Hi all,

My 8 year old is asking if he can learn how to program.

I’d like to support this, and it seems like it’s not a transient interest as he’s been all over scratch, and using things like minecraft commands for the last year. I have an old (pre 2017) MacBook Air I can set up for this. How do I / what would you advise I set up for him, to a) keep him safe online (he’s 8!) and b) give him the tools he needs in a structured way.

  • jiml78@lemmy.world
    52·
    2 years ago

    If he is interested in game development, I recommend buying a couple Udemy courses on Unreal Engine development.

    You will need to make sure your MacBook is powerful enough to run the unreal engine development IDE.

    But if it is, he will be able. To quickly put something things together and see the results.

    My son(9 years old at the time) put together a small game over a summer via a udemy course and unreal engine.

    • dbaner@lemmy.world
      4·
      2 years ago

      Or alternatively Godot. IMHO it’s a lot simpler to get basic stuff working. The editor can run on a much lower spec machine than unreal and GDscript is good stepping stone between scratch and languages like c#.