#478: When and how to start coding with kids Transcript
00:00 Do you have kids?
00:01 Maybe you have nieces or nephews?
00:03 Or do you work in a school environment?
00:04 Maybe it's just friends who know your programmer and ask about how they should go about introducing
00:08 programming concepts to their kids.
00:11 Annalena Popquez is back on the show to share her research on when and how to teach kids
00:16 programming.
00:18 We spend the second half of this episode talking about concrete apps and toys you might consider
00:23 for each age group.
00:25 Plus, some of these are fun for adults too.
00:27 This is Talk Python to Me, episode 478, recorded August 8th, 2024.
00:34 Are you ready for your host, please?
00:37 You're listening to Michael Kennedy on Talk Python to Me.
00:40 Live from Portland, Oregon, and this segment was made with Python.
00:44 Welcome to Talk Python to Me, a weekly podcast on Python.
00:51 This is your host, Michael Kennedy.
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01:54 Anna Lena, welcome back to Talk Python to me.
01:56 It's awesome to have you here.
01:57 Yeah, thanks for having me again.
01:58 Yeah, it's always fun to have you on.
02:00 You've got interesting and playful topics.
02:03 I think the very first time that you were on the show, I can't remember how many years
02:07 ago, but it's been a little while, was to talk about learning Python through Harry Potter.
02:12 Is that right?
02:13 In the magical universe.
02:14 Yeah.
02:15 I still love that project a lot.
02:16 People can find that on GitHub and they obviously can find that episode on talkpython.fm.
02:21 But we're back for, I would say, another playful episode in a sense, right?
02:26 Continuing the theme, I'm going to talk about when should you teach kids to program and
02:32 maybe even more importantly, what are some age appropriate resources that spans a good
02:37 chunk of what a kid's life is?
02:39 You know, like a kid, not a kid at 18, I don't know, but lower than that, a lot of resources.
02:44 Exactly.
02:45 So that's going to be a lot of fun.
02:46 It has been a while since you've been on the show though.
02:48 So just a quick introduction about who you are and what you do for everyone listening.
02:53 Yeah, actually not much has changed since the last episode.
02:55 I think that was on Python packaging.
02:58 I'm still a senior machine learning engineer at a German company called Innovex, where
03:02 I jump from project to project.
03:04 I'm currently working at the speech recognition team at Bubble still.
03:08 Was that last time as well?
03:10 I'm not sure.
03:11 I think so.
03:12 I believe so.
03:13 Yes.
03:14 Yeah.
03:15 So that's a really interesting topic.
03:16 And yeah, I love Python.
03:17 We have talked about different topics over the years and this time it's on children and
03:23 talk I prepared for PyData and the PyCon here in Germany.
03:27 And I was really, it was lots of fun to learn about it.
03:30 Yeah.
03:31 It looks like you did a lot of research.
03:32 I did.
03:33 I think it's probably worth pointing out that we both are parents.
03:37 And so we have some interest in this topics, you know, close to home as well.
03:42 My kids are getting a little bit older for any of this kind of guidance, but still, you
03:47 know, a lot of things I thought about as they were growing up and some of these things we're
03:51 going to talk about I've actually used, you know, before I saw them on your list as well,
03:55 which is cool, but yeah, it's a personal topic, I suppose.
03:58 Yeah, absolutely.
03:59 For me, it's also personal because I did not have any coding opportunities growing up myself.
04:03 I really want this to be different for children growing up now and my own kids.
04:08 That's also a reason why I wanted to do the research so that it would be just different.
04:13 Let me know what you think.
04:14 I feel like there are social stigmas, like this person should be a coder and that person
04:19 shouldn't be a coder.
04:20 They should go do something else.
04:22 And that may or may not be around gender, but often it is, unfortunately.
04:27 But when you're six years old, you don't care.
04:29 You like games.
04:30 You want to play a game.
04:31 You want to explore.
04:32 Things are interesting.
04:33 Right.
04:34 And that also has a big opportunity to short circuit these unnecessary influences, I guess,
04:40 depending on different cultures.
04:42 And also just having it in your environment.
04:44 If there's like a person in your family or your friend circle or even at school and you
04:49 have some opportunity to learn about it, it helps a lot.
04:52 For me, it just wasn't a topic ever.
04:56 And I still remember my parents when I told them that I was switched to computer science
04:59 in my graduate degree.
05:00 They were like, "Are you sure you want to do that?
05:03 Isn't that like very nerdy, techie stuff?" And I'm so happy I did the switch, even though it was quite hard in the beginning.
05:11 But it's an amazing topic and there's so much cool stuff to do.
05:14 It's just not only the nerdy stuff.
05:16 It's always got something new.
05:18 That's both the benefit and the curse of it.
05:20 What you've learned is powerful and helpful, but there's more to learn.
05:23 Yeah, always.
05:24 But that makes, like, keeps it interesting.
05:26 Right.
05:27 You never get bored.
05:28 Exactly.
05:29 Especially in JavaScript.
05:30 Okay.
05:31 So I feel like as your parents had that thought, you know, probably one thing they may have
05:35 thought, I don't know, obviously I don't know them, but a lot of people would think is that's
05:40 a very antisocial sort of thing, right?
05:42 Like, "Oh, you're going into programming.
05:44 That means you're going to sit behind a computer screen completely alone and not talk to people."
05:48 And I think that's one of the misconceptions of programming.
05:51 Yeah, absolutely.
05:52 Even now when I'm working remotely, most of the time I have so many meetings and collaborations
05:58 with other developers and I don't ever feel not part of my team, even if I don't see them
06:03 because we interact so much.
06:05 Sometimes they sit on a completely different continent and it still feels very close and
06:10 we do love and we don't only pair code, but we like, yeah, you get to know them well.
06:16 And it's lots of fun, interesting people that are not the stereotype of coders at all.
06:23 Yeah, absolutely.
06:24 I bring that up because I think some people listening might be attracted to the show who
06:27 don't necessarily work as programmers themselves.
06:30 I can recommend it a lot.
06:32 I think it's a lot of fun.
06:34 Absolutely.
06:35 All right.
06:36 Well, we talked about some of the reasons that we're interested in this, obviously,
06:40 but why?
06:41 I mean, as people who like programming, we may want to communicate or share that thing
06:47 we like with other kids, with our kids and so on.
