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Ask HN: How are parents who program teaching their kids today?

by laze00 on 6/1/25, 4:27 PM with 93 comments

• by Waterluvian on 6/1/25, 5:57 PM

  8 year old badly wants to be an engineer like his dad. :’) Public school got him into Scratch so he was animating things. The high school robotics team I mentor has Lego robotics kits for their community outreach program. Those kits use Scratch. So I got him a used kit and he spends an absolutely ridiculous amount of time making robots that do stuff.

  This started at a very young age: we gave him access to a windows PC, not a tablet. So by 3 he could log in and get to YouTube kids. This meant that keyboard and mouse and web browser were very comfortable concepts.

  We also gave him and his younger brother countless building toys. Meccano. Lego Technic.

  A few lessons I’d love to empart:

  - you can’t make your kid into this. His younger brother has no interest and is far more about sports. So we nurture that with him instead.

  - open ended learning. I’m not sitting down and teaching him. All I do is make sure he has access to the tools, and I unstick him when he’s stuck.

  - I connect concepts when I see them. “That’s called a loop. It’s just like that thing you did in Minecraft to make your machine work over and over again.”

  - the learning must all be a side effect of having fun. Don’t try to teach programming. Do fun things and fill in the programming toolbox, tool by tool, as they’re needed.

  - connect programming to what your kid is passionate about. Programming is a means to an end, not the end itself. My kid loves trains and has a Lego train set. I suggested he use his technic to automate the track switch. I then let him work at it for hours and hours over weeks, giving him breadcrumbs of what to consider next.

• by dybber on 6/1/25, 5:18 PM

  I have run a codeclub for 10 years. Here’s some quick thoughts:

  - Make them curious, if they are curious they will teach themselves. Example: don’t tell them what a for loop is, make a project where they really need it, but let them first to write it very verbosely without loops, then they will almost invent it themselves and be relived when you teach them (same style can be applied to most things)

  - make projects that have low entry level, but where they can improve it infinitely. E.g. build an aquarium simulator or a city simulator using p5.js

  - make them collaborate with other kids if possible, often they learn better from their peers than listening to their parents. Facilitate collaboration, and help them come up with more and more difficult projects, that require more and more of them, so they don’t stay on the same level too long

• by primitivesuave on 6/1/25, 5:43 PM

  I taught kids how to code for several years, both in person and through a website that taught Python to ~500k kids. My eternal advice with teaching CS is to delay abstractions as long as possible. Teach them how to draw a circle on a canvas, then get them to move the circle to different parts of the canvas, then get them to draw multiple overlapping circles/rectangles/etc. Once you've got that down, make a bouncing ball animation, simple games, and so on. Most kids don't really care for leetcode problems these days, so it's best to stick to things that are visual, creative, and instant-feedback (i.e. games).

  This was a really useful realization when I was teaching kids to code in person for ~5 years. I started off teaching Java with an abstraction layer (https://www.bluej.org/), but I found that many students would be intimidated by anything that ventured outside of the abstraction (e.g. just run `javac` on your computer with a `.java` file). My most successful students intuitively understood how to turn a text file on their computer into a useful piece of compiled code, or into a JAR bundle that they could share with others. They also used the various abstractions that were thoughtfully introduced over time - e.g. an IDE that gives you a run button, libraries like Firebase which enable some exciting multiplayer game options, and so on.

• by neilv on 6/1/25, 5:50 PM

  > Knowing fundamentals is always useful, but learning to collaborate with an AI is probably the more important long-term skill.

  How difficult a skill is "collaborate with an AI" that it can't be picked up quickly at any time (and will be changing rapidly)?

  And how permanently stunted is a person who always "collaborated" and never had to think.

  > I’ve been focusing on fundamentals like logic, structure, and problem-solving.

  These are good. And exploration, and having fun.

