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Comment by throwaway47292 | Hacker News Reader

She didn't like scratch at all, says it feels patronizing, so I didnt push much, but she is doing fine with python and c.

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I believe typing in early age will lead to carpal-tunnel syndrome so I'm not pushing my kids to learn typing.

In my experience Scratch or SNAP! are great to learn programming. We recently made auto-clicking mouse with microPython and I could see they understood the code well because of their experience with Scratch.

My kids like to follow tutorials by griffpatch on YouTube which I think are superb.

> I believe typing in early age will lead to carpal-tunnel syndrome so I'm not pushing my kids to learn typing.

Typing extensively and without proper ergonomics will lead to carpal-tunnel and other syndromes. Not teaching them proper posture and typing ergonomics as kids means when they inevitably have to use computers in school/college/work, they will be much more likely to develop a strain-based condition.

I would argue there's no 'proper posture' for child's hands on adult sized keyboards and keys.

backspace and enter are especially an issue, i teach her to use ctrl+h and ctrl+j capslock being control, on windows i made https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/tree/master/... to help with that

Spending half your time dragging with the mouse seems to cause way more wrist issues than typing. For me at least

At least pointing devices come in different shapes and forms, including vertical and trackballs. We used to enable chrome accessibility feature [1] to automatically drag-click when the mouse button is stopped. Although, as kids got faster they turned it off. It's a nice option to have.

[1]https://mcmw.abilitynet.org.uk/how-to-make-your-mouse-click-...

One of the reasons why we made auto-clicking mouse is so, when playing games, they don't have to click it crazy fast (besides it being fun project). To increase keyboard ergonomics I am thinking on a custom keyboard with programmable keys to, for example to turn long-press space into backspace, shift space to enter.

yeah my 14 yr old son says the same thing about scratch and the other similar targeted languages.

not surprising really he's taught himself c# to make games in unity.

Yeah, Scratch is is IMHO more an option for half that age.

I think there's a huge difference between a 14 year old and an 8 year old.

Also there's a bit of cultural assumption going on here. Based on the amount of comments, the poster's child is probably a native English speaker. My nephew is not, and has only begun learning English in school.

If the goal is "Let's make something for my child" that's cool and needs no change. If the goal is "Let's make something to help children learn programming", a more difficult and noble goal, then removing barriers such as English fluency, is a way to do that.

> the poster's child is probably a native English speaker

She is not, but started learning english when she was 5 or 6 by watching netflix peppa pig in english and with english subtitles, now she is almost 11 and watches anime in japanese with english subtitles.

What pushed me to do that years ago was Stephetn Fry's turn on the subtitles video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-zISnJ-oao (I cant actually find the one I watched at the time, but was the same content)

that's hugely impressive, learning to program in a language you dont speak.

actually given how messed up english can be at times i wonder if that actually helps :-P

Good on you for that.

This is my nephew, so I don't have a lot of control. My wife learned English around your daughter's age and she's at native level.

Nonetheless, human languages are a barrier :)

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