06:50 But I think programming also can stand in for a lot of more traditional things such
06:55 as geometry and so on.
06:57 I think what I like most about it is that you can really make things.
07:01 You can see them come alive and it can be a game, it can be something more math related,
07:07 it could be music, websites.
07:09 You can just create anything that you're interested in and even have so much fun seeing it come
07:15 to life.
07:16 So it's not just learning a skill, maybe for a job or your life at home or your hobbies,
07:22 but it's more of like being able to create anything that you're interested in.
07:26 And then, of course, you have the obvious advantages like the career opportunities and
07:31 lots of skills that are taught by learning how to code that you do not think about in
07:36 the beginning, I guess.
07:37 Yeah, absolutely.
07:38 The realism or I've created something I can see even though it's still digital and virtual
07:43 and you can't actually touch it usually unless it's like robotic or something.
07:46 But that's so much more realistic and interactive than things like, oh, you're going to learn
07:51 these axioms and then we're going to teach you how to prove stuff about angles and triangles
07:58 with these axioms.
07:59 It's going to teach you logical thinking.
08:01 So sit down for the year and we're going to talk about small angles, big angles, diagonal,
08:07 cross connected, all that kind of stuff, right?
08:10 Which is a little bit useful, but being able to work with computers is way more.
08:13 And I think it teaches these problem solving and computational thinking skills at least
08:18 as well.
08:19 Yeah, absolutely.
08:20 And especially what you said, like problem solving, logical thinking that kids, like
08:24 not only adults, but kids especially, they understand that you might have a complex problem
08:29 you want to solve, but you can break it down into simpler steps, like what an algorithm
08:33 is actually doing, giving you a step by step path to reaching a goal.
08:38 You can teach that not only by coding also, of course, by just playing and seeing you
08:43 want to build this huge Lego piece, but you start building it with little pieces and put
08:49 it all together.
08:50 And that's also what you have in coding.
08:51 You want to reach a goal, you want to program a game or maybe create an animation and you
08:57 understand how to break it down.
08:59 It helps us or also kids to make more structured decisions.
09:02 I think that's a very valuable skill to learn, not only for coding, but for everyday life,
09:06 I guess.
09:07 Being able to break problems down and solve them.
09:09 It helps.
09:10 That's like adulthood right there.
09:11 What I also find really helpful is one of the skills I looked at specifically is perseverance.
09:17 Also for kids, they get frustrated so easily and give up and say like, "This is not working.
09:22 I don't like this.
09:23 I hate this." And start throwing their toys around.
09:26 At least we are at this stage.
09:28 Your kids are probably not doing that anymore.
09:31 But yeah, I think with coding, when you encourage them to keep going, even or especially when
09:37 they fail, that they understand that failure isn't something bad, but rather it keeps you
09:41 improving.
09:42 It keeps you going and that you can learn to see challenges or problems at something
09:49 positive and something you can grow with.
09:51 I think that's really, really great about coding because you will have that a lot when
09:56 you learn how to code.
09:57 Yeah, I absolutely agree with you.
09:59 In the problem, this perseverance skill is incredibly important.
10:03 I agree.
10:04 It manifests itself a little bit differently as they get older.
10:06 Instead of going, "I dislike this.
10:09 These are those toys.
10:10 Crap.
10:11 I'm not good at this thing," or whatever, it's more, "I can't do this.
10:14 I'm not good at this." And a really important skill, I think, is not, "I can't do this.
10:20 I need to work at being good at this." And that perseverance that you learn.
10:25 Honestly, I think one of the very most important skills that people can have as a programmer
10:30 or in software development in general is perseverance.
10:33 Like, "Doesn't work.
10:34 I read the docs.
10:35 Still doesn't work.
10:36 I read Stack Overflow.
10:38 People were mean.
10:39 Still didn't help me.
10:40 I worked my way.
10:41 And now it works." And it's such a cool feeling to work through those things.
10:45 But until you learn the perseverance, you just think, "Well, I wasn't good at math.
10:49 I must not be good at programming.
10:50 I'm out." Yeah.
10:52 I think that keeps a lot of children to learn or to like learning things that are hard.
10:57 Lots of kids struggle with math and STEM classes.
11:01 But I think it's often because they feel like, "I don't understand this."
11:05 Might also not be explained in the best way, but they just shut down and say, "Okay, I'm
11:09 just not going to try." And if you understand, and maybe also I know that there's this huge psychological research
11:16 on growth mindset that you understand that you shouldn't praise just an outcome, but
11:23 rather the effort that kids try to do something.
11:27 They try to improve and put in the work that's just so much more important than reaching
11:32 the goal in the end.
11:34 We can really help our kids to become more robust and more joyful about learning by teaching
11:40 these principles, for example, through learning how to code.
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12:51 Now you did give this topic as a talk at PyData.
12:55 Was that PyData Berlin?
12:57 Or was it?
12:58 I gave it once at PyData London and at PyCon Berlin and at EuroPython.
13:03 Okay.
13:04 Yeah.
13:04 So the reason I was going to bring that up is you had some really cool pictures.
13:09 Yeah, I know.
13:10 You'd come up with like a little persistent kid working away there and stuff like that,
13:15 right?
13:16 Oh, I loved them.
13:16 I loved creating them.
13:17 I used Delhi 3 to create them.
13:20 And I spent so much time just playing around with the model and providing it prompts to
13:24 see which images I liked best.
13:26 Of course, there were the obvious problems with some of them that the kids had six fingers
13:30 and so on, but still, it was amazing to create these images.
13:35 And I love that like the perseverance one.
13:37 And we can link the article to my blog later where you can see the image.
13:41 It's just everyone laughs when they see the picture.
13:44 Yeah, the pictures are great.
13:45 The pictures are great.
13:46 All right, let's talk for a minute about brain development and maybe the different stages
13:51 that kids go through because there's four or five stages, which then you might map over
13:57 to the different types of resources that we're going to talk about.
13:59 Yeah, I think that's a really important topic to consider.
14:01 If you want to understand when your child is able to do certain things, then you need
14:06 to be able to understand how their brain develops because our brain matures over time.
14:11 It's not fully mature at birth, but quite the opposite.
14:15 And some regions of the brain take more time to develop and some like vision and hearing
14:20 are quite well developed already at birth.
14:22 So at certain ages, it does make sense to start coding, for example, from zero to four.
