Scratch is a fantastic entry point. That's where I was put on the path for a software development career.

Someone else mentioned Lego. If you can find the Mindstorms robotics set, that would be a great place. I know they're not cheap at retail and I don't know if they're still offered. But it's a way to get introduced into visual coding but with a physical aspect still.

Heck, even a a Lego motor set like this and some gears and wheels will do a lot for problem solving skills.

• Microbit was designed for just this: https://microbit.org/
• There's a whole ecosystem of addon peripherals to make fun, tactile games: https://microbit.org/buy/accessories/
• It even runs scratch: https://scratch.mit.edu/microbit
• Once older, if still interested, they can graduate to Arduinos or Raspberry Pis.
• Especially for smaller kids (< 12 according to Python researchers), coding abstractions may be a bit hard to grasp and they may get discouraged. A little more of a gentle ramp might be physical kits like Snap Circuits: https://elenco.com/snapcircuits/

I've been teaching scratch as an extra curricular for elementary students for a little over a year. I've taught 10 year olds basic algorithm stuff with it (boolean, if/then) and basic game dev patterns (event loop, signal/listener) with some success. I have had no success with 6 year olds (granted my attention was divided) but the nice thing is that they were content to use it as paint and drag sprites around.

Code.org has some good program for teaching coding for free. Also check out Kahn Academy, and definitely Scratch - as others have mentioned.

In what sense do you mean Godot only needs code for optimization? How do you think it... becomes a game? Especially a particular game versus any other?

Maybe you're using a different definition of coding though? Like maybe GDScript is scripting, and it's only coding if it's from the coding region of C#?

You can definitely interact with them a lot. Beyond imaginative play (which kids love), you can also give Legos all kids of movement with articulation/technic pieces. The possibilities are quite literally endless. There's a reason that there's so many adults that are Lego enthusiasts.

Probably okay for the 10 year old but let the 6 year old find it by themselves if the sibling picks it up or try when they're around 10yo.

They definitely meant the bricks

I'm not the original poster but I think they meant the logo programming language. Basically you write a script which moves a turtle around on the screen and draws a line behind them.

It's unrelated to the Lego plastic bricks

Yeah bro, tossing a 6 year old in front of a computer screen to code is definitely a better plan.

This is some misguided helicopter parent shit. If they enjoy computers, then they’ll figure it out.

I am not too deep into the topic but I'd suggest like any game engine over a framework like love2d. Isnt godot like only dependant on coding for optimization (fact check me on this one)? If you want to stick with lua there are also a few options for game engines

yep. Scratch is one option I'm considering.

Lego is great. but they're more into computers. I think them making a game of their own will really spark that spark within them. Legos are usually just models. You can't interact with them that much.

Isn't this what scratch is made for? Kids learning programming.

Lego. Build a tree fort. Let them play with friends and just be creative.

I know some people that will do pretty professional stuff for 500-1000 (professional producers from developing countries) DM me if you want.

The most AI answer ever 😂😂

9840m I'm ready for the big leagues.

90s had John Carmack this era has this guy. Also, absolute Hans Zimmer level music score. Loved it.

Aw man I totally missed the first 3

I have actually used that for some things, although it's hard to know why the books there are there. Is this one guys opinion? sourced from uni courses? Consensus from some conference etc.

It's a little frustrating because I don't know much what I don't know but I also have limited time and I can't just study everything. I'm potentially struggling in certain aspects where there's some technique that makes it massively easier.

Certainly in everything I have learned more formally there's a huge amount you can get from one of the few gold standard texts. Like if you can do quantum optics by fox you're basically just ready to go work in a photonics research lab (at an entry level), even trying and finding out what you can't understand in that book will tell you exactly what you need to go study.

I recently found this repository, with a section dedicated to books. Maybe you could find something useful in here.

Slop is slop.

But I don't get it. This is exactly what I discussed in the blog post. And this is very contradictory in the online discourse. In the meantime I can't barely make the mechanical parrot generate a basic asset.

Also, the discussion on the topic isn't irrelevant.

Slop coding is slop. Anything else is irrelevant.

There is a vast amount that would go into a Game Design Document that doesn't fit into a noun-verb diagram.

What about the objective of the game? The story or art style? Software platform and input devices? What gets better when the player activates a jar to level-up? A design doc might also include some anticipated implementation details.

It's a whole different level of detail.