  > CS fundamentals

  You can gently drop CS-ish ideas, or more sophisticated programming ideas, as the kid is ready. For example, they're blocked on something they're building, and can't go any further, because they're trying to do everything as code with not enough data. So you show them what could be data, and what language feature enables that, and suddenly their code looks a little more sophisticated, and a lot less repetitive.

  If they keep going, eventually they will want to frontload learn all the CS things. Not for Leetcode interviews, nor for whatever job-gatekeeping atrocity is made up next for people who also have to interview-prep to fake "passion".

• by codingdave on 6/1/25, 4:30 PM

  You are already on the right track. Fundamentals are far more important that trying to teach them whatever is current in the industry, whether that is a popular language or using AI. Those things change over time. Fundamentals do not. So keep on teaching those basics, and he'll figure out whatever the current toolkits are, as needed, just like we do.

• by protocolture on 6/1/25, 11:48 PM

  My 2 year old is already way too good at problem solving and it causes me significant problems.

  His favourite book at the moment is "Baby Loves Coding" mostly because it features a train.

  He has a phonics laptop that he drags around the house, types on it madly then uses it as a step to climb over obstacles. He already uses 3 or 4 step logic when trying to get things, like seeking a second tool to use to pull something he wants closer to him. Pushes a chair to the front door, climbs up and tries to operate the deadbolt.

  My goal in the short term is to read to him more. Long term, I reckon he will be able to work with pygame before he is 10.

• by SoftTalker on 6/1/25, 5:44 PM

  Who guided you? If you're like me, nobody. I was exposed to BASIC as my first programming language, and I just started doing stuff that seemed interesting. My school offered a few "computer math" classes as they were called at the time, which I elected to take, but nobody pushed me into it.

  Give the kid some programming tools and leave him alone. Be there for questions, and brainstorming if he wants it. Otherwise let him figure it out. He'll shoot himself in the foot, and maybe get discouraged but if his interest is deep enough he'll persist.

• by PaulShin on 6/8/25, 4:57 AM

  A fascinating question. As a founder building AI collaboration tools, this is a topic we obsess over daily.

  You're wondering whether to focus on CS fundamentals or the skill of collaborating with an AI. My take is that this is a false dichotomy.

  From my experience building an AI "teammate" that's integrated into our team's daily workflow, the most crucial skill of the next decade won't be one or the other. It will be using the fundamentals to ask the AI better questions.

  The biggest challenge we see isn't the AI's ability to execute a task; it's our team's ability to frame a problem clearly and break it down into logical steps that the AI can understand. The best results don't come from our best pure coders, but from those who can translate a vague goal (like "make this design better") into a series of fundamental, actionable instructions.

  So, I believe the original poster is on the perfect track. Teaching his son how to "break problems down" – how to create arrows, move them, and know when they hit – is the foundational skill for collaborating with any intelligence, human or artificial. He is not just teaching him how to code; he is teaching him how to think.

  And that's the one skill that will never be outsourced or automated. Best of luck to the OP on his wonderful journey.

• by supportengineer on 6/1/25, 5:32 PM

  My teenagers have zero interest in programming. They like just about everything else other than programming. They both have the ability, but it’s not what they want to spend their time doing.

• by dfxm12 on 6/1/25, 9:48 PM

  In my experience, most of the time when kids say they want to make games, that doesn't mean they want to code them. Making a game is usually not a task done by a lone coder. It is a task done by someone who can manage different technical, creative and business types. I think kids want to have ideas. This creativity can be captured by coding, maybe, but maybe there are better outlets for the individual. The director of street fighter 5, for example, started as a music composer.

  I think it's important to really understand our kids. They may not have the experience or vocabulary to have this discussion. Wanting to make a game and coding are different things. You're on the right path in terms of breaking things down into smaller, solvable problems. Coding might be part of it, but translatable skills to making a game might also include leading a band, making a short film, playing team sports, etc.

