About the Course

For Kids

This course will teach you how to write computer programs!

You will need to use a Mac computer to follow along. The programs are short, so you can type them all in yourself. This is true even if you can't type well.

For Parents

This is a course for you to do with your child, or for your child to do by himself or herself.

It is based on a book which I wrote to teach my 9 year old son the basics of programming. He had been playing video games for years, and he wanted to learn programming since he wanted to make his own video games someday. This course is intended to be the first step. (No, it doesn't teach you how to create the kinds of video games a 9 year old can dream up; that takes a lot more knowledge!)

The reason this course exists is to be the best course in the world for a kid who is wanting to learn to program computers to do first. Computer programming is a good skill to have, regardless of what occupation your child eventually does as an adult. (I'd argue it's much more important than lots of the math than you learn in high school, for example.) But more importantly, learning how to program computers teaches a rigour and discipline of thinking which is useful in any field. This course exists to show kids that they can program computers, and to help them get started.