14:30 And there is not much there for them to really have the cognitive abilities to understand
14:36 computational principles or really sit down and concentrate and focus.
14:40 Yeah, for example, at birth, you have quite a lot of neurons already, but just 25% of
14:45 the adult size brain.
14:47 And when you reach the age of four, you already have 80%.
14:49 So it has grown a lot through the first four years.
14:53 And you do have a lot of influence as a parent or caregiver, friend, whatever.
14:58 Mostly the primitive areas of the brain develop first, like hearing, vision, emotional regulation
15:04 starts developing, but really cognitive and executive functions like planning and so on
15:10 come later.
15:10 So I guess zero to four years would be, or birth would be the first stage.
15:15 And then zero to four years where you have lots of things happening and you can influence
15:20 that by positive influences from like responsive caregiving, that you have diverse learning
15:27 experiences and playing with a child.
15:29 And then at four years, it starts getting interesting.
15:32 And that's also where you can start doing things with your kid.
15:38 Like, do you want to rather talk about the development first and then about...
15:42 Maybe we should talk about the resources that go with each stage.
15:44 What do you think?
15:45 Yeah.
15:45 Yeah, let's do that.
15:46 So yeah, I do too.
15:47 Since we already reached age four now.
15:49 Oh yeah, nice.
15:50 Yeah.
15:50 So at age four, you can teach basic algorithmic thinking.
15:54 And you can ask questions like, what would you do to guide a lost puppy home?
15:58 Just making them start to think about how to break down problems into smaller steps.
16:03 But also they have the motor skills at that age and the perceptual abilities to interact
16:09 with simple toys that teach the basics of coding.
16:12 And you open the BeeBot, which is a tiny floor robot, or I guess it's not so tiny.
16:17 It's a bee and it has four directions to go front, back, right, left.
16:22 I think it can remember up to 130 commands and you can press go and program the way it's
16:28 supposed to crawl or walk, however you want to phrase it.
16:32 Yeah.
16:32 So one thing you might do with this thing is...
16:35 So this is a little robot that has wheels.
16:37 It looks like a bee.
16:39 What you do is you push the buttons like forward, forward, right, forward, left, forward, forward.
16:43 And you might put out something on the ground, like a little...
16:47 Can you make your bee go around this thing and then through this little gate or whatever?
16:53 Right?
16:53 Those kinds of challenges.
16:55 I think even when you purchase them, you can purchase rucks that have certain paths on
17:00 them and so on.
17:01 I guess it's a very...
17:02 Right.
17:02 You can spend a lot of money on these kinds of toys.
17:06 But maybe as a side note, if you start looking, you will find tons of robots in different
17:11 price ranges.
17:12 So I guess we will only mention examples, but if you start looking, you will definitely
17:18 find lots of different options.
17:20 Yeah.
17:20 Absolutely.
17:21 Would you say that this RoboTurtles game falls into the same category or is that a little
17:26 bit older?
17:27 Oh, I'm not sure from the top of my head if it's older.
17:29 What I like about it is that it's a board game.
17:32 So I'm always asked about screen-free offers.
17:34 So something that you can play without sitting in front of the laptop because screen time
17:39 is just a general huge discussion point.
17:42 I would have to look up.
17:43 So if I...
17:44 Yeah.
17:45 Looking at the box here, it says ages four and up.
17:47 So probably.
17:48 Oh, nice.
17:48 That's really cool.
17:49 Yeah.
17:49 Yeah.
17:50 So this one is...
17:51 I think it's almost exactly the same problem.
17:53 There is a little bit more to it because there's a couple of challenges in the board game.
17:58 So I think we actually have this board game from when my daughter was young.
18:01 And you have a little turtle, which is a card and a board, and you can put stuff on the
18:05 board like little rocks.
18:07 It can't go through.
18:08 Maybe there's like an ice wall and it has ability to melt the ice, but it has to do
18:13 that before it can move forward.
18:14 You get a bunch of cards and you put them in a stack and then you play them out to see
18:19 if your turtle wins the game or something like that.
18:22 So this is another pretty good option at that age, especially if you want something not
18:26 electronic.
18:26 What I also like about it is that it becomes a family activity that you learn.
18:30 That's just in general a very good thing if you want to teach your kids how to code, that
18:35 you make learning a fun activity and playing games, being with them, showing interest and
18:40 yeah, having fun doing it as part of gaming or what you do at home, playing board games.
18:46 That's just a very easy way then to get started and to get them interested.
18:50 I should point out like the actual Robot Turtles website has a bad SSL certificate right now.
18:56 So I'm sure you can find it on like Amazon and other places, but it's...
19:00 Yeah, I'm sure.
19:01 Okay.
19:01 So what else?
19:02 Another one you talked about is cubelets, but this feels like this might be a little
19:06 bit older.
19:07 Cubelets, it's, well, you can start early with them, but you can also use them at a
19:12 later stage because you can program them using visual coding languages or one of them may
19:17 code, but you can start quite early.
19:20 These like cubelets are small physical blocks.
19:23 As you can see there that you just plug together and some of them move, some have cameras or
19:28 sensors, and you can build lots of cool, unique robots with them.
19:32 And if you start looking at demos on YouTube, it's really amazing how cool they can look,
19:38 the end robot.
19:39 I think one disadvantage of this is that it's quite expensive.
19:42 So one of these blocks is about 50 euros or maybe $45, $50.
19:48 So if you want to build big robots and have lots of options, then you need to invest quite
19:53 a bit of money.
19:54 Yeah.
19:54 I like that the website says free shipping on orders over 50.
19:57 It's like, okay, pretty much anything.
20:00 Yeah, I guess.
20:02 But I still, I love it because it makes you like be creative, especially having this aspect
20:09 that you can program them later on using Mako.
20:11 That's one of the visual programming language.
20:13 I think that's the run for Microsoft.
20:15 You can keep using them over a long period of time.
20:18 Yeah.
20:19 For maybe a mental model for people who haven't seen these in action, because even looking
20:23 at the website, you'd have no idea.
20:25 What do I do with these things again?
20:26 Why are they here?
20:27 I feel like they should have people to animation or something, but there's these cubes as the
20:31 name would imply, but they're almost like Lego blocks that each block is programmable.
20:37 And then you combine them into a thing that does stuff.
20:40 Right.