• by wslh on 6/1/25, 5:17 PM

  I think it's best to start close to the goal and move into problem-solving once something is up and running and needs improvement or optimization. Focusing on CS fundamentals isn't always worthwhile, unless there's a genuine interest in computer science or math olympiad style problems. Today, we can operate at a higher level since most core algorithms are already available in libraries and frameworks.

  Just my two cents: if your kids aren't very interested or ready for that kind of knowledge now, you might find that in a few years they can learn it surprisingly quickly if they're interested then. What takes months to teach early on might work in days or hours later.

  Also, don't forget to explore https://www.alice.org/ it's a 3D way to get started.

• by nico on 6/2/25, 6:10 AM

  With kids under 8, been doing some light "vibecoding". I am their typist as they guide the ai to do stuff they want. Like these:

  * https://openjam.ai/stupid_coral_852/8s0opc6yc5

  * https://openjam.ai/stupid_coral_852/y2hj69iqvo

  It gave them the experience of using a computer to create more complex things they wanted to create. They also got to experience the fun of iterating on something while playing with it. It kinda felt very natural for them

  As long as they keep enjoying using these tools I believe they'll keep wanting to learn more

• by empressplay on 6/1/25, 8:41 PM

  It's important to remember that the exercise of teaching children coding isn't so much about teaching them how to code, but how to think, how to plan, predict, conjecture, reason and so forth. It's just a convenient and quicker way of teaching these things than the alternatives.

  If they have a good foundation in these things, then if they choose to go on to coding later they can learn all of the minutiae. But I've found in teaching it is important to stress that learning basic coding is _not_ about steering them towards coding as a career, or even a pursuit.

  It _is_ important to stress that learning basic coding will help them become better problem solvers, better able to anticipate issues and mitigate them. And that this is useful to them in a wide variety of areas in which they may have interest, such as sports, engineering, adventuring etc. And yes, also learning how to guide an LLM.

  So once you get those fundamentals down in the context of coding (Scratch, GameMaker, Logo, BASIC are all fine here), go practice them in more real-world applications. Those are the skills you need to foster, not object-oriented programming. And if they take an interest in going further with coding, then that's fine. They will have the tools they need to do that.

• by gus_massa on 6/2/25, 2:25 PM

  Probably start with a turtle, like https://docs.python.org/3/library/turtle.html

  First just graphics, then functions without parameters to make a fixed drawing on demand, then add a parameter to choose size or color...

  For games I think it's better to use absolute coordinates, so perhaps redo most of that without a turtle (and without rotations).

  > That said, I wonder whether focusing on CS fundamentals is worth it. Knowing fundamentals is always useful, ...

  Wait a little, until they learn to use the editor and run simple programs. Try to focus in teaching nice habits like not too many globals, but how many bits has a byte can wait.

  > ... but learning to collaborate with an AI is probably the more important long-term skill.

  I'd not worry too much. They will learn faster than you.

• by AndrewKemendo on 6/1/25, 5:54 PM

  Father of three here (ages 11-15)

  I teach them the following:

  1. Goal determination - what do you want to do?

  2. Context mapping - What is the environment and action space we’re operating in?

  3. Problem decomposition - Given The previous how can I chunk the overall space of action into measurable and manageable parts to solve

  4. Tool selection - what effector systems can I access and can they solve the subproblems?

  5. Structured solution exploration - Now that I know my goal, context, problem heirarchy and tools, how do I create experimental system to progressively solve each subproblem and the intersection between them

  Then it’s just running that until you have a solution

  This transcends “coding” to more important thing which is holistic alignment of goal (direction) and action capabilities (magnitude) that results in a measured action vector which is discrete and bounded.

• by StrauXX on 6/1/25, 6:25 PM

  Not my son, but I did teach my younger brother programming. From when he was about 10 to when he was about 14. I started out when he was showing interest in my programming work. I ended up gifting him a book on programming for kids. Then nudging him into working on it every now and again and helping him out when he had issues. Mostly my goal was to make him motivated to learn (showing him interesting projects I had been working on, etc.). From my experience with motivation and time the skills will come themselves, without motivation, every attempt is pointless.

