn is a really good approach to learning programming for all ages!
I am a teen ... Feel free to email me at whtn.begins@gmail.com ^