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.

  • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Pico 8 is super frustrating at times. I wish they’d make a program to be a “Pico 8 dev kit” that has a larger resolution so the IDE is more readable. The IDE being so hard to work with makes me want to use a proper text editor but there are downsides with that too. It could keep the game’s resolution the same and only have a larger resolution for the IDE so the specs don’t change.

    • 0xc0ba17@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      I agree with the resolution, and I (almost) never use the built-in code editor.

      Most of the time I have a folder per game, with a somegame.p8 whose only code is #include main.p8.lua (+ other includes if needed), and the code itself is inside main.p8.lua. Since the code is cleanly separated from the other assets, I don’t risk overwriting one with the other while juggling between my IDE and pico8