20:40 I think you explained it well.
20:42 Yeah.
20:42 Thanks.
20:43 So I think that that's pretty interesting, but this is probably in the next stage, right?
20:47 The next stage would be maybe six to nine.
20:50 What do you think?
20:50 Yeah, exactly.
20:51 I think the next stage regarding development would be around six to nine.
20:55 Of course, you also always have to mention it's this is now for normally developing children.
21:01 It's just an average, every child is different.
21:03 So if you observe your child, you know, which skills develop at what point and what might
21:08 be easier for them, what is harder.
21:10 So this is not like hard ranges, but yeah, if you start with about six years of age,
21:15 you can start using visual programming tools because kids become used to using technology.
21:21 They have a better hand-eye coordination.
21:23 And also one very important part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, it's like the CEO of
21:28 our brain, has a big growth spurt between five and eight.
21:32 And this improves working memory, planning, attention, and all kinds of mechanisms that
21:38 you need to start really sitting down and code.
21:41 And you already opened Scratch Junior.
21:44 Yeah, and Scratch Junior is, I think Scratch is quite popular, one of the most popular
21:50 visual coding languages.
21:51 And Scratch Junior is just a simplified version of it for very young children starting at
21:56 five to seven is recommended on their website.
21:59 So it has no text, but rather actions like movement.
22:04 In visual programming in general, you have puzzle pieces to represent concepts like loops
22:10 usually, or I don't know, variables, logical expressions, and you can plug them together.
22:15 So you don't have to worry about syntax or using the command line.
22:19 You just create these programs by putting together puzzle pieces.
22:23 And that happens on a visual interface.
22:27 So that's what visual programming is about.
22:29 And Scratch Junior is just a very simple version.
22:32 I think it's just a free app.
22:34 You can play on tablet and create little programs where the characters move around and do
22:40 things.
22:40 Kind of like the Bee, but you look a little closer to real programming, but then you see
22:46 the output, right?
22:46 Yeah.
22:46 And you start really using, I guess, these plug-in principles that you have the blocks
22:52 that you put together.
22:53 So when you go on to, for example, Scratch or another of the visual programming languages,
22:58 you're already, you have knowledge about how it works in general, I guess.
23:01 As I look at this website, I was thinking, you know, when I think about coding, I think
23:05 about computers, Mac, Windows, whatever with apps, but obviously young kids are way more
23:13 in tune with touch devices like iPads and Android tablets and stuff, right?
23:17 It's amazing how quickly they adapt and learn it.
23:20 I think it's quite, sometimes I'm blown away by how young children can already understand
23:25 how to swipe and select stuff on a touch screen.
23:28 I think actually it probably lowers the age by quite a bit that kids are able to do this
23:34 kind of stuff because these touch interfaces exist in decent ways.
23:37 Yeah, absolutely.
23:38 Just learning how to type is actually one of the main reasons why you can only start
23:43 with textual programming later because typing is hard.
23:47 You need to learn how to do it.
23:49 Just touching and dragging and dropping is much easier.
23:51 When my older kids were very young, we wanted to have them work with things like this and
23:57 just learn how these computers, and they, this predated the iPhone.
24:00 Like it didn't exist.
24:01 There was no meaningful touch screens that really you would want to use.
24:05 And so we got like, kind of like you get a typing program to learn to touch type.
24:10 We got a mousing program and there was like a little airplane and they had to like chase
24:14 the airplane around with the mouse to learn how the eye hand coordination of mouse and
24:18 then like screen, right?
24:19 When you're three or four years old, like that's not natural, right?
24:22 But touching, oh, they already be all over that.
24:25 I think sometimes it's even too intuitive for them that it starts having, like having
24:30 a very huge influence on them way too early.
24:34 But I guess that's a different discussion.
24:36 Yeah, that's a different problem.
24:37 That sends you back to a robot turtle board game.
24:40 Yeah, exactly.
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25:58 A little bit later, we could do...
26:01 Once you start doing this, some kind of programming language, then that opens up a bunch of resources,
26:07 right?
26:07 So obviously Scratch is sort of the way more full featured version of Scratch and Junior.
26:13 That's pretty neat.
26:14 Yeah, I think Scratch is amazing because it...
26:16 I think for kids, it's great.
26:18 I know lots of adults that still use it for some projects where you really want to make
26:22 it come alive because Scratch is focused on having really cool, interactive, fun projects.
26:30 They have sounds, music, you can add graphics and it just offers a lot of functionality
26:37 to create your project, share them with friends.
26:39 And there is a ton of resources on learning Scratch.
26:43 And as you can see here, make music, create a story, create a character.
26:48 I guess your possibilities are endless.
26:51 Yeah, it looks really...
26:52 Actually, I didn't realize all the stuff they got going here.
26:54 They have a bunch of tutorials, free coding community.
26:57 It's super cool.
26:58 Then I guess while we're talking on these visual programming languages, we could talk
27:01 about Blockly, right?
27:03 Yeah, when I knew Blockly existed, it was also free.
27:07 Like Scratch is also free.
27:09 I guess that's important to mention.
27:10 And Blockly is actually at the basis of most of the other visual languages.
27:15 For example, it is actually like block-based languages like Scratch and MakeCode are based
27:20 on Blockly.
27:21 Blockly is developed by Google.
27:23 And with Blockly, I think it's for a bit older kids because it's more low level.
27:29 If you can say that, it offers you more flexibility.
27:32 You see the code next to the blocks.
27:34 You see it in an editor, how it actually looks like.
27:37 And you could copy paste the code into a normal editor and run it.
27:42 It's more low level, but also somewhat more sophisticated, the editor that you have it
27:48 more, it looks more like coding to me than Scratch.
27:51 Maybe the way to think about it, you say it's more low level.
27:54 I would say each block almost corresponds to a single symbol of code, almost, right?
28:01 Like you have a set variable too, then you put another block on, which is the value.
28:06 And then, you know, you've got your visual editor, but then side by side, you have your
28:10 JavaScript or I imagine you could probably see Python or other languages if you, there's
28:14 a dropdown for choosing the output language.
28:16 Yeah, you can use JavaScript, Python, PHP, Lua or Dart.
28:19 Yeah.
28:20 So that's kind of getting a little farther up there.
28:22 And maybe we could talk a bit about the hardware side, because that's one way that it actually
28:27 can be something you can touch and feel.
