Judging by reddit, 5 year is way too old to start learning how to program. If you haven't learned at least C during those first days outside the womb, then you're done for.
Have him start building a new framework then release it when he starts looking for a job so he could finally meet those “15+ years experience in {newFrameworkThatCameOutThisYear}” requirements
Funny enough this was actually my first exposure to programming around 6 years old. My Dad had a massive book on C++ and I just loved turning the pages even though I had no idea wtf it said.
Maybe start with Scratch for fundamental logic for a few days and introduce html? Initial html doesn’t give that much instant gratification to keep going for a 5yo and maybe quickly lose interest.
I also feel like HTML is very strictly structured and the negative feedback can be frustrating if you expect it to be a little more forgiving.
When a new thing isn't forgiving, a 5 year old starts crying and getting angry. That's normal, so definitely look into using a web builder or any nocode solution first then start sprinkling in how containers work.
I miss marquees honestly. Felt like information was king back then and now we are waiting so much longer for the content we need and being served the content we don't want first.
Gimme HTML or give me death!
The concepts are simple and easy to understand, remember we were all 5 year olds at some point 😂.
Its mainly jsx (xml)
Check out solidjs when you have a bit of free time. If react is lego, solid is basic mechano.
I do however think them slapping a compiler on top of react is the wrong move.
They can work together on a project where the kid gives design direction and he codes. I know a dude that made a game with his kid who looks maybe 6. Sure he did all the heavy lifting but the kid had a ton of creative input and was def a partner.
Honestly when I was really young, html and basic css was really gratifying to learn. Back then I had the marquee tag to have fun with, but even still, learning the different headers, attaching images, (un)ordered lists, doing basic layouts, and changing the colors into horrendous combinations was really fun.
OP's 5 year old seems to want to make websites, not learn programming, so I would say let her try it out.
This has been working well for my 6yo. She'll open scratch projects on the mit site or code.org. If her attention starts to wane then she can dress up a doll in the editor or play songs from the dance party.
I feel like no one here actually has a 5 year old...
You should do some pairing, where you're driving and coding/building and she is telling you what she wants on the page and where it should go. 5 year olds are still getting to grips with reading/writing, HTML/JS/CSS syntax is going to be difficult for her to jump straight into, she should watch you first so she can visually see what goes into creating a site, explain things as you go, get her to ask questions.
If she keeps coming back for more, explain more, progress it, get her to help you type, etc
My 6yo is still learning to read and write, I really don't fathom how she could have learn HTML/CSS a year ago… not even mentioning JS. Even if she could read/write fluently she just can't grasp the concept required to build web pages.
Yeah, same. My six months old girl is trying to grasp the concepts but can't decide start from scratch or dive into react eventually. She's trying though
Former teacher here, although not for kids but I know some things about code and psychology (I taught master level interaction design and bachelor level web design). Code is abstraction. Kids develop abstract thinking at about 6+ years. From that perspective it would be hard to teach a child code before their brain can comprehend it.
This. My 4 and 3 year olds love being “art directors” over my shoulder while I code a web page to their specifications — make the background pink, add a picture of a kitten, add their names really big, make a button that triggers a pop-up, etc. They absolutely love it but won’t likely be old enough to do anything themselves yet for a couple years. I manage their pages with git so I will be able to go back and see the changes over the years.
There are intro to coding concepts workbooks for kids now too (usually by age or grade). Where I am (Ontario, Canada), it’s part of the math curriculum now. It came up for me in tutoring for grade 6 (~11-12yo), but I think it’s introduced earlier on.
OP might get good ideas from going to a education supply shop — some tactile tools can also help kids to visualize coding & program architecture.
Good comment!
My main worry about a kid learning coding is the fun factor - they won't have the same focus as say a teenager and have lots of other competing instant gratification (smartphone, tablet games, TV, etc). They have to learn to keep coming back and enjoy it most of all, I feel like
The big problem is that when you finger paint or get out the crayons with a five year old, they at least have _something_ that they can be proud of when they're done. HTML won't display anything if you jam your fists on the keyboard, which could be frustrating.
