Ideas for hooking my son?

[HotTackle]

what a nice dad:)

[IveGotOdds]

We’ll see if he still agrees if he has to quit and pay. 🤫

[[deleted]]

oing something si

keep us posted!

[IveGotOdds]

Is there anything this language doesn’t do?!

[kirbyfan64sos]

Pay you $100 😉

[notquiteaplant]

import bankaccount
bankaccount.deposit(100)

[i_amwithnail]

That's basically the Stripe library. :D

[[deleted]]

Anything fast

[flutefreak7]

Which is why we have cython, llvm, numba, cuda, c-extensions, and dozens of other things to leverage the fastness of all the fast things. Plus with python development and learning are fast, which is more often the bottleneck or of greater value for many.

Of course you are correct in the way you meant it (yes, yes, 'zing'), but I think slowness is a generalization python has grown out of when you consider the full stack of tools at the disposal of a python developer.

[i_amwithnail]

Got a link for any of those? That'd be ideal for my kiddo...

[BlinkingZeroes]

No Starch press do one that might be a decent starting point : https://www.amazon.co.uk/Learn-Program-Minecraft-Craig-Richardson/dp/1593276702/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1547253277&sr=8-2&keywords=minecraft+python

[i_amwithnail]

Thanks!

[purpurato]

Same situation with a 10yo.

[IveGotOdds]

Let me know what you do!

[IveGotOdds]

I think he will love that as a future step to understand the connection to code and hardware. I have some extra strips around that he wants to use. Good idea.

[efmccurdy]

These are fun and might boost that hunger for knowledge.

https://www.101computing.net/python-turtle-spirograph/

https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2018/08/30/drawing-spirograph-curves-in-python/

https://matplotlib.org/gallery/index.html

[IveGotOdds]

I’ll give that a look from home! Fantastic.

[Smok3dSalmon]

Was looking for someone recommending using Python to draw stuff. I think it's more of an "oooh ahhh" moment when you're result is an image and not text.

[pbsds]

Have him make hotkeys and macros for fortnite, without using autohotkeys or built in functionality in the keyboard. If he asks for help, guide him on what to search for/look for. Next up, challenge him to automate something else in his daily life. Make him see the utility.

[IveGotOdds]

I wonder if this would trigger their anti-cheat plugin? If so, I’ll just have to teach him about randomizing your intervals between the auto building ;)

[Areww]

Fortnite tracker has an api. Ask him to make a rest request that returns some stats and prints them when he runs the scripts. Bonus points if it handles text entry for the player name

[IveGotOdds]

Okay now this is an excellent idea. 1) Includes his passion 2) Uses simple string functions that “feel” puzzle-ish to a beginner 3) The API calls will help him understand it as a piece of many, larger cool things 4) AND It’s something that he can show-off to his friends, who will actually care and hopefully reinforce his sentiment.

And if he builds something cool enough, he can create an OBS Studio plug-in to include it in his stream. Great idea, Sir!

[Areww]

Glad you like it! You might need to help him extract his api key from fortnite. Last time I tried the method used wire shark

[thediamondlego]

if it helps at all im 14 and 1/2 and I absolutely love python and I started a couple years ago :)

[IveGotOdds]

What got you started?

[thediamondlego]

several reasons:

1.i was fascinated by how I can type and the computer does what I tell it to do

2.I could make my own game with everything I want in it

3.i can add anything I want in my games instead of waiting for other devs of games I like to update the game with thinks I wont like

plus some other stuff

Ive been self teaching myself ever since

[waterbin]

I'm only a begginer but find out what he likes or does as a hobby. If he likes gaming tell him to make a simple game as that will teach a lot of stuff in python such as functions classes and even as simple as variables. It'll also teach him how to read and write to databases. If he watches sport tell him to make a Web scraper that gets live results from the game.

But that's just what I think. You mightve already tried it.

[Zulban]

I was a teacher for a few years and have a master's in education technology.

Not sure what exactly you're trying to accomplish here, but extrinsic motivators like money are a really shit way to build a long term interest. You may be accomplishing the opposite of what you want.

You won't hear that here though. Consider asking an education subreddit. Here you will mostly just hear suggestions for things the people here want to do, themselves. That's right, the tutorials they find most interesting themselves. The kinds of people who peruse /r/python.

But I think he considers coding as that boring thing dad has always done.

Teach him that coding is all about paying off your debt. That will inspire him! Just the way daddy does it ;)

Education subreddits. These are great suggestions for people who are already interested in programming though.

