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I have been asked by a friend to introduce her 13 year old son to programming. Can anyone recommend a very entry level C# book? It's got to be simple enough for a 13 year old to understand.
Thanks
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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Lets start him right away with Sacha Barber's articles.
No seriously, did you know that there is a MSDN kid's corner[^] ?
Or you might want to try C# for kids[^].
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Marco Bertschi wrote: Or you might want to try C# for kids[^].
Thanks for this interesting URL>
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
Personal Homepage Tech Gossips
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep!
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Marco Bertschi wrote: No seriously, did you know that there is a MSDN kid's corner[^]
Whoa.
It opens with "Are you a cool kid..."
If you even feel the need to answer that question, you ain't cool.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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13 year old, book, programming...
I got into programming around that age, via video games. Objects in gaming lend themselves to object oriented design very well. I would recommend incorporating games, otherwise attention span will fail quickly. Because that mind thinks about one thing every 3-6 seconds. Blowing stuff up or humped stuff.
So your plan B: find him a 23 year old blonde tutor at the local university's CS department.
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Plan B might be overruled by his SO when she finds out that he plans to attend classes too.
"The ones who care enough to do it right care too much to compromise."
Matthew Faithfull
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Quote: I got into programming around that age Computers hadn't been invented when I was that age.
- Life in the fast lane is only fun if you live in a country with no speed limits.
- Of all the things I have lost, it is my mind that I miss the most.
- I vaguely remember having a good memory...
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You look awfully good for being more than 85 YO.
"The ones who care enough to do it right care too much to compromise."
Matthew Faithfull
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It's the clean, healthy living - I have avoided it!
- Life in the fast lane is only fun if you live in a country with no speed limits.
- Of all the things I have lost, it is my mind that I miss the most.
- I vaguely remember having a good memory...
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Don't get him a book. Everything you need to know about C# at entry level is right here:
http://www.csharp-station.com/[^]
I've given up on paper books altogether. Errata remain errata forever and you can't search inside them.
I wouldn't worry about it being overly complex, he's a 13 year old kid and therefore has the kind of brainpower idly going spare that we can only dream of. Besides which, dropping him in off the deep end will more likely mirror a real-world situation he could easily find himself in - look at it as a test within a test, does he really want this kind of life?
Be careful what you wish for..
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Have you considered recommending Scratch[^].
I recently helped my niece and it even tested my programming ability - I mention it because it may give him something that is faster to get going with than C#, a positive experience of programming from the start is more likely to then lead to something like .Net .
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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Alice seems like that, but 3D. Used it in college years ago... seemed a bit buggy and a memory hog, but it's had years to improve, so maybe that's changed.
There are a couple of videos here for anybody interested (I didn't watch them, but I skipped through the bottom one and it looks informative enough).
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Hi,
Well it's not a C# but a C++ recommendation I have and that's [Programming Principles and Practice Using C++] by Bjarne Stroustrup. (Inventor of C++). It's I think a very good book with a lot of colourful image's and graphical explanations, and as it say's on the back cover:
This book is primary designed for people who have never programmed before, and it has been tested with more than 1000 first years university students...
I think it will work for younger aged also, it has a so called drills after each chapter to establish practical programming skills and in general is a good book to learn the C++ basics.
With friendly greetings,
Eric Goedhart
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check out Khan Academy's Computer Science section. They have a great system there for coding and seeing the results immediately. Great learning tool.
https://www.khanacademy.org/cs[^]
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At 13(ish) I had picked up Sam's teach yourself c++ in 21 days. I wouldn't underestimate the ability of someone that age to pick stuff up. I think a lot of the beginner stuff is too trivial and patronizing.
CPallini wrote: You cannot argue with agile people so just take the extreme approach and shoot him.
:Smile:
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