28:30 And as you interact with these ideas, right?
28:31 I know that that's nothing I ever used, but my brother started using it.
28:35 Like I know that he bought a Raspberry Pi.
28:38 You open up the micro bit, which is like a smaller programmable device.
28:42 And the Raspberry Pi would be like full-fledged computer in a tiny device.
28:46 But yeah, you can learn a lot about hardware and also coding by having such devices.
28:52 And the micro bit has displays, buttons, sensors, and you can program it using make code, one
28:57 of the other visual programming languages.
28:59 And I think it's quite cheap compared to other devices.
29:02 Like a Raspberry Pi is, I think it's not expensive for having all these abilities or these capabilities,
29:09 but the micro bit is, I guess, more affordable for lots of people.
29:14 Oh yeah, nice.
29:14 There you can see how it works.
29:16 And you know what's really interesting is if you go to makecode.microbit.org,
29:21 even if you don't have one of these devices, it comes with a little emulator and then it has
29:26 a virtual micro bit that you can write code against.
29:30 And it gives you an option as well to choose Python or Blockly or some other way of working
29:37 with it, which is pretty cool.
29:38 Exactly.
29:38 That's also why it's recommended for children, like officially it's recommended for children
29:43 at the age of eight or older.
29:45 And Blockly, I think is even recommended for kids starting at 10, whereas Scratch is for
29:50 even younger children, right?
29:51 They say you can get started at eight and they say what I think, which is funny, they say it's
29:56 up to 16, which doesn't make sense to me.
29:58 Why would there be an upper limit?
30:00 But yeah, anyway, you can still use it.
30:03 You're 17, you have to do C++ now.
30:05 Yes, exactly.
30:06 What is great about visual programming is that you can always come back to it.
30:09 It's not that you progress from these robots to visual programming to textual programming,
30:14 but you can use visual programming for doing, I don't know, digital stories and you can still
30:20 do textual programming at work.
30:22 It's just having all these options now is really nice.
30:25 Yeah, absolutely.
30:26 Let's see.
30:26 We also have Zoomie.
30:28 Zoomie is pretty cool.
30:29 Let's come back to Zoomie.
30:30 I do want to talk about something that's like a little bit more real similar to the micro
30:33 bit first is many of the things over at Adafruit.
30:37 Are you a fan of Adafruit?
30:38 I don't know Adafruit.
30:39 Tell me about it.
30:40 So this is a company that creates a whole bunch of small devices like the BBC micro bit that
30:47 runs CircuitPython.
30:49 There's just tons and tons of things you can buy.
30:53 You can buy little sensors and you can buy little displays or whatever it is that you're
30:58 looking for.
30:58 There's just many, many little ways to make these projects a little bit more than a micro
31:03 bit.
31:03 So for example, you could get one of these ESP32 devices, but it has like a little tiny
31:09 display on it that you can output your text to and it costs $19.
31:14 Which is pretty ridiculous.
31:17 And they often come with tutorials on how to do it.
31:19 So if you're into this kind of stuff, this is like a perfect place to go.
31:24 Also, there's just so much opportunity to learn even for like being the parent.
31:29 I would learn so much from doing this.
31:31 It would be so valuable to me to learn more about the hardware side of things, especially
31:37 because I would never sit down and buy myself a Raspberry Pi.
31:41 I don't know why, but I wouldn't do it.
31:42 Just don't find the time.
31:44 But if I can do it.
31:45 You already have a computer and all that.
31:46 Yeah.
31:47 And if I can do it together with my children, I think that's just amazing.
31:50 It's really cool.
31:51 And this is just a general thing about learning with kids.
31:54 If you learn together with them, they can also be the expert sometimes, which is amazing
31:59 for kids.
32:00 If they can explain something to you that they understand better, it gives them so much
32:05 joy and helps them develop this passion and love for learning.
32:09 I think that's a great thing about learning how to code.
32:12 That doesn't matter if you are the best coder, but you can just use it as a way to improve
32:18 yourself.
32:18 Yeah.
32:19 And once they get that mastery, they're like, "Oh, now I've gone beyond them."
32:22 It's probably a really good feeling.
32:24 If my kids want to learn how to code early, like much earlier than myself, they will become
32:30 so much better than me so quickly.
32:33 Yeah, for sure.
32:34 I have one of these little devices here.
32:36 You put it in your hand.
32:37 It's like certainly smaller than the palm of my hand.
32:39 And this thing manages the DNS and ad blocking on my network.
32:43 It was like 20 bucks or something.
32:45 Yeah.
32:45 There's sort of less playful, more interesting.
32:49 Also just utilitarian things you can do with these little things.
32:52 Yeah, absolutely.
32:53 All right.
32:53 Back to Zoomy, which is in the same age category, I would say.
32:57 This is like around 10 years or so.
32:58 Yeah.
32:58 But it's more robot-like, right?
33:00 Yeah, exactly.
33:01 It's a self-driving car kit.
33:03 It's a small car and it has so many capabilities.
33:07 You can program it using Python and Blockly.
33:10 You can even teach it about driving certain ways by providing your own data sets.
33:16 So there is a lot of machine learning.
33:18 Even you can teach it.
33:19 It offers so many opportunities or ways to create projects.
33:25 At my company, we have done quite a few workshops with kids with Zoomy and they love doing it.
33:30 And adults love doing it too.
33:32 Nice.
33:32 It's like a self-driving car kit.
33:35 So if you wanted to try to, instead of maybe teaching it, you go forward three steps, you
33:39 turn right, you go forward two steps, you turn left, you teach it.
33:42 If you see a turn left sign, you turn left or something like that, right?
33:46 Exactly.
33:46 Yeah.
33:47 It can really understand or analyze its environment.
33:50 Yeah, that's pretty awesome.
33:51 Okay.
33:51 And you do events with these?
33:53 Yes.
33:54 That's also maybe advice for people that want to get started.
33:57 It's always useful to check out local events that happen at companies that are close to
34:02 where you live or universities.
34:04 They do offer a lot of free, often offer free workshops for kids where you can sign them
34:09 up to learn about robotics or coding.
34:12 And it can be like an easy way to get them started if you find it hard to do it yourself.
34:18 Yeah.
34:18 I think a lot, at least in the US, there's quite a few programs for like summer teen
34:24 programs that do either 3D printing or coding with Lego robots or whatever.