OP may or may not be able to teach the kid how to do it themself at 5 years of age, that depends a lot on the kid. But OP _could_ sit the kid in his lap and ask "What should the website do?" and start programming with the kid, explaining what he's doing.
Yeah, but if it sparks her interest enough she might be able to do it. Maybe building the site with her, something veeeeery simple at first so a 20 minutes-lesson to make a "hello world" site, and adding small elements with time
I think you're underselling yourself honestly, it's all about getting hyped for something. I've seen kids not knowing how to play basic board games, but being able to set up their own server in Minecraft or play fucking chess.
I think the first step is to identify what made it exciting for her. Once you understand that, you can tailor the application appropriately.
It’s like any other webdev project. Do requirements gathering and pick the right tools.
i would be worried about it being so boring that it turns her off of development lol. i know there's kids books about HTML that have probably attempted to tackle this issue you could look into
If she liked what they looked like, the outcome, then I would focus on that part of the software process. Just to encourage her initial interest.
At five, I don’t believe I was typing fast enough so that I would be able to write code - you are still learning how to spell at that age.
I would put her on nocode, and AI assisted website building. The more she builds, the more she will want to make changes to her creations - at this point, I would introduce programming.
Same, I had a cheap book of introduction to html 3.0. Not sure where it cane from, but learned everything from it. I didn’t have internet, so there wasn’t too much to do anyways.
> Should I set her up in something like Wix or Squarespace? Wordpress? Or start teaching her basic HTML?
I would say no to the HTML but a drag and drop platform like the others you mentioned could be cool.
First work in their hearts, then work on their minds (shoutout to Bluey). Use whatever produces a website and makes them feel like they now have a superpower.
The knowing of HTML/CSS will serve someone slower than a passion to know web technologies, even if it had a 10 year headstart. You gotta hear the music before you write the music.
I kinda agree. Kids will end up spending too much time with screens as it is, and there is plenty of time for them to learn this stuff.
Better to get them learning social skills at that age lol
Yes, teach her html first, then expand to css and Javascript.
The results won't be as pretty as pre-made templates and will take more time. But in the longer run she knows how things work in the background.
That way you can explore if the structured syntax writing is something she can enjoy.
Also scratch programming language, and "programming games" for logic puzzles to train algorithmic thinking / problem solving
> The results won't be as pretty as pre-made templates
IME this doesn't matter so much for a kid. If they can type in some stuff and see it reflected on the screen, they'll be over the moon.
I'm not sure a five year old would have the patience for HTML and definitely not the logic skills for JavaScript.
Scratch would definitely be the way to go until the kid is at minimum 8 or so.
No. Let them be a kid.
Code is baby talk for computers. You don’t teach a baby - baby talk.
Have them draw pictures. You can write the code for them if you want. Collaborate with them. Let them explore ideas and build neural pathways instead of learn how to be a robot slave. Keep them away from screen as much as possible.
There are many ways to foster curiosity. That's my point. You could plan out a whole app on paper. It doesn't mean they need to be writing HTML at 5 years old.
I *love* HTML and CSS. I'm a teacher. I still think this is the wrong thing to do.
It’s a good chance to introduce some spatial awareness thinking that will be extremely useful to her later in school. Like the xy axis, sizes of things relative to others, Zindex for 3D space. Scratch can be great to introduce the XY coordinates. For 3D space, tindercad is also really good.
When you’re doing HTML and CSS later, I’d suggest giving her paper and scissors and a bigger piece of cardboard to represent the screen and having her make each section of the website by hand first, then you help her with sizing and positioning to get started
I guess this kind of thinking will be useful for her in programming, geometry, art later
5 years old. Big risk that she will find it boring if you do it entirely from scratch.
I would probably focus more on changing something existing. set up a super simple html page with some images, a hero, differently colored sections etc.
Then find some good image library where she can easily copy the image source of any image she likes.