  It was a slow burner but over the course of four years he ended up learning quite a lot. Now being one of the best programmers in his college.

• by freefrog334433 on 6/1/25, 11:52 PM

  I started a coding class at school because my 8yo preferred learning with friends.

  I made a website for parents to see, at http://rustycc.com.au/whyrust for more details of why I chose Rust.

  I used Rust, partially because like you, I started with C at an early age, courtesy of my Academic father, who placed me in front of a Unix mainframe at the Uni "babysitting", and older children taught me.

  To make it fun, I developed multiplayer games, and children program the actions of a robot avatar, so they have their character, and robot in the games. I also used it to teach mathematics.

• by scarecrw on 6/1/25, 6:27 PM

  I work teaching CS to a variety of age levels (admittedly mostly teenagers and older), and one thing I would recommend is broadening your consideration about what CS fundamentals might include. Picking up language syntax or new tools is easy enough at whatever age, but problem solving and planning skills are very tough to rebuild as they grow into adolescence.

  One of my personal favorite resources is CS Unplugged. [1] It sidesteps any particular language or toolset in favor of pen-and-paper interaction.

  [1] https://www.csunplugged.org/

• by danenania on 6/1/25, 6:00 PM

  I have a 6 year old daughter—got her a lego boost robot kit recently and she seems to be taking to the programming aspect. It’s cool to watch her experimenting. It has a nice graphical block based programming environment that is pretty intuitive for her with an ipad. Makes programming concepts very concrete/tangible.

  It’s fun for me too since learning to program robots has always been on my bucket list. Chatgpt helps since even though it’s meant to be intuitive, you still run into various issues pretty often, and documentation is scarce. Sending screenshots to o3 works amazingly well to get unstuck.

• by sizzle on 6/2/25, 9:16 AM

  I wonder if the next generation of dads will be teaching their kids how to ‘vibe code’ with fun and simple prompting in the age of LLMs.

  This is readily accessible to non tech savvy parents and was never an option before, but here we are in 2025 with AI coding tools front and center.

  What about using LLMs to help break down the concepts in kid friendly terms, lowering the cognitive load for exhausted parents.

  I can even see it as an extension of your lesson plan, further guiding them like a virtual tutor version of yourself. Thoughts?

• by slt2021 on 6/1/25, 5:39 PM

  programming can be picked up any time, rather invest time into building curiosity and basic fundamental sciences: math, physics, and micro/biology.

  these three fields underpin all advanced sciences

• by chili6426 on 6/1/25, 6:46 PM

  Not a parent, I was a kid to a software developer and now I'm a software developer. I think the most important thing is nurturing curiosity. Whenever I wanted to know how something worked my dad would show me. Eventually I figured out how to learn things myself and it snowballed into the career I have now. I never felt dumb asking questions and now learning is my favorite thing to do. I was never taught to code, I figured it out myself using the curiosity my parents gave me.

• by agentultra on 6/1/25, 11:50 PM

  My kids have been interested in what I do but programming is too abstract for them. Instead I’ve used a “math circles,” approach with them and we play games. CS Unplugged [0] is a good resource. As well as family games such as Set and Zendo.

  [0] https://www.csunplugged.org/en/#:~:text=CS%20Unplugged%20is%...

• by joshuajooste05 on 6/1/25, 6:11 PM

  Prompting, especially for code, is not too difficult of a skill to pick up, but the ability to A understand syntax and B develop the way of thinking is much harder.

  I think the only way to learn to code is to really limit the use of AI (obvs can speed up some things, but never let him copy and paste from it)

  I don't really think there is a substitute for encouraging him to push through without AI tbh.

  When he eventually start's vibe coding, it will be like putting a v8 in a Ferrari instead of a VW golf.