34:31 So there's a lot of summer camps and that type of thing.
34:33 Yeah.
34:34 I guess that's very big in the US and Germany.
34:37 I think not so much.
34:38 Maybe it's growing, but yeah, you can definitely spend a lot of time doing it.
34:43 I know that like we at our company, we sometimes offer day workshops where you can just start
34:50 getting to know about a topic or just play around with things, becoming kids interested
34:56 in the topic in the first place.
34:57 Yeah.
34:57 That's really neat.
34:58 Last in the category of hardware here, you already mentioned it though, is Raspberry
35:03 Pi, which I guess is a little closer to just a real computer, right?
35:07 Yeah.
35:07 It's a really powerful device.
35:09 So it's basically a very small and cheap computer that runs Linux, but you can use it to learn
35:16 coding, but you can also build hardware projects with it, do home automation, learn about the
35:21 Internet of Things.
35:22 But it's recommended for kids starting at 11 years, so quite a bit older because you
35:27 need programming.
35:28 This maybe also shifts over to the next age range, namely when your kids have typing skills
35:34 and also a more well-developed cognitive abilities and the prefrontal cortex, which I talked
35:41 about the CEO of the brain, the development starts to mature and stabilize.
35:46 So planning, organizing, thinking abstractly, all these skills become more fully developed
35:51 and you of course need the typing skills to get started with textual coding.
35:55 So at the age nine plus, most of the time you can get started with these things.
36:01 For example, with like programming Raspberry Pi or just more traditional textual programming
36:07 languages.
36:08 The typing skills is pretty interesting, I think.
36:11 One that you talked about before, but I think is also super interesting as a gateway to
36:17 this.
36:18 This is the best one that I know, maybe people know of others as well, is Code Combat.
36:22 You did a podcast episode on that years ago, right?
36:26 This is one of the ones, like my daughter and I both subscribed to this for a while
36:30 when she was younger.
36:31 We'd go through and we did, I can't remember, I think she did 30 or 40 code challenges
36:36 through there or something like that, which was pretty awesome.
36:39 And I also had the guys on the show.
36:40 Yeah, it's been a little while.
36:41 Yeah, it has been, but it's still, I think it's an amazing resource.
36:45 So Code Combat is about learning how to code through gaming.
36:48 So you play a game from beginning to end.
36:50 And while you play the game, you learn to code in Python or JavaScript.
36:55 I think there are several languages, but you really do textual programming.
36:59 And if your kid likes gaming or this is something that makes it easier for them to get started
37:04 with coding, it's an amazing resource, even though you have to pay for it because you're
37:08 really guided through the course.
37:09 You can have lessons.
37:10 You can even have, I think, teacher lessons once or twice a week, dependent on your subscription
37:17 plan.
37:17 Yeah, I think there might be a free tier if you tell it you're a student, but you can
37:21 only do certain challenges.
37:23 Like, for example, see this, there's like a locks here and it says, I think, yeah, I
37:28 have to subscribe to this if I want to do all, if I want to solve all the puzzles, but
37:32 there's some of them that you can do for free, I believe.
37:34 I don't feel like we had to pay at the beginning, but they could have changed the model.
37:38 I also played around with it.
37:39 At least in the beginning, you can try it out for free.
37:42 What I really like about this, you know, so if you click on, if you go to this, you click
37:46 on one of the things it says for this challenge, you're going to learn arguments and syntax.
37:50 Or if you come over here and you click on this one, you'll say you'll learn while loops
37:54 or whatever.
37:55 But then it gives you just a nice, simple challenge.
37:58 So, but what's cool, oh, no, in order to play that one, I got to, can I play this one?
38:04 Yeah, here you go.
38:04 So you have this character and what's, oh my gosh, it made that very large.
38:09 What's really cool though, is when you, it gives you a little hint, but the editor, here's
38:13 what I think is special about Code Combat.
38:15 The editor is auto-complete like you have never seen, you know what I mean?
38:21 So it says, all right, what you need to do is build a fence and you have a hero and the
38:24 hero has the ability to say, build at X, Y position, or it could move.
38:30 And if I just type the letter D, it'll auto-complete like hero.movedown.
38:34 Or if I say hero build X, Y, it automatically puts in all the, it's, so if you can type
38:41 just a couple of characters, it'll keep the syntax, you know, like the spacing for indentation
38:47 and block definitions and all of that kind of stuff is ridiculous for how you don't even
38:53 have to really have the right syntax.
38:55 You just have to put a little bit of some kind of word in there at all.
38:58 And it'll, it'll start to write all of it for you, which I think that's the magic here.
39:03 It's nice that you have this insider knowledge by having tried it out yourself for quite
39:07 a while.
39:08 Yeah, it worked way better than other stuff when my daughter was young and I was trying
39:12 to teach her like beyond the visual programming things, but it's, it's so forgiving compared
39:18 to, well, here's your favorite editor and you start typing, oh, why won't it run?
39:22 There's three spaces, not four.
39:23 Oh, I see.
39:24 You know, all that kind of detail you got to normally deal with.
39:27 It can be so frustrating in the beginning if you need to learn about everything at the
39:30 same time, like syntax, spacing, brackets.
39:33 It's just a lot to learn in the beginning if you just want to understand the basic concept
39:38 like for a start.
39:39 Yeah, absolutely.
39:40 Another thing you put out there was CodeClub.
39:43 Yeah, that's, I think a really cool resource by the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
39:48 So it's a platform and it guides your kids from lesson to lesson.
39:55 So you start with learning Scratch, but then it progresses onto Python.
39:59 And yeah, you can start, I think at the age of eight, yeah, you can start at the age of
40:05 eight, which is also the recommended age for Scratch.
40:08 And this is just an example for a full platform that you can use to guide yourself or your
40:14 children through progressing from one thing to the other.
40:18 And I think it's also free.
40:20 So if you start looking, there are lots of online coding classes that you can use that
40:26 teach you different things and have a whole program and sets of ideas behind how to approach
40:31 different topics.
40:32 Yeah, this looks very fun.
40:33 And the example, at least they have on the screen is using Blockly, right?
40:37 Or Scratch, one of them.
40:38 I think it's Scratch.
40:39 Yeah, I think level one is Scratch and then level two would be Python and more comes after
40:44 that.
