Question for the forum: my 11- year old daughter is very interested in coding. She’s using Hopscotch on iPad and has learned about Codea, naturally. Very bright (proud dad) but is she ready for this app? Or would it just frustrate her?
I obviously want to encourage her learning, but don’t want to get her into something that would kill her curiosity for code/dev for the wrong reasons.
FYI the closest I ever came to coding was a Lynda Dreamweaver course 5-6 years ago, so a little out of my element here.
Any opinions greatly appreciated.
I’ve only been using the app for around 2 mounts now and I find its very easy to learn the basics quickly, I am almost 14 and love Codea. I think 11 might be stretching it but not really sure, especially if she’s coming from Hopscotch, but I definitely think she could do it with no problems.
@DeanLogan I don’t know what Hopscotch is, so I can’t compare it to Codea. If she interested in coding, then that’s a good start. One thing about Codea, there are no shortcuts. If she thinks she’ll be able to code complex games in a few weeks and put them on the App Store, then don’t bother. If she’s willing to start small and build her knowledge over time, then she’ll have a good chance to write complex code sometime in the future. There are plenty of people here to help when she has questions, and there are plenty of examples and answers in this forum.
@DeanLogan I will be completely honest, she probably isn’t ready. Hopscotch doesn’t really teach much except of how coding works. I would recommend her to go to scratch.mit.edu, it’s sort of like hopscotch, except more advanced. My friend, who’s the same age as me, and I’m only a few years older than your daughter is getting so frustrated with coding on Codea even though he’s worked with drag and drop so many times. Like dave1707 said, it depends how she’s willing to approach it, but also like you said, you don’t want to kill her interest. Hope she becomes the next Steve Jobs! Good luck!
If you have an iPad that will run the new Swift Playground app (need iOS 10), that is a great place to start.