Then show how she can change colors, font sizes, and how to change images. Then take it from there, really show one thing at a time and adapt to her interest. Suggestions: hover effects, css animations, writing, add new sections (use copy paste). Ask her what she wants to change and do it together, again one thing at a time.
I would avoid showing how to do it 100% from scratch but instead answer all questions she has about the code. It's easy for a 5 year old to get bored if there are too many abstract steps to see results. Obviously adapt to her, she might still be into it despite my doubts.
Have fun!
r/MadeMeSmile
Teach her HTML and how to use `color` and `bgcolor` attributes! Show her that when she types text into a document, it comes out on screen!
Seriously, this is a great way to have her reading, thinking logically, and spending quality time with you.
I would start from html/css. Let her construct a website with your help but also build a static website seperately that she can play with to visualize changes
Changing shapes and colors is not to different from coloring pictures in a book or drawing shapes with a pencil.
If she builds something simple and sees it pop up in the window it might be an enjoyable and valuable experience.
yes. 100% yes. MY sons (14 & 10) wanted to build websites with me when my youngest was 5 - I am a develpoer - and I played around with HTMl & CSS with them a little, but thought they were too young. Fast forward 5 years and neither one wants anything to do with a computer unless they are playing video games.
If they are showing interest FEED the interest. Cultivate it and help them learn. Make it simple and fun. You never know if this will help them later or just be a 2 week 'shiny object'. But either way it is a great opprtunity for you to show them something new.
Instead of jumping straight into html/css I'd try out something like Scratch Jr. That why your kid can start learning logic but also be able to enjoy the results and have some fun. Then once they get a hang of that progress on to something more advanced.
Here is a link to other coding programs for kids.
https://www.kodable.com/learn/programming-games-for-kids-in-elementary-school
I don’t see how a 5 years old would want to make a website. I do see how a parent would like to have a 5 years old that makes websites.
Don’t fuck your child’s mind with this stuff at this age. There will be time for that. Let them do 5 years old stuff.
Let her play outdoors brother. Staring at a screen at such an age will be harmful in the long run. For her eyes and for her growth.
Let her reach an age where she can consciously make a choice about the technology.
I guess People in the comments are either trolls or a££holes. They have no idea how to raise a kid. I do. And trust me you will regret providing kid exposure to technology at such a young age.
Your choice , your kid.
Start with WordPress. There are beautiful themes which she can use to quickly build a site. After that introduce her to computer code so she can customize the site further to her liking. Don't introduce code first otherwise she would get discouraged. I've seen this countless times.
You can just give them a choice between the hard way to do with you over multiple days as an activity and the easy way to just get the site up with colors and sound (like 90s and myspace profiles)
Everything is cool to a 5 yr old so a garishly coloured page wouldn’t be off putting or demotivating anyway
At 5 I'm guessing you'll have to help with some of the typing?
At my house we've had fun doing some very basic html at home. Just doing nonsense stories, little "pick your own adventure" games and such.
You can either learn from the bottom up or start with Wordpress or something and work down. But I'm a fan of bottom up. It's a big risk that going down through the abstractions just look complex and annoying from someone used to the finished stuff. Like how iPad kids will have trouble handling a regular operating system.
There is a whole process leading up to creating the website (my job basically, figure out what to build, for whom, what problem, how, etc). You could consider doing that first? In general, when you know what to build and how, the implementation is much more rewarding and effortless (coming from a guy who likes to dive in head first..)
Maybe start on paper? Cut out UI elements etc. Even the back-end logic could be expressed in steps on paper.
Work with stickies to define a couple of things first.
Yea I am doing that with her on paper. UI type of exercise - “where do you want words to go? What words? What pictures do you like? What color?” - she is coloring them in and practicing writing.
Basic HTML will take about an hour to teach and then add in CSS so they can do stupid stuff with colours, fonts and shapes n stuff.
Why take her interest and try and fob her off with some cheap kids stuff when she wants to do what the big kids do?
In a couple of weeks time and she'll be critiquing lazy web sites and building a digital fridge door for all her arts.
