Grandson brought me his new Fire tablet and asked me to 'hack' it with an install of the Google Play store.  I did and explained that I didn't equate following online instructions to install APKs with hacking. Heck, it didn't even require rooting.  Anyway, he's got the bug and his mom says he wants to learn to program (though I suspect he has a highly glamorized vision of it).  Anybody here have any experience as to kids' tutorials, etc?

I don't think you know what that word means.

hacking n. 1) Any action that vaguely involves some sort of lateral thinking that leads to a result other than the normal or intended one; 2) Any action that seems vaguely like cheating, but isn't really. Obs. 1) Computer programming. 2) Illicitly accessing a computer to which you would not normally have access; 3) Accessing functionality to which you normally would not have access, but on hardware for which you are a legitimate user. Usage notes: The obsolete meanings are still permissible, but will flag you as a grumpy old guy.

>I don't think you know what that word means.

Guilty as charged.  But my blackhat background clouds my perspective.

Messing around with Javascript IMO is an easy step up. And since it's already there in the browser it can be messed around with right away.

Quote from: rcjordan on December 27, 2017, 05:16:39 PMhis mom says he wants to learn to program (though I suspect he has a highly glamorized vision of it).  Anybody here have any experience as to kids' tutorials, etc?

I missed the question at the end... I'm sure you can do a search for "coding for kids" as well as I can, but I thought I would throw out that age old gateway drug: game programming. That leads me to Tynker which has both game and robotics programming courses for kids 7 and up.
https://www.tynker.com/

If robotics for fourth graders had been a thing when I was 9, and someone had given me a Tynker subscription, I doubt I would ever have become a historian (which sort of makes me sad actually).

My brother learned FORTRAN and I learned BASIC because we figured out we could learn how to create games. Absurdly simple games that were fun because we entered text and computer returned text... That was the limit.

A generation later, my nephew and his best friend also learned to program, because they wanted to create games, and created simple games by the standards of the time, but much more complex than what my brother and I did.

>>glamourized

My nephew ended up working reverse engineering embedded software systems for which the source code had been lost and then getting a computer engineering degree and working in Silicon Valley. His buddy was, by about age 14, profiling performance for different algorithms for basic math functions... he of course ended up at Google straight out of college (though he moved on fairly quickly).

Python would be a good language for a 9 y.o. to start with.  It is very uniform, teaches good habits, has thousands of good tutorials out there (some specifically for children) and it has a very big community to tap into.

Check the Android play store.  Seems to me I read somewhere that Google had developed something for kids to learn programming but I'm not sure.

Good stuff.

Here's what I've pulled together as possibilities so far

https://www.tynker.com/

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.internetdesignzone.kidlolandcoding&hl=en

https://csfirst.withgoogle.com/en/home  (click curriculum)

https://studio.code.org/courses

https://scratch.mit.edu/parents/

>Messing around with Javascript

I was thinking basic html or even simple excel math functions but I'd bet kids need a more visual 'hook' before they sit down and grind something out.

>python

That came to mind, too.  Though I've not coded with python, I know it's in a lot of DIY robotic stuff.