A few months ago I was trying to get my siblings interested in "doing things with computers". I decided to do this by showing them how powerful a few lines of code could be. I had already tried to get them into programming puzzles [topcoder, etc.] and that didn't go anywhere, and they were being taught boring things[1] like string manipulation at school.
I showed them some html and css tricks [because I'd recently picked up css] and they were strangely unimpressed. While they watched I wrote a quickie chrome extension that moved the Compose button in gmail to a different location. Change facebook chat box size. No reaction. These were bright kids who'd never shown the slightest interest in programming and I was once again despairing that they never might[2]. At a whim I created a rails twitter clone while they watched and fidgeted, and told them to go to http://192.168...:3000/twitter on their computer and post a status message. They did that and it showed up on my computer. Their reaction was astonishing - they simply could not believe how little it took to get that to work!
I don't know exactly why that particular example worked but they were hooked instantly. Now they have written chrome extensions and launched tiny websites and are checking out some new things. :)
My takeaway was to get to the aha moment as soon as possible while trying to get someone interested in something.
[1] boring for someone who hasn't programmed before and doesn't see the point of learning to manipulate strings
[2] not that anything is wrong with not programming but I want them to give it a chance
A few months ago I was trying to get my siblings interested in "doing things with computers". I decided to do this by showing them how powerful a few lines of code could be. I had already tried to get them into programming puzzles [topcoder, etc.] and that didn't go anywhere, and they were being taught boring things[1] like string manipulation at school.
I showed them some html and css tricks [because I'd recently picked up css] and they were strangely unimpressed. While they watched I wrote a quickie chrome extension that moved the Compose button in gmail to a different location. Change facebook chat box size. No reaction. These were bright kids who'd never shown the slightest interest in programming and I was once again despairing that they never might[2]. At a whim I created a rails twitter clone while they watched and fidgeted, and told them to go to http://192.168...:3000/twitter on their computer and post a status message. They did that and it showed up on my computer. Their reaction was astonishing - they simply could not believe how little it took to get that to work!
I don't know exactly why that particular example worked but they were hooked instantly. Now they have written chrome extensions and launched tiny websites and are checking out some new things. :)
My takeaway was to get to the aha moment as soon as possible while trying to get someone interested in something.
[1] boring for someone who hasn't programmed before and doesn't see the point of learning to manipulate strings
[2] not that anything is wrong with not programming but I want them to give it a chance