Teaching OOP and C# to Kids

I’ve been reading about how kids these days can best learn programming. People may wonder if kids that learn programming will gain an advantage in life in the future, given that the software industry isn’t as hot as it used to be. Well, if kids are still being taught art and music for them to develop hobbies, why not a creative activity like programming?

When I was a kid, they had programming for kids courses during summer. I was introduced to programming at 11 years old with DR (Digital Research) Logo, which taught procedural graphical programming. I cut my teeth with programming with BASIC on the Apple II. A year later, it was Turbo Pascal 3.0.

It was simpler back then because programming languages like Logo and BASIC can give you results with just one line of code. Back then, most kids learned programming using BASIC. These days, with linear programming and procedural programming gone the way of the dinosaurs, kids have to start with Object Oriented Programming. These require some more introductory concepts to digest.

I think kids these days can start getting the OOP mindset even before writing a single line of code. There are many options for children’s programming environments, but these are my choices (with a slight bias towards Microsoft technologies):

8 years old and earlier: Kodu Game Lab – a game environment for the XBox where kids build their own worlds and define rules to create their own game.

8 to 11 years old: Scratch – An MIT project, Scratch is a free development program for creating interactive stories, animation, art and games. Users can upload their creation to the Scratch website and get feedback too.

11 years old onwards: C# for Sharp Kids – At this age, kids can start learning the real programming languages. This ebook is free and, if I’m not mistaken, may be reproduced. Bundled with a free Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition, it’s perfect for Philippine high schools.