> to teach programming to 12- and 13-year olds. I know how it is sometimes done: You can move some smiley on the screen, you have a few ready made functions like goLeft(), goForward(), turnLeft(), touchWall() available. And then the kids can enter commands like "goForward; if touchWall() then turnRight()". Sometime that is done with real robots. May be some fun, but how is that related to CS and programming? It is more a logic game then. It is as when you learn in music school how to switch the radio on and how to adjust the equalizer.
Learning is not always fun. But I think it is important that there are some resources for learning available. > spip Of course the term kid is never used in the book. The subtitle is "A gentle Introduction". And in the introduction I wrote: "But still there are people who missed this introduction in school for various reasons and decide later that they need some programming skills, maybe for a technical job. And there may exist some children that are not satisfied with the introduction to computer science taught at school. So we have decided to start this book with a short fundamental introduction to basic concepts -- most people can skip that part. In part II we explain the basics of computer programming step by step in a way which should enable even children to learn independently." Of course the audience of the book is very small. It may grow when teachers in school would use the book as a foundation for their teaching.
