Hey everyone. I have a 10 year old daughter who is very intelligence and talented artistically. She has also expressed interest programming. My wife and I really want to foster these interests but neither of us have any experience with programming or coding. Can anyone recommend and good program or product that could help guide her in this? She has a pretty good laptop. We also have a Mac laptop she can use although I’m guessing Apple product might not be the best for this. Here is something I found that appears to help get a kid started with Minecraft modding (she loves minecraft). 

https://www.educents.com/mod-creations-portals-and-dimensions.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=pla&utm_campaign=867693044&utm_content=46534357387-m-328486612966&utm_term=52257-pla_with_promotion&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI9rmfsJrX1wIVhrbACh26EgZ9EAQYAiABEgKV5vD_BwE

Would this be a good start or is there something else out there that’s better? Thanks in advance for your help. 

Don't know about minecraft & modding it (never looked into it), but perhaps Scratch is an option. Developed by MIT, aimed at children 8 to 16, apparently: https://scratch.mit.edu/parents/ (parent information)

Thanks so much for the tips! Looking into it

JavaScript is a good first language, and you've already got it installed as part of your web browsers.

There is a good tutorial for it here: https://www.w3schools.com/js/

I also recommend Javascript for beginners nowadays. Not because it's a great language (it's not good, but not too bad either) but the fact that it's available in your browsers. Thanks to HTML DOM, you get rendering engine basically for free.

3 hours ago, Anri said:

For such a young mind, I would recommend Python or Javascript. 

I've seen some Python kids programming books in the stores. Thinking of buying them for the kids.

For learning Programming, I would suggest the book Head First Programming. Very beginner friendly, and contains great interactive examples. You can check it out here: http://www.headfirstlabs.com/books/hfprog/

Head First Programming would start out by teaching Python, without assuming any programming knowledge. Having learned to program by a Head First book myself, I can confidently tell you that it would be one of the best ways to start with programming. Do take a look at it.

Later, if your daughter decides that she wants to do Game Development, then she can try pygame (which is a bit low-level) or Game Maker Studio.

Otherwise, learning Python opens up a lot more options as well. So you might want to rethink her path depending on how the Stage #1 goes.

Good Luck!

I remember having discovered Logo when I was 7 or 8. It is very good because it allows both a simple programming and visualizing the results. To my opinion, it gives the base ideas of (game) programming: logic, time notion (things you do first have an impact on what you'll do later) and a display.

Then Basic seems to be a good second language. This language gives the basic notions of programming: you have variables, loops, conditions, jumps (goto), procedures (gosub). And it allows easily to add a graphical display (print) and interactivity. Finally it allows to play with memory too (peek and poke) that are useful to optimize (reduce memory consumption or make things happen faster). Qbasic is a big no no there. I can remember both Amstrad and Atari got good Basic.

I am talking about my own passed. And I guess I'll do the same to my son if he'll be interested in this later. But I'm also sure there are many new things nowadays that can focus on more recent things (like scratch). But to my opinion scratch should come after Logo. Plus this language moves too quickly (AFAIK the language structure changes often), this might not help kids, which need to rely on something well funded to grow up on.