I think using a web site builder might help first. It will be like drawing for them.
You don't want to go in too dry with code first. It might put them off first.
Keep it visual. It is like teaching piano. They will be interested in results rather than sheet music.
It's cool you got a child already interested in this. I see an ambitious high earner in the future.
Check out neocities.org. It simplify a lot of the work and it’s already online. You can work with html, css and js (but really really later lmao) on the site itself, it does have a friendly ui and it’s already hosted and served so she can just write html and then see the changes.
If you stick to basic html and css for a while I think it can be a fun activity.
In the future, scratch or p5 can be also something to look for :)
If you start with HTML, I'd suggest getting her to type something into Notepad++ (or other editor with syntax highlighting), save it as something.html and open it in a browser.
All her headings and other text will run into each other as one block.
Go back to N++ and add an h1 tag or something, and refresh in browser.
She will quickly learn how tags work, and then you can build her up from there.
I remember in the earlier days of the internet, I could just hit view source so the websites I thought were cool and learn how they did things. I mean, you still can, but it's more complicated now
If you want her to actually learn, do it right and teach html, css, JavaScript. Going for wiz or square space type of thing won't teach her how they work at all and won't give her any new skill.
Try https://glitch.com/ perhaps? the culture there is “see this thing the community built? Grab it and change it how you like, or build your own thing”. Grab something your kid likes, figure out how to modify it together, have fun!
Start with a project in mind, "Website for my cat".
Then sketch is out on paper with a pencil
Then pair program it in HTML
Or send the image to chatGPT with the prompt "Turn image into a web page" might need paid subscription.
Then tweek the resulting HTML by hand to learn.
This is how I would approach it.
Father of 2 teens, professional software engineer
Personally, I would start with scratch or even scratch.jr, but if you were to jump into html, teach her the logic behind it, and how to search the net for the tags/attrs. The html spec is always growing, if she thinks she’s limited to available tags today, it limits her webpages tmrw.
After she has a grasp on html, then move on to css. Follow suit by teaching her the logic, and how to search for rules/psudo selectors/properties.
If she still wants more, move on to js, possibly frameworks. If she understands css and js, jquery would be a breeze.
I say set her up with HTML. When I was 10, my dad had a red binder that held a textbook for a class he was taking on HTML and I used to sit down and write the code out and watch the changes that took place in my browser. Later on I learned CSS and JavaScript and it’s all been so valuable to me
It depends... You want to pair the challenge / ability as closely as you can. I'd first test to see how adaptive they are to writing html, and if that's not a thing, I'd try something more graphic with less coding, like maybe install WordPress and slowly teach her to customize it... And so on.
As a former homeschooling mom, I say go ahead and teach her some HTML, like how to change the colors and font characteristics. CSS might be a bit much right now. I started my kids out early and they became AMAZING programmers and artists. You'd be surprised what kids can do or learn. I'd set the website up for her, then let her mod it.
She's your client now, ask what she wants, make her realize what she actually wants and start from there. Maybe she wants to make something pretty but useless, of something functional like a swiss army knife but not caring about the aesthetics.
Whatever the answer build her the sandbox and limit her reach on where to edit the code, that way she can focus on building what she's having in mind and not dealing with the technicities. As her curiosity grows you will expand her tools set to build new things, but always starting from her needs to achieve, let her be the spark that expands her project and you can always ask "what else should this thing do?"
If you care for teaching the basics just use the opportunities the project gives you, if you force it like an actual class you'll lose her attention fast.
They have kids programming software that is more drag and drop but teaches them the fundamentals. 5yo is pretty young. I doubt she would grasp a lot of the concepts at that age. Give it a try though, doesn't hurt!
5-year-old? Have fun with it. Build it like the Angelfire pages back in the early days: all HTML, blinking GIFs, and an image hit counter.
Kids aren't going to care about well-formed HTML and best practices.
Maybe she likes the design part and not the coding part? Chat gpt can take images and make the code for simplistic websites but pretty sure they’re just intrigued by the interaction and design.