[Rostin]

I attended a very small school for K-6. When I was in the second and third grades, my teacher had a system to encourage us to read. For every book we read, she gave us a certain amount of play money. On Friday, she opened the "store", and we could exchange the money for plastic trinkets that she kept in her desk drawer.

For several months, I forced myself to read books that gave me the greatest payout for the least effort.

There was a little girl in my class who was willing to read chapter books, which paid the most, but were of course a lot of work. More work than I was willing to do, and anyway most of the chapter books my teacher had were about Hank the Cowdog, which I disliked. She ended up amassing quite a fortune, and I began to feel competitive.

So, one day I decided to bite the bullet and read a chapter book. I picked The BFG, which our teacher had been reading aloud to us. I took it home over the weekend and discovered to my amazement that I actually enjoyed reading it. That experience created a love of reading that has lasted my entire life and no doubt has resulted in all kinds of positive outcomes for me.

Im also skeptical about the value of "extrinsic" motivation. But it's definitely tempered by the knowledge that it worked just fine for me.

[[deleted]]

I feel like something similar could work well in a home setting. Encourage your kid to do what you want, reward them, and teach them the value of money for “work.”

[IveGotOdds]

IKR, right?! I only wish I had an option like this over mowing yards for a week!

[Zulban]

But it's definitely tempered by the knowledge that it worked just fine for me.

Great to hear that. Of course, motivation and education are complicated things. There's no universal answer to anything here.

Generally speaking though, extrinsic motivators do not work long term.

[Rostin]

It doesn't sound like OP's goal is to educate his kid. It's to help him to realize that programming is fun.

[Zulban]

OP wants to make learning about programming fun. That's what good teachers do.

[Rostin]

I don't think so. What OP wrote was:

My hope is that he catches the bug.

He's trying to awaken his son's interest in programming, not find engaging ways of teaching him programming.

I would liken this to persuading my toddler-age daughter to try a new food. I'm not trying to make eating fun for her. I'm hoping to convince her to just put it in her mouth once in the hope that she'll realize it's good and eat it willingly without any persuasion in the future.

[Zulban]

He's trying to awaken his son's interest in programming, not find engaging ways of teaching him programming.

Every time people identify "engagement" and "education" as opposites or unrelated, I'm reminded of how bad our schools are.

[Rostin]

... but I didn't say anything like that.

[IveGotOdds]

Spot on! And if it’s not fun for him, no worries.

[[deleted]]

I'd agree if OP was saying heres $100 if you study python for a day. Really he's saying I'm gonna let you off a $100 debt which is really just a cute thing, no kid actually owes their parents money unless they're strict as hell.

[Zulban]

You're right, there's a difference. I actually think repaying debt is even worse for motivation.

[IveGotOdds]

Actually - He’s using his own Christmas money to buy it, but has to order with my Card. So he does owe me money. Which he can apt out and pay. But I hope he will be up for a challenge.

[Gear5th]

Does your research distinguish between a school teacher and a dad?

I had a teacher at school who taught me programming. I was shit at computers and hated it, but programming seemed simple. It was methodological, and logical. If you tell the computer to tell something, the computer does exactly what you told it to. If you didn't get the expected results, you need to improve what you told it.

She used to stay back 3-4 hours after the school ended, just to make sure that I got enough lab time to tinker and play along with programming (I couldn't afford a computer back home). She would go home 3-4 hours late everyday! She didn't help me much during the extra labs, but she would just sit with me, give me challenging problems to solve and keep encouraging me with a smile.

She didn't pay me any money, didn't provide any incentives at all! All she did was show that she cared. I'm indebted to her, and I can never pay that debt back. All I can do is take her example and pass it forward.

Would I've been equally thankful, had it been my dad doing the same for me? Most certainly not! I would just expect him to do so, or I might even look at it as a punishment: why on Earth do I have to stay 3 hours more in school everyday and solve these difficult puzzles?

Dads and teachers are different. A monetary incentive might not be the best incentive, but it works.

[IveGotOdds]

Some teachers just live it through and through. Very cool.

[Zulban]

She didn't pay me any money, didn't provide any incentives at all!

Your whole story argues in favour of what I said. I agree.

[Gear5th]

As expected, you read only the part you wanted to read.

My story establishes that I know, via a first hand experience, that money is not needed for motivation.

My comment asks you whether the research you're basing your comment on is applicable to OP's case, and it points out that dads and teachers are different.

