Let's suppose you have to teach C to 7yo kids.
Where do you start from?
How do you setup their playground?
(please, don't question the goal in this thread... let's focus on solutions)
ok, you can question the goals, actually. 😃
which concepts do you think they could not understand or memorize?
can we just omit them and still write useful programs (for them)
ok, you can question the goals, actually. 😃
which concepts do you think they could not understand or memorize?
can we just omit them and still write useful programs (for them)
ok, you can question the goals, actually. 😃
which concepts do you think they could not understand or memorize?
can we just omit them and still write useful programs (for them)
@Shamar At that age (seven) the capacity for abstraction is still minimal. To begin to understand cognitive theory you can read, in first, Piaget and Vygotsky theories and for example find the differences and similarities. Regardless of certain differences they identify stages (Piaget for ages more defined, Vygotsky more related to socio-linguistic interaction).
@Shamar Your sevens may be or seem smarter than others, it's possible, try to force their cognitive schema by presenting two objects belonging to the same class, for example, a truck and a car or tree and fruit (this more problematic). See how well they are able to abstract from a particular concept to a general one and to the decomposition of the objects itself. The problem is that they might “understand” in first, but forget shortly if their cognitive schema is not sufficient.
I wonder how much abstraction we need to program in C (or in Oberon without inheritance)...
@Shamar That's not the problem: C, Oberon or any programming language. The issue is whether it's appropriate or not. If kid will not benefit from it because he's unable to benefit from it, is it really needed? Why not to give him canvas and brushes for painting? In order to get knowledge, it's necessary to challenge the actual cognitive schema, but thanks of the previous one that the following is accommodated and consolidated.
@Shamar For that stimulus the school goes (should) advance by degrees and thorough repetitions of the same thing. Each time the schema is challenged and overcome. Adult man should do it by himself, although very often he fails miserably. :D
@Shamar don't have much of an idea, but I would start with https://replit.com/languages/c
I would start with metaphors
I would introduce a chest of drawers with numbers on it
Then I would ask the kids to give names to the drawers
and to put things in the drawers
I'd start from there, mentioning that a name on the drawer identifies it, and can be used to inspect and change its contents
@Shamar I'd start with the memory.
Memory is everything.
Boxes that store things, each box has a number.
You are training the computer to put things in those boxes and rearrange them. That's what a computer does.
@Shamar I wouldn't start them with C at that age. Even something like The Little Schemer requires lots of reading. I'd wait two or three more years. Or, maybe, get a copy of K&R and let them just have it, flip through it. If it piques their curiosity and generates pleasure looking at the code, you can build off of that curiosity.
I've got four daughters and they're all learning, and my efforts with the younger ones were misplaced. They have to become comfortable reading first. And at that, given the choice, they seem more inclined to learn Scheme. (I laid out several books with code examples, and Scheme generated the most pleasure.)
To kill memory safety bugs in C code, try the TrapC fork
@Shamar Seven years? Are you sure? It's not possible with C, they would not be able to understand and memorize some concepts.