40:44 Yeah, that's really cool.
40:45 Another one in this realm is Hetty.
40:48 I had not heard of Hetty.
40:49 Yeah, me neither.
40:50 Just when I started researching the topic, why I chose it as an example is that I just
40:56 like the concept of gradual programming.
40:59 So gradual programming means that what I just mentioned, basically, that if you learn language
41:05 speaking or like a programming language, you have to learn a lot at the same time.
41:10 It can be overwhelming.
41:11 You have concepts like loops, if else, and syntax like quotation marks, round brackets.
41:17 And in Hetty, it's free.
41:19 Like it's a web-based interface and you concepts are introduced with as little syntax and then
41:26 refined.
41:27 So in the beginning, you can just type print and the text and you don't have to worry about
41:31 quotation marks or brackets.
41:33 It's just introduced at a later stage.
41:35 So it mimics the way in which we would learn a language.
41:38 And in the end, you like it's based on Python.
41:40 So you learn a subset of Python, not the entire programming language, but it's syntactically
41:45 valid and you have all the right syntax.
41:48 But for some kids, it might be easier to get started with having not everything like being
41:53 part of what you have to code yourself.
41:55 Right.
41:56 Like learning, oh, whoops, you forgot to close the parentheses.
41:58 So it's not going to run or you forgot to close the quote.
42:01 So it won't work.
42:02 Something like that.
42:02 Yeah, exactly.
42:03 Yeah.
42:03 Kids run into that all the time because they're like, well, I see the words on the screen
42:07 that I wanted to do, but no, no, you got to put it in quotes.
42:10 Why?
42:11 Oh, and maybe regarding the age, this is recommended for age 10 plus years.
42:14 So yeah, when you want to get started with actual textual programming, so it fits into
42:20 the third age range that we discussed.
42:22 That's pretty much the last limited age range, I guess you would say, before you just go
42:27 and do regular programming, right?
42:29 Exactly.
42:29 From there, you can just progress on to more traditional programming languages.
42:33 There are lots of resources like from the Bersperry Pi Foundation.
42:38 They have Python courses and there are some on Udemy.
42:41 If you start looking, there are tons of resources to get started.
42:44 There are lots of online and on-site classes that teach kids starting at various ages.
42:51 Yeah, I know about a few German offers where you can really find what you're interested
42:56 in, which is really important, like make coding fun and learning fun for kids.
43:03 So find out what they are interested in, what their passion is, and then find something
43:08 that fits their interest.
43:09 I'm sure there's a ton of stuff on YouTube as well to help people, but at least I'm out
43:14 of touch.
43:15 I bet there's a lot on TikTok, actually.
43:17 Oh yeah, I'm out of touch with that as well.
43:19 Just, you know, you learn one concept every 30 seconds, you just swipe away until you're
43:24 a programmer.
43:25 I should actually look at that probably when talking about coding with kids.
43:29 I guess that's something that can play a big part.
43:32 For sure, Instagram Reels or whatever.
43:35 All right, I think that kind of touches on most of the resources that we have.
43:39 There's one more I do want to talk about, though, and I think this is probably as good
43:45 around, it's beyond the code combat stage where kids can actually use an editor to create
43:52 proper, valid syntax, but it's not much beyond that.
43:55 And that's Anvil, at anvil.works.
43:58 Are you familiar with Anvil?
43:59 No.
43:59 So I've had, Meredith, the creator of this online and on the show, but what's really
44:05 interesting is it's a way to visually build web pages that are actual real web pages that
44:12 people can actually, you know, you publish it, your family or your friends could use
44:16 it.
44:17 So if you wanted to build, you know, something like a Harry Potter type thing and you could
44:21 have your friends vote on which one, which character is their favorite or and why or
44:26 whatever, you know, like you could build this into a web page and publish it.
44:29 And with so many of these projects, it's like, okay, I built this cool thing.
44:33 How do I share it?
44:34 Or how do I make it look like the thing that I use?
44:37 And so you can do this drag and drop, build it out thing.
44:40 But then you write the front end, the front end interactive code in Python and true Python,
44:46 JavaScript.
44:47 And then it has kind of like a simplified database in the back end.
44:50 So it has like a little bit of like persistence and storage, but it's, it's really cool.
44:54 After we did code combat with my daughter, we went and we did this and she built a bunch
44:59 of things that were like, really, she really thought were pretty neat.
45:02 She could share with people and have people input little text messages or whatever.
45:06 - I love that.
45:07 Yeah.
45:08 I would learn again.
45:09 I know very, I have very little knowledge about web programming.
45:13 This would be a good tool for me to get started as well.
45:16 - Yeah.
45:16 Well, also the problem is even if you're a very good web programmer, it's like, okay,
45:22 kid, you go from code combat to now you're doing CSS, HTML, database, you know, like
45:29 the, the explosion of complexity to puts, and then you do all that.
45:32 And then how do you even put it on the web?
45:34 It's just so out of control that step from one to the next.
45:38 And so if people want to do anything with like web pages and Python, this is a really
45:42 cool option.
45:42 I think right here.
45:43 - Pretty cool.
45:44 Yeah.
45:44 And like speaking from your experience, how did you get your kids excited about coding?
45:50 Did they just like it or do they hate it?
45:53 - My older daughters, they grew up with less technology because they're older.
45:58 So at first they weren't super into it, but then they got into college and they had to
46:03 start learning things for their degree.
46:05 And so now one of my daughters is doing a lot with R, which is fine because she's in
46:10 psychology and that's what all of her colleagues are using.
46:12 - Which is fine.
46:14 It's not ideal, but it's fine.
46:16 - It's not ideal.
46:17 It's fine.
46:18 No, I'm not that district.
46:19 No, I'm very proud of her.
46:20 I think there's different things that can motivate you.
46:23 You know, you can just be curious.
46:24 Like my youngest daughter's like, let's play games.
46:26 Let's play code combat.
46:28 Then she's like, I want to build something for my friend.
46:30 You know?
46:30 And then so we did this thing with Anvil and she was very motivated, like seek out the
46:35 technology and play with it.
46:36 Whereas my older daughters, I think they weren't that interested and they had other things
46:40 to do, but once they got somewhere with a job or with their education where they needed
46:45 it, then all of a sudden it was more interesting.
46:47 So, you know, it varies by kid, I think.
