Free or cheap online programming course for young children

[snapenilk]

My uncle has young children (around 7-10 IICR) who are interested in learning to program. Does anybody know of a good free or cheap online course? I'm sure I have seen some people talk about some on the forum, but I don't know enough about them. I'll just C+P the email below:

There is a program called Code Ninjas nationwide where they teach codes how to code/create games on the computer. Our kids did a free session and enjoyed it. The only concern is the monthly price. I think they build stuff using Sratch [sic] and some other programs (see below). I know Bryce used to do a lot of coding using Scratch and was wondering if he has any suggestions if maybe they could do a similar coding free (or paid) online somewhere for a cheaper price? I assume he was self-taught, but wasn’t sure if knew of any websites where they could do online virtual classes for cheaper.

From a Code Ninja official:

introduce your children to three coding languages, JavaScript, Lua and C# as well as two game building platforms, Roblox® and Unity 3D®. [...] Our introductory price is $99.00 for the first month and $169.00 ongoing thereafter. We do have a $25 one-time registration fee which will be required at the time of singing them up.

[bh]

Good grief! That's a lot of money.

Dan Garcia is piloting a middle school version of BJC that might be the right thing. I'm not sure if it's online yet, but I'll check. (Like all our curriculum, it's CC-BY-NC-SA, so no cost to use. But it doesn't come with a live teacher unless you take the course in a school.)

Maybe one of Jens' and Jadga's MOOCs?

PS Is that your name in that email, and do you care?

[snapenilk]

Yes, my name is Bryce, and I am okay with anybody here knowing that.
EDIT: I edited my profile.

[earthrulerr]

I taught myself HTML, JS, and CSS using https://www.w3schools.com/ (free)

[earthrulerr]

@snapenilk

Roblox

Roblox is LUA.

[sir_kitten2]

Try Kahn Academy. It is completely free and requires no account. (Please note KA's programming tutorials are kind of outdated.)

[348663451y]

If they feel like learning any program, I suggest Python. It is SUPER EASY to learn. I feel like it's JavaScript without all the stuff like calling "var" to make a new variable and adding a semi-colon after each line. Python has none of that. I learned Python from a YouTube tutorial. It's 4 hours, although of course, you don't have to watch it all at once. It's from freecodecamp.org. Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfscVS0vtbw

[test19230]

I enjoyed the Snap courses available in OpenSap, they are all free.

bh posted some recommendations recently after I asked that I was looking for something to do after finishing the OpenSap courses:

Book recommendations, or tutorials?

Hi, welcome to the forum! There are a bunch of different directions you can go in, depending on your interests and experience. bjc.edc.org is The Beauty and Joy of Computing, a yearlong secondary school course that starts at the beginning but moves in somewhat different directions from the SAP course. Codierte Kunst by Joachim Wedekind is a fantastic book of Snap! programs that generate art in the style of various modern artists. It's in German, so I can't read the text, but the Snap! code i…

Edit:
Found this free PDF by an organization called Code Club , offers free courses. It's for Scratch, but as far as I know, Snap can be used as well.

Edit 2:
Found that Code Club offers the same PDF as a self-guided online course (Link).
hope that helps!

[warped_wart_wars]

@348663451y

program

...ming language.

In Python, you can use semicolons at the ends of statements.

I know Python pretty well.

[ego-lay_atman-bay]

@warped_wart_wars

In Python, you can use semicolons at the ends of statements.

wow, I thought that was only for javascript.

[warped_wart_wars]

Most common programming languages have semicolon-delimited lines. JS is special because, even though it does require them, if it finds a line that should end in a semicolon but doesn't, it inserts the semicolon.

[ego-lay_atman-bay]

oh, ok.

[bh]

What's really annoying in most text-based programming languages is that if you have a sequence of statements like this: , half the languages require that orange semicolon, and the other half prohibit it.

If you have to use a text language, let it be Scheme.

[earthrulerr]

Yeah, it is really annoying. I say if you were trying to teach coding start with python.

[348663451y]

@warped_wart_wars

@348663451y

program

...ming language.

Sorry. Typo.

@warped_wart_wars

In Python, you can use semicolons at the ends of statements.

Yes, but only if you want to put multiple statements in a single line.

[348663451y]

I agree.

[bh]

@earthrulerr

I say if you were trying to teach coding start with python.

And what's wrong with Snap!? It's a much more powerful programming language (because Python has a broken lambda), and very little syntax to get in the way.

[warped_wart_wars]

print("Hello World!");
print("Moew");

is valid Python code.

[348663451y]

Very sorry. I meant a text-based language. No offence meant. If I wanted to code Python I wouldn't be on this forum.

[earthrulerr]

Oh yeah, you should use Snap! first!