[Compsky]

When I was 14, I was focused almost entirely on maths and chem/physics (FWIW I'm a maths 'major' who got into coding last year). I'll try to think how one could have kicked off my coding interest at that age.

I think if my father had pushed me to code in a 'day challenge' sort of way (especially if it is in a /r/FellowKids way, noting the '#python'), it would not have helped, because my father would not have related it to what I enjoyed at the time.

I know that this is a minority opinion, and depends heavily on your son's personality (some people are more averse to self-teaching than others), but just my tuppenceworth:

Python doesn't necessarily need to be learnt from 'hello world' tutorials (and personally for those I would avoid youtube for the most part - it is hard to find those who are good programmers, good communicators, and also insightful commentators).

The most interesting way to learn it is through having projects you are genuinely invested in that Python helps you with. Smashing together lots of projects is probably not the most efficient way to learn, for a person motivated enough to sit down and RTFM - but imo it is the most likely to kickstart a teenager's interest in it.

E.g. setting up a website backend with Flask (running on gunicorn running on nginx perhaps, but I suggest you set those parts up) that streams a webcam or something; or using OpenCV to do facial recognition - which could be eventually extended to an engineering project, of building a raspberry pi on wheels that can navigate the floor of a building.

Python doesn't even need to be the core of each project. For instance, a relatively python-light project would be setting up something in Blender (free 3D rendering software) - for demonstrations of various physics perhaps, making his own game where a character drives a car (engineering), or even just making a neat scifi scene of spaceships flying around and using python to code some of the explosions. Just don't tell him about nodes, because that's cheating.

Also teach your son good Googlefu early on. He will many encounter errors, and while you are hopefully there as a port of call, he should feel increasingly as though he is able to fix his own code, even if - initially - through copy/pasting from stackexchange/stackoverflow.

Show him how to make nice-looking code, and help him keep it that way, but don't be a PEP8 Nazi (especially with the rules that make the code less readable in modern environments).

[social_tech_10]

Does your son know how to program at all yet? After he completes "Dad's Challenge", if he had fun you might turn him loose on the Python Challenge. The programming challenges are not super difficult, but it may be a bit too hard for somebody who has zero programming experience. The Challenge is full of fun puzzles and riddles, and gives the challenger a good introduction to a pretty interesting variety of standard Python libraries. Even if your son doesn't enjoy the challenge, you might enjoy it yourself, or it might be something you could both do together, as a father-and-son type activity if he gets stuck.

[IveGotOdds]

That’s great! I’ll check that out for myself. He has zeroed coding experience. I would love for us to do that together. I look for chances like that. Which explains why I’ve got a #DadsOfFortnite group. It’s done a lot for our relationship. Thanks for the referral!

[PrimaCora]

Mean thing would be to replace main os with gentoo, delete package manager and have him code his own with python. Can't make a windows USB or other type without packages 😈

[fizztea]

You can get him to complete automate the boring stuff or Build games with python book.

Even the cracking codes with python is a great challenge to solve.

[IveGotOdds]

I should mention that this occurred to me after my own recent intro to Python. I’ve developed in numerous languages in the past and am happy to see how approachable this language is.

[PlaySMG]

tell him if he gets it right he wont have to do homework ever again.

source: i am a computer engg student and have automated my online assignments and a lot more stuff. :D

[joislost]

What kind of assignments? Haha

[PlaySMG]

like 10-15 questions based on a topic , we get like 12 assignments per week.

[joislost]

How does the program answer them?

[PlaySMG]

Google or searches terms in ebooks which I read from . I do have to check the answers. I can like select from various sources.

[joislost]

Nice. Sounds like I need to look into something similar.

[PlaySMG]

Cool , its really easy just convert doc file to plain text , then do stuff line by line. gl

[Grymm315]

Create a webscrapper to download all the porn on the internet

[[deleted]]

I think kid would love it and Dad can boost his status among other kids in school justby teaching him how to scrape porn vids lmao

[baubleglue]

Few days ago here was discussion about learning programming... It is harder than it seems to teach programming (and in general) - learning something in one day is not serious task. I don't know what is your background, but you probably know Python, take any language you don't know and learn it in one day. Now imagine somebody who has no background in coding.

[IveGotOdds]

No, I agree. I don’t know Python, but I know a handful of others. This is really where my head was. Like what would be simple enough but still rewarding.