• by sriram_malhar on 6/2/25, 5:10 AM

  I think Scratch is fantastic. You get concurrency, timers, reactive programming, multi-media, design elements, and no syntactic rules to learn. So many concepts.

  As a next step, I'd suggest GoboScript, that was on HN a few days back. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44026799

  This is Scratch with a textual interface, with a few lovely and much needed extras.

• by zeroc8 on 6/2/25, 6:53 AM

  I've had good success in the past using the old, non object oriented Blitz Basic, which is a basic dialect enabling you to program simple 2d shooter games within two or three screen pages. Not sure what I'd use today though. I think the key is instant feedback and fun. Andre Lamothe has a Udemy Course teaching simple game programming using Javascript, which might be worth exploring.

• by aptj on 6/2/25, 8:13 AM

  @all Don't forget to help your kids learn to communicate, cooperate, stand for the healthy life on this wonderful planet (our common habitat) and resist being fooled and bullied.

  > Veritasium: How One Company Secretly Poisoned The Planet https://youtube.com/watch?v=SC2eSujzrUY

  Edits: minor typos.

• by hobsonlane on 6/2/25, 1:04 AM

  There's a 3rd option. Teach programming like you self-taught leave CS for High School. Just teach a beginner programming language like you would teach a second natural language in a bilingual family. An AI assistant is useless to someone who does not know what "if" does, or order of operations or basic vocabulary, syntax, grammar, and symantics.

• by bhu1st on 6/2/25, 3:43 AM

  I setup an old Kano OS on Raspberry Pi 3 for my 8 yo boy. He managed to finish challenges upto Level 8 by himself mostly. The OS has block based programming challenges and games. The Pi PC is his and he is hacking it whenever he feels like. No pressure, not forcing him to learn coding or anything. I'm curious how it will unfold in later years.

• by bigs on 6/2/25, 11:14 AM

  My 8yo has an iPad with Osmo Awbie which he loves. You use physical tiles to program steps in a logic game like “move right 3”, “turn 90deg”…

  They have a bunch of other programs too but for some reason I seem to only be able to find them on Amazon now.

  He did want to create Roblox levels and Blender based characters and it was just too much to start with.

• by rcarmo on 6/2/25, 6:40 AM

  Mine are both teens now. We started with Codea, Pythonista and Swift Playgrounds and then moved to pico-8 (highest recommendation I can give to anything). Now they’re using Godot, plain Python/pygame and Swift.

  There was zero emphasis on CS fundamentals - they went out and explored those themselves.

• by chondl on 6/1/25, 6:20 PM

  When my child was in the 9-12 year range we did programming with Godot. He liked building games so it maintained interest. Previously he had been working Scratch and the Godot editor was a much easier on ramp to building more complicated games than trying to do them in Java or Python.

• by orochimaaru on 6/1/25, 6:11 PM

  My 14 yr old wants nothing to do with coding. She hates scratch which I think spoiled the experience for her. I think schools should dump scratch and move directly to programming languages. Besides she’s at the age now where she doesn’t want the parents in her business.

• by abstractbill on 6/1/25, 5:46 PM

  I started my kids on turtle graphics. There's a good implementation that comes with python that's very easy to get up-and-running, to the point where it quite reminds me of BASIC on the kinds of microcomputers I got started on as a kid.

• by 28304283409234 on 6/1/25, 5:41 PM

  Minecraft. After a while they'll want to write their own plugins. They will feel instant power when they learn the can run their own server with their own plugins and can change the actual game! (Worked for my nephew anyway).

• by chaddattilio on 6/1/25, 7:10 PM

  Code.org has a fantastic suite of tutorials aimed at kids that use a Scratch-like environment but it also gets to the point where you’re writing code. Also free. Teaches concepts of control flow, functions, algorithms, etc.

• by empressplay on 6/1/25, 7:38 PM

  Creative coding events like #Genuary (January) and #Minacoding (June) are good ways to pique interest too, each day is a different prompt to create something new using whatever you like.