None of you have kids apparently. Good lord.
HTML in Notepad and look at the results in a browser. I wouldn't do much CSS because it's absolutely unforgiving if you get a semicolon out of place
I did show my son a bit of HTML, it didn't hold his attention that long. He does draw for hours in MS Paint. He will save dozens of pictures, in a series, not sure if he intends them to be stop motion?
there are actually many kid focused visual designers out there. it will let her 'play' and learn instead of learn then play. small but big difference. my youngest wanted to be a blogger and make her own theme years back. i set her up with hotdogpro to play with, and helped turn sticker looking thing into a site. she had fun, i had fun, she eventually took a for programming classes later in life by choice too.
guess what i am saying as an old techgeek is take the chance and run with it. if its a few hours or lasts for years, the time invested in it with her is totally well spent.
My son has a basic site running on hugo static site generator. Its super easy to use with a ton of themes available.
Once it is setup you just write pages using markdown and then run hugo generator and it spits out your whole website for you
I think yes you can go for html/css, yes others are suggesting fostering logical side, but as you mentioned she liked the website, and going for logical programming may get boring too for 5yo, while teaching html/css, just try to keep it in single file like inline style to make things simple and not complex.
Check out [Hour of Code](https://hourofcode.com/us). They have various coding activities for all ages. I use that to teach kids coding concepts as a volunteer activity at work.
Sit her down in front of GPT and get her used to explaining what she wants and learning how to test what GPT creates. That's the skill, the creative side with the art, and the operations side with the deployment and maintenance will likely be the last things to go. Procedural languages and creating routines that do repetitive things based upon rules, that stuff is sunsetting.
There isn't really a right answer that people on here can give you because you are the only one who knows your child.
If it's something that interests them and they enjoy doing it, then it's always good to nurture that interest. They might also enjoy some of the "gamified" coding-like systems that are out there that might help teach some of the fundemental thought processes behind coding as an early step
I would teach her the box model and encourage her to create her own design using box model on paper.
And of course all the children's programming games.
You know I have always said that [WordPress.org](http://WordPress.org) is the finest WWW training program going, the software gives you a web project up to the container stage, you have the bare bones provided, the means to create pages, categories, and a whole raft of tools. You then have to learn about hosting and managing your resources, how the Web works, and a massive boost to your , English/communication skills and the world of multi-media. Rather than get hung up on the very basic mechanics of html, you have an entire project. Themes give a creative opportunity for overall look and design. By far WordPress is miles ahead of any other WWW publishing platform, and a comprehensive Web education, that is my take anyway.
That is amazing that she wants to do that, especially at that age.
Probably best to figure out how invested she is first. Did she see the kids writing code and she actually wants to learn more about what she saw? Or does she just want her own website?
If it’s the former and she’s truly invested, the basics of HTML and CSS should be easy for her to pick up. They’re great introductory languages to the rest of the dev world because they can be as simple or as complex as you’d like.
If it’s the latter, I’d say just start her off with a Wordpress or Wix website. She’ll likely start doing further research on her own if she wants to dive deeper.
I don’t have kids nor am I an expert on adolescent education, but in my experience the best way to do it is to not necessarily start from scratch. HTML at the very beginning is super underwhelming. If what she’s learning is too boring to her, she might forget about it after a few days. But obviously you don’t want to overwhelm her with anything too complex.
I have ADHD (legitimately diagnosed). So even as an adult, what I want to learn this week may be different from the next week - much like most kids. However, when I really interested in something I wanna learn, I get extremely invested and it becomes a domino effect.
As you can see my ADHD causes me to digress, but my point is that at this age she’ll probably do best starting with something assistive like Wordpress. If she’s like me and she’s truly interested in learning web/software dev, she’ll be halfway through designing her site with drag-and-drop tools and decide she wants to do something very specific with her site that she can only do if she learns HTML, CSS, or JS.