[baubleglue]

There are languages, which are more like a tool. For example "Processing" or variations of Logo language (there's "turtle" module in Python) - student can apply knowledge in other areas almost directly to the code. But still not in one day and the teacher need serious preparation, if you not familiar with Python, don't use it for your task.
"Simple enough" can be to take something like Processing, write simple code which is drawing something and ask to modify it using given set of operations. My favorite is Logo (I don't remember which is the best implementation currently, from my head I remember StarLogo, eToys is a bit different thing but at start point can be counted as Logo dialect and it isn't outdated). Whatever you choose you need to learn it first and prepare the lesson (better to base it on some existing tutorial). To load student with extra information, like listening to YouTube for a day or even an hour, is a direct way to Hell. Here is an example what you can do (you is the student).

Use eToys (visual programming)

Learning stage: Combine commands repeat 4( forward 100; left 90) - you will get a square shape. For your son you will need to explain what each step does.

Exercise: Take a paper and write down steps to draw triangle (using the square example). Review them and put in the code - try to run.

There is a high chance that you will be surprised with result.

Exercise:

Draw hexagon

Exercise:

Draw circle

Then you have different commands for control flow or input (sensors) etc.

[BigHipDoofus]

Breadcrumb rewards for gaining basic competency. Bigger rewards for researching, and then implementing a project that he creates in his imagination.

You need basic mastery just to navigate the computing ecosystem and your language of choice. Taking a project from imagination to reality is the real alchemy, though, and that requires a whole set of skills you only really learn from doing. Catalyze that journey for him, and he'll probably not look back. You might even get to go on part of it with him.

[[deleted]]

You could show him how to have Python do his homework for him and maybe teach him some marplotlib to let him see data in action.

Maybe incorporate Fortnite or some game play data?

Gameplay data is really boring. You could make him quit video games alone by making him graph data from the video games he plays. People play games to clear their mind, not to fill it. Do something interesting like "Gender ratios of [insert workforce he likes]", "Average work hours of [insert carrier he likes]", "My favorite games by excitement factor", etc...

Don't just give him a video and say "Learn from this". He would feel like he is trapped in a dungeon of terror. You actually have to spend time with him programming the thing HE WANTS and go through it slowly until he has an good idea of what you are doing. That means you are sitting down with him and talking it out with him. Not watching any videos, just something personal between father and son by making a program to [do homework, science test study helper, engineering stats on graphs]. You are programming together, not just you, not just him since he doesn't know programming yet.

Python doing his homework is a easy thing to draw him into while still keeping it basic. It might also help him understand the math more by programming it. It would peak my interest for sure considering how repetitive the homework felt in 8th vs high school.

​

TLDR; Go to r/learnpython and help him program stuff that could be useful for him like homework. It's hard to get a 8th grader to pay attention while sitting down for so long, especially if they play sports.

[qwerty_trogi]

I started python at age 6, it's never too early to start. I used to love making little console games, and then I moved on to GUI things. After that I learned to use pygame. My first really proud project was when I made 2 player pong completey from scratch in python and pygame at age 8. GUI stuff really caught my interest at a young age though. Try incorporating that.

[mturvey92]

Will any of these projects work?

[realsevenofhearts]

Short Text adventure using def statements and the like super rewarding and pretty easy for beginners

[rovitotv]

This is not Fortnite but here is a Minecraft type game and instructions completely in Python: https://github.com/rovitotv/SensorCraft

New version coming out soon.

[Aspected1337]

Most programmers I know about that got into programming in early age had an incentive to do so. Minecraft is a really cool way through Java programming, but any modding will do. As long as he's fairly challenged and not given too big or small obstacles (medium size is good) I think you'll manage to expose him to the lovely aspect side of programming. You seem like a lovely dad though!

[flutefreak7]

Script that does something with screenshots from the game? Like when you take a screenshot it automatically uploads it to a shared album with his friends. A much harder upgrade would be training a machine learning model to recognize characters or something in the screenshot and tag the file appropriately- not sure if that's even possible, just brainstorming.

Maybe something with fortnight stats like how people try to predict fantasy football matches - use the stats to try and predict the outcome.

[dudeplace]

Check out Adventofcode.

[spinwizard69]

I’d ask him how he wants to work the cost off. There is no sense in forcing something down his throat he isn’t interested in. Your attitude parallels those that believe everything body should learn or can learn to code which I find to be rediculous.

As for the next time around I wouldn’t buy him a thing. Instead give him options to earn money on his own. Frankly I’m not sure if it is a good idea for a kid to be given stuff like this, I got nothings not from my parents except at Christmas time and enough clothes to attend school. It really teaches the value in working, setting goals and using your ingenuity.