brad_frostI’m dropping in to talk to on my 8-year-old’s school coding club tomorrow.
What should I talk to them about: Webpack config or end-to-end testing frameworks?
But seriously, what would you say to a group of 8 year olds about coding?
spartanatreyu@brad_frost Do the "make a sandwich with exact instructions" experiment with them.
Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR25vZJEKeo
They give you the exact instructions on how to make a sandwich. Once you have the instructions, perform them exactly as specified making sure to mess up the result as much as possible whenever something can be interpreted in more then one way.
Then you teach them two lessons:
Teacher Follows Student Instructions to Make a Sandwich — Hilarious Results!
@brad_frost
1. Programming is all about writing instructions to get the result you want.
2. It's never the computer's fault. Computers don't make mistakes, they do exactly what they are programmed to do.
Then (depending on how much time you have)...
@brad_frost you could play a game with them on the board where you draw two checkerboard/gameboard states and they all need to figure out the instructions to get from the starting state to the end state.
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And if you want audience participation:
1. You could also get them to each draw their own states
2. Pass the states to someone else and figure out and write down the instructions before giving them back
3. Get them to perform their partner's instructions to see if they get the end state