46:49 - Yeah, absolutely.
46:50 And I guess that's fine as well.
46:52 Not everyone needs to like coding, but just having the opportunity to learn about it and
46:56 experience yourself, if it's something that you're actually like, I was just so blown
47:01 away when I experienced how fun it is to learn how to code.
47:05 I always thought it was boring and yeah, having all these stereotypes in my head because I
47:11 never actually knew anyone that was coding.
47:15 - Yeah.
47:15 - It's nice that they had the opportunity to learn about it at home.
47:18 - Yeah, it absolutely is.
47:20 So I think we have a little more follow-up here on the TikTok learning style.
47:24 @5fast_tether says, "You can learn every single short, but you won't remember anything as
47:29 you flip through them." (laughing)
47:30 Flip, flip, flip, which is probably true.
47:32 And then also @Krishan asks, "Do you think Scratch is good to start with for kids?"
47:37 Like if you had a kid who was 10, 11, 12, 13, what would you start them with?
47:41 - Yeah, I would get started with visual programming.
47:44 I think it makes it easier.
47:45 I know that for some kids, it can be hard then to progress onto textual programming,
47:49 but I guess this is just a general thing.
47:51 You need to see what works.
47:54 It's not that you, it might be that you start with one thing and you see, actually, it doesn't
47:58 work for us.
47:59 And then you have to switch tracks and that will happen a lot.
48:02 And that's just fine.
48:03 You need to find your own path through it.
48:05 And don't be afraid to actually make changes if you are not enjoying what, or your kid
48:11 is not enjoying their work.
48:12 I think visual programming is a great and fun way to get started with coding concepts
48:18 and not have it feel like you're actually coding.
48:21 - Absolutely.
48:22 So @Krishan's child is 13.
48:25 I would consider code combat, actually.
48:26 I think, you know, 13, you're well enough to do textual stuff if it's not too much drudgery,
48:32 right?
48:32 Like matching braces and quotes and all that.
48:35 So maybe if this kind of thing inspires, maybe that as well.
48:38 - Yeah, absolutely.
48:39 I think 13 is great for getting started with textual programming as well.
48:44 And what is so nice about having large language models now is that lots of these offers are
48:49 being translated to various languages and it is becoming much more easy to get started
48:56 in your native language, which might not be English.
48:58 And then you do not have to learn a language while you learn how to code.
49:02 Yeah, that's also, I think, a huge advantage of the current time.
49:06 - That's something that's always been interesting to me is so many of the programming languages
49:12 are in English, but many of the programmers, their first language is not English.
49:17 - Yeah.
49:17 - And you know, maybe like your English is perfect, I'm sure, you know, for a while is no big deal.
49:22 But when you're 10 years old, here, you need to learn a program.
49:25 Well, by the way, it's in a foreign language.
49:27 That's pretty wild, right?
49:28 That's gotta be challenging.
49:30 What was your, like, how do you feel about this?
49:31 I mean, you're more in it than I am.
49:33 - Yeah, I would always start, like, if you have the chance, then start in the native
49:37 language of the child and you will definitely find good ways to get started and good offers.
49:42 For example, Scratch, I think, is available in lots of languages, 70 languages, actually.
49:47 Choose something that keeps the cognitive effort that you need to get started with simpler,
49:53 because otherwise you really have to learn two things at the same time, learning a language and learning all these concepts.
49:59 And it can then be overwhelming.
50:02 - It's not something that I had to deal with, but looking back, I'm like, wow,
50:05 I was pretty lucky that I didn't have to learn what all the keywords meant in addition to
50:10 just what I was trying to do.
50:11 - That's also actually why I decided to study in English, because I knew all the papers I'm
50:16 reading are in English, all the code I'm writing is in English.
50:19 It doesn't make sense to study it in German.
50:22 It's just weird.
50:23 - The internet has done some interesting things to just sort of spread everything around globally.
50:27 So, all right, Elena, this has been awesome.
50:30 A bunch of concrete things for people to take and work with their kids, maybe if they're grandparents, their grandchildren, or if they're teachers,
50:37 or friends, kids, or whatever, right?
50:39 - Whatever, yeah.
50:40 - Yeah.
50:40 How about some final advice to close out the topic?
50:43 - Yeah, I think for me, two things are the most important ones, namely, first,
50:48 don't force your child to learn how to code, but see if you can find a way that makes it fun for
50:53 them. I think making or learning that learning is actually a cool thing, is like it offers you,
51:02 or it opens you so many doors in your life that you learn that putting in the effort,
51:08 and even if something is complicated, it's worth it.
51:11 It's just one of the most valuable skills you can provide your child with.
51:16 So, yeah, learning how to learn and how to love learning, I guess.
51:20 And there's lots of ways in which you can do it. Choose the right topics, be patient,
51:26 sit down with your kids and learn together. Don't force them to sit down for long times,
51:31 and like rather distribute learning sessions over time. Don't be afraid to switch tracks.
51:37 Lots of the things that apply to adults also apply to children regarding learning.
51:42 - Very good advice. I would just maybe re-emphasize that people should reward persistence.
51:48 Reward it very, very highly. Like, I can't believe you spent half an hour and you just
51:52 got barely got it to print hello, but that's actually a massive accomplishment. And like,
51:56 I'm so proud of how hard you focused and worked on it, right? That's a big deal.
52:00 - Yeah. That's like, it makes a huge difference to two kids.
52:03 - Probably adults as well.
52:04 - Yeah, yeah. Everyone. But you lay the foundation for learning, right? So if you...
52:09 - Yeah. I mean, that expands on to being good at literature or being good at philosophy or like,
52:14 whatever it is that's hard to learn.
52:16 - And just believing that you can learn anything.
52:19 - Yes, exactly. And the other is to try to capture inspiration. If they're like,
52:23 really, really excited and they really want to learn a thing at that moment,
52:26 then you could introduce some of these tools. But if they're like, I want to go outside and play with my friends. You're like, no, come in here,
52:31 we're doing coding. Like maybe that's not the moment, yeah?
52:34 - Exactly. Yeah.
52:34 - All right. Thank you for taking the time to put this all together and coming on the show
52:38 and nice to have you back. So.
52:39 - Thank you.
52:40 - Yeah. Thanks. Bye.
52:41 - Bye.
52:41 - This has been another episode of Talk Python to Me.
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