Here is a bit of background. Like any 10 year old these days, the one here is hooked to gaming and can spend insane amount of time playing Minecraft. Have a decent exposure to programming with Scratch and spent sometime learning coding at Code Ninjas before the pandemic hit. So, definitely keen on learning a programming language associated with some gaming aspect. These experiences gave some background on concepts like conditionals and forever loops in programming language
I felt, this is a good time to expose a real programming language and decided to start with Python. Choosing Python as a first language was no brainer. May be it is due to too much thinking, but did not want to pick a Python book that will put-off kid’s interest in coding. Therefore, it took sometime on Google/Amazon to narrow down to a couple of books to try out.
One of the first books I decided to try is this relatively new and low key book Learn Coding Basics for Kids, Young Adults and People Who Are Young at Heart, With Python: Python Computer Programming Made Easy! by Jack C. Stanley and Erik D. Gross from The Tech Academy.
A Grown Up’s Review on “Learn Coding Basics With Python”
This is a different type of book review. Although I spent time to get the book and read through quickly I was not the one who actually used it. Here are my quick thoughts first and then a short review from the 10 year old guinea pig at home who used this.
My initial thoughts were the conversational nature of the book with “dad jokes” (read lame jokes) might be interesting to the kid. I liked the cartoons of the authors sprinkled throughout the book. The kid loved the book, read and worked through more than half of the book in just a couple of days. That was really good to see and I was pretty impressed with it.
One of the reasons is that we did not have to spend time installing Python as the book described. I already have the Python set up using Jupyter lab on my Macbook. The kid could easily get started with Jupyter lab.
One of the complaints I have about the book is regarding the print. Especially, how the python code is printed in the book is too faint and kind of harder to see. However, I should not be really complaining as the cost of the book on Amazon is really low.
10 year Old’s Review on “Learn Coding Basics With Python”
Here is the book review by the kid. These are his own words without any edits.
This book is very good and easy to understand. There are lots of reasons why: For example, the format of the book. It is different than other coding books.
In most other coding books, it shows how to download python, and write code, in a nonfiction format, and I like that. BUT, in this book, It is a bit different: it is basically a fiction story! There are two characters, Jack and Erik, and they tell all about python, like how to install it, the IDE, and of course how to code on it. And at the end of each chapter, they congratulate the reader, and say they are so smart.
I recommend this book to anyone who is a beginner at python even if they are not a kid!
Here is an interesting twist, the 10 year old also tried programming directly on the terminal in addition to jupyter lab. And the feed back I got was the kid liked coding on the terminal more than coding in jupyter lab. Yes, definitely not enough time spent to make the call 🙂 Still, I just had no clue what to say 🙂
