Advice needed, son wants to learn how to program - eviltoast

Hi all,

My 8 year old is asking if he can learn how to program. He has asked specifically if I could set him up with a ‘programming kit with lessons’ for a Christmas present. I’d like to support this, and it seems like it’s not a transient interest as he’s been all over scratch, and using things like minecraft commands for the last year. I have an old (pre 2017) MacBook Air I can set up for this. How do I / what would you advise I set up for him, to a) keep him safe online (he’s 8!) and b) give him the tools he needs in a structured way.

I am not a programmer. I know enough bash/shell and basic unix stuff to be dangerous and I was a front end dev a very long time ago, but I wouldn’t call myself a programmer and don’t know what concepts he needs to learn first.

Hugely appreciate any advice, thanks.

Edit: So I posted this then had a busy family day and came back to so many comments! I will methodically go through these all, thanks so much.

A couple of things on resources: he has expressed interest in 3D worlds and I noticed comments on engines, but wonder if that’s too advanced?

Totally agree with the short feedback loop rather than projects that take days.

He has an iPad 6 and I’m happy to pop a Linux distro on the Air, so certainly open to that.

So many links to research. Hugely grateful.

  • jiml78@lemmy.world
    62·
    1 year ago

    If he is interested in game development, I recommend buying a couple Udemy courses on Unreal Engine development.

    You will need to make sure your MacBook is powerful enough to run the unreal engine development IDE.

    But if it is, he will be able. To quickly put something things together and see the results.

    My son(9 years old at the time) put together a small game over a summer via a udemy course and unreal engine.

    • dbaner@lemmy.world
      4·
      1 year ago

      Or alternatively Godot. IMHO it’s a lot simpler to get basic stuff working. The editor can run on a much lower spec machine than unreal and GDscript is good stepping stone between scratch and languages like c#.