[TriLUG] Teaching Kids to Program

[Steve Litt via TriLUG]

On Mon, 17 Aug 2015 13:50:47 -0400
Steve Litt via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org> wrote:

> On Mon, 17 Aug 2015 10:45:09 -0400
> Ken MacKenzie via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org> wrote:
> 
> > So if you were going to teach your kids some starter programming,
> > what language and/or ide would you use?
> 
> Python.

I forgot something.

Python's great to teach a kid programming. But if I had a kid who was a
preexisting Geek and *really* wanted to learn programming, I'd teach
him/her Lua. Here's why...

Lua is like an algorithms and data structures course in a box.
Everything you learned about algorithms and data structures, all that
stuff that seemed so tough in other languages, is trivial in Lua.

Python's one and only [1] complex data structure is the table, which
is like a Perl hash or Python dictionary with such high performance
that you can give it numeric keys and have it perform well as an
array. Because Lua treats functions as just more data, you can put
functions into tables, thereby implementing much of what objects are
intended to implement. Callback routines in Lua are trivial. Closures
are pretty easy. I learned about all these things by programming in
Lua.

So, if you're teaching your kids programming because everyone should
know the basics of programming, Python's the way to go. If one or both
of your kids wants to become a crackerjack programmer, I'd recommend
Lua. 

HTH,

SteveT

Steve Litt 
August 2015 featured book: Troubleshooting: Just the Facts
http://www.troubleshooters.com/tjust