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jackdoe
programming-for-kids
Python2021–2024
jackdoe / programming-for-kids

programming-for-kids

book for parents and kids.

10Distinct people
38Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
664GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

book for parents and kids.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 10:02:05 AM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year38 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2021-07-11 14:42:56 UTC to 2024-07-23 19:13:49 UTC.

0510152021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 16 mentions; 2 submissions, 14 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 12 mentions; 0 submissions, 12 comments20222023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 4 submissions, 3 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2024

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC16214
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC12012
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC743
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303

What Hacker News says

7 sources
That looks seriously cool. Just the colors give me goosebumps :) completely offtopic: My dream is to build a super cheap child friendly computer, that the kids can build themselves, has a software keyboard that directly polls the gpio pins so that kids can modify their keyboard instead of having a keyboard controller (just so there is less mistery in what happens when a key is pressed). And the OS is something inspired from LEAP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_TlE_U_X3c that allowing you to evaluate code and apply it to your current file. A bit like your LOAD81 but with text. I have a prototype now: https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/blob/master/... but it has a long way to go.
In PicoCalc: A fully-functional clone of VisiCalc for the PICO-8
I think programming is literacy. People who can code can see through the fabric of our world in the same way as people that can read can see different worlds. Teaching programming is so incredibly difficult, I am trying to teach my daughter, 343 days so far (12 yo, log here: https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/blob/master/...) and I am not sure it is a tooling problem at all. The problem seems to be to be able to understand what the student does not understand. And to be able to keep their focus. I also use a lot of incentives (custom tshirts, vbucks, displate posters etc) to compete with the million developers in snap/facebook/tiktok/epic/etc that are trying to steal and sell every bit of her attention. I constantly try different methods, we even made programming card games together (like https://punkjazz.org/programming-time
Read the rest
/), or downloading music or generating music, writing games with python/lua/c, making autoclickers or bots, pranks, hacking things (e.g. explaining and using the whatsapp url parse bug recently was very fun), playing war games etc, but every day I have to spend a lot of time thinking about what is the "right" next lesson, what does she need to learn to level up. Learning programming is not a curve at all, it is a staircase and stairs are like walls for some people. It might take 10 years to get to the next level. You can have people programming whole complex programs without having any idea what is going on. That being said, the future of programming pedagogy and andragogy is very open, and I am very happy for every attempt to try to make a dent in it.
In Two years of teaching high school CS

Ask HN: How do you explain ChatGPT to your kids

My daughter(12) started using ChatGPT recently for homework stuff, but she also asked it some personal things about a friendship advice, which made me think about how dangerous it is to take a life from a language model. I thought its important to explain what it is and how it works, so I made our lesson yesterday be about ChatGPT (we spend every day doing a bit of coding and I log it in this repository): https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/blob/master/week-044.md#day-318-ai… Today before school I asked her to reflect on what ChatGPT is, and she had a pretty good mental model from yesterday's lesson, so at least she doesnt think it has empathy or is telling the 'truth'. I managed to change 'ChatGPT is giving an answer to a question' to 'its just guessing the next word, but it understands deeply how words are connected'
Read the rest
. We did a lot of exercises where I asked her to think what would the next word be given a sequences of words just by thinking about their probabilities, like: 'Your name is ChatGPT. What is your' and the next word is going to be probably 'name' and then '?' and then 'My' How do you explain it to your kids? Do you worry about them using it? Since OpenAI makes it super easy to login with gmail (and her gmail is a kid account), I didn't even know she had a user there until she told me, but I think most kids in her class use it without their parents knowing. PS: Sorry I submitted the AskHN with url filled in and that made it remove the AskHN part of it and also mangled the url and etc, so i am just submitting again without url this time
2 points · Open discussion
My daughter(12) started using ChatGPT recently for homework stuff, but she also asked it some personal things about a friendship situation with her best friend, which made me think about how dangerous it is to take a friendship advice from a llm. I thought its important to explain what it is and how it works, so I made our lesson yesterday be about ChatGPT (we spend every day doing a bit of coding and I log it in this repository): https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/blob/master/... Today before school I asked her to reflect on what ChatGPT is, and she had a pretty good mental model from yesterday's lesson, so at least she doesnt think it has empathy or is telling the 'truth'. I managed to change 'ChatGPT is giving an answer to a question' to 'its just guessing the next word, but it understands deeply how words are connected'.
Read the rest
We did a lot of exercises where I asked her to think what would the next word be given a sequences of words just by thinking about their probabilities, like: 'Your name is ChatGPT. What is your' and the next word is going to be probably 'name' and then '?' and then 'My' How do you explain it to your kids? Do you worry about them using it? Since OpenAI makes it super easy to login with gmail (and her gmail is a kid account), I didn't even know she had a user there until she told me, but I think most kids in her class use it without their parents knowing.
In How do you explain ChatGPT to your kids

Ask HN: Legal question – liability for printed card deck of computer pranks

Hi I am teaching my daughter how to code, and now I am running various pranks on her computer. For example, every time you alt+tab there is a weird beep sound, or the computer randomly restarts every 10 minutes, or after 10 minutes in Minecraft the keyboard presses 'W' for 3 seconds, or I move her mouse remotely and etc... (some are extremely evil, like stopping half the internet 128.0.0.0/1 or 0.0.0.0/1 every 10 minutes for 3 seconds) I made a whole deck of cards (each prank fits on one playing card): https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/blob/master/projects/panic/cards-s… I sell the decks for 5€ (e.g.: https://punkx.org/c-pointer-game/ or https://punkx.org/punk0/) but for this one, I am not even sure what kind of lawyer should I talk to, to make sure I am not liable if a user of the deck damages someone's computer. I a
Read the rest
lso aded epilepsy warning on the cards that are very visual (like randomly rotating the screen 90 degrees). The deck is also licensed CC BY 4.0, so anyone can re-print it, and are the people printing it and sharing it liable as well? The warning I have now is made by me and you can see it on the first card, but I will also paste it here: WARNING! WARING! WARNING! USE THE CODE FROM THESE CARDS AT YOUR OWN RISK. THESE PRANKS ARE PURELY FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES AND ARE NOT INTENDED TO CAUSE HARM. THE AUTHOR OF THIS DECK IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE, LOSS OF DATA, OR OTHER CONSEQUENCES THAT MAY ARISE FROM THE USE OF THESE PRANKS. BY USING THESE PRANKS, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU ARE FULLY AWARE OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR ACTIONS AND THAT YOU UNDERSTAND THE CODE ON THESE CARDS. IF YOU ARE UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, YOU MUST OBTAIN THE CONSENT OF YOUR PARENT OR LEGAL GUARDIAN BEFORE USING THESE PRANKS. BY USING THESE PRANKS, YOU AGREE TO RELEASE AND HOLD HARMLESS THE AUTHOR OF THIS DECK FROM ANY CLAIMS, DEMANDS, OR DAMAGES, WHETHER KNOWN OR UNKNOWN, ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY WAY CONNECTED WITH YOUR USE OF THESE PRANKS. Any advice will be super helpful, I really think the pranks are very fun and educational if used properly, but like any prank it can go too far. Thanks in advance. EDIT: Forgot to say, I am in The Netherlands, but send decks worldwide, not sure if that matters when selling physical products online
3 points · Open discussion

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