• by type0 on 6/2/25, 7:29 PM

  Thonny is real good for beginners in Python https://thonny.org/

• by ramshanker on 6/1/25, 5:31 PM

  Touch typing is fun amd magic for kids. 9 more keys left out of 26 for my kid. I clearly see her developing muscle memory faster than I did myself.

• by dyauspitr on 6/1/25, 9:32 PM

  This is probably our last chance to teach kids programming before it becomes utterly meaningless to do so over the next 5-10 years.

• by khelavastr on 6/1/25, 5:43 PM

  A real Roguelike like ADOM with ASCII graphics and key-based navigation is irreplaceable for teaching typing.

• by ninetyninenine on 6/1/25, 5:51 PM

  Not all but many kids are destined to hate what you’re good at.

• by dataf3l on 6/1/25, 5:42 PM

  consider colobot.

• by darthrupert on 6/2/25, 5:51 AM

  Don't teach your kids programming. Answer their questions when they have them, stop them when they're doing something obviously stupid (like too many hours on the computer, staying up too late, punching/yelling at the computer, that sorta stuff), but do not actively participate. Let them have their fun. Above all, do not get them a personal computer that is located in their own room.

  In other words, be a parent, not a friend or, even worse, a colleague.

• by jmole on 6/1/25, 10:45 PM

  I have 3 kids, all around the same age (K/1). They all got laptops about 18 months ago for christmas. I installed mint linux on all of them, and installed a few free/libre games for them to play, and I self-host the game server at home.

  One game they play is luanti (formerly minetest). I gave them instructions on how to clone the git repository for the game, run the build script, and then start the game. They've probably forgotten the build instructions, but they know to play, they have to type `cd code/minetest` and then `bin/luanti`. Occasionally they have to run `git pull` to update the code on their computers. I handle all the game server administration.

  I initially blocked all internet access with a kill switch, but this quickly became an issue because you need to be able to run `apt update` and a few other commands to keep the system up to date. So now I run a proxy server called e2guardian that lets them access sites that I choose.

  Later, I introduced them to scratch, and I downloaded the entirely of griffpatch's youtube library with yt-dlp and organized it into folders on each of their computers. I've done the same thing with other tutorial style videos. They don't have access to youtube, and I don't really think it makes sense to give them access at this age.

  They run scratch locally, as opposed to using scratch.mit.edu. I enabled the scratch website for a couple of days as a treat for them, and as expected, they spent most of the time exploring and playing others' games, but very little time building their own. I sort of expected this to happen, so we closed off access a few days later, and they took some of the ideas they saw online and started playing with them locally.

  So my experience is:

  a) linux makes a great platform for kids, since it's very easy to tweak things to stop behaviors that you don't want to reinforce. e.g. `sudo chmod 400 /usr/local/games` turns off all the games, `sudo killall kidname` will close the desktop session if your kid isn't listening when it's time for bed, you can set up time-based login policies with pam_time, you can install your own root certificates for SSL MITM, etc.

  b) games reinforce that "computers are fun", and games like luanti are free, open-source, and hackable.

  c) interest in games naturally spills over into interest in making your own games.

  If you want to try luanti/minetest, I recently cleaned up/released a mod that I built for the kids last year called turtlebots. It's a visual programming tool that lets you program little turtle-shaped robots that can navigate in a minecraft-style world and build things as they move around. Source is here: https://github.com/jmole/turtlebots

• by moritonal on 6/1/25, 6:08 PM

  Spacechem!

• by senectus1 on 6/2/25, 2:21 AM

  showed my son how to write batch files, noticed he was getting interested so i showed him how powershell works. he got even more interested so I have ever since bought a family premium lic for youtube and let him teach himself.

  he's teaching himself c, c#, openGL, c++ etc etc. kids these days learn at their own rate via youtube in my experiance.