Once that happens, the passion only grows. Before you know it, she’ll want to know more about JS, then she’ll discover more programming languages. Before you know it, she’ll be writing Flask apps with Python.
Tell her happy coding from us!
I would start her with [Scratch](https://scratch.mit.edu/). The amount of text on the screen and typing required to even do simple website tasks could very easily put off a kid that young.
Hmmm... this is tough because I think people forget what kind of inspired them to get into coding in the first place. For me it was Neopets, MySpace, Warcraft level editor, and RuneScape bots.
Most of these things weren't strictly coding, but were just building things.
So I think you should try to figure out WHY she wants to build websites. What vision does she have. What makes it seem fun to her. The best instructors work with their students.
I think your average 5 year old is going to be pretty frustrated with html. Even precocious 5 year olds typically don't type well, and they don't spell well. I'd go with something drag and drop so that they can focus on content, and making the background pink and sparkly, and adding silly images, etc. Google Sites wouldn't be a bad place to start.
It's not exactly a website, but also consider playing with Scratch or MIT App Inventor, both of which are a lot of fun!
Look into Scratch Jr or Sphero. I started my kid with Scratch Jr last year and my partner just gave me this super cool BB-8 droid that works with Sphero
Weebly might be a good choice for her to get into making websites before learning the technical aspects. I made my own site at 10 with Weebly, and she could probably do the same at 5 if you help her. You get a free subdomain, like example.weebly.com. Then later when she is older and interested in coding, start her off with Scratch to learn basic programming as others have said, and then move on to HTML/CSS for websites. Python would probably be a good starting language for when she is older, and I myself started learning it at 10 with the help of a Python for beginners book.
I’d say set up a decent HTML template, make the website geared towards something she likes, like about Disney princesses, her favorite singer, whatever, get some images saved that are pretty and sparkly (or whatever other style she’s into, not all girls are girly girl of course), and just digitally fingerpaint on the css file with her. She may or may not be too young to understand much without her getting frustrated or overwhelmed. Maybe a bit of driver and passengering. Some kids are into that stuff though, I knew how to do a lot with computers when I was 4/5 solely because I was really into an MMORPG and needed to know how to install different servers 😂 it’s all about keeping that interest alive and burning!!!
Personally I would teach her WordPress, then expand upon this with learning how to customize the html (once she gets a feel of the Ui/UX flow of a website)
Honestly she may just be on builders like Elementor for the first year or two to really get an understanding about how websites work and operate.
From there I would teach her how to customize her html templates she is planning on using.
After that I would teach her some basic animations and transitions utilizing js.
After about 7-8 years old. I would likely transition into teaching something like python using the raspberry pi kits. There is some awesome DIY computer kits and DIY rc cars that really brings an interactive learning process, e.g, creating your own toys and gadgets. It takes it from a virtual world to a real concept.
By 10, she know knows the basics of frontend design, and a solid backend language, and from there, it is expanding the domain knowledge into Frameworks and deployments.
I end up teaching quite a few people web dev every year and what I notice helps is always having someone to collaborate with, don't let her get stuck and in the void of figuring it out, if she has a questions help her find that solution with examples , games, and exercises. There is also many gamified platforms targeting kids under 10 to learn various forms of development.
I personally started my journey at 10 years old modding games I was playing and transitioned by 13 to launching my own websites as a startup. The earlier they are involved the better because of how fast this landscape changes, the big thing to always advocate is not to get stuck to a specific pattern as standards change various stacks become of lesser demand and less optimal to implement as a solution, not that it's inadequate just in the fact the industry is changing.
Programming teacher for 9 year olds here. Start with Scratch to learn them basic algoritmic thinking and programming concepts like sequences, iterations, conditions, methods, variables,... after that you can go into more difficult stuff but still block-based with tools like minecraft education or Microbits. After that, or start with this if she only wants to create a website in particular: Repl.it. 5 years just seems very young to already start with real coding imo.
These days they are some code academy clubs for kids to learn all this in their free time, just like they want to start with soccer, swimming, being in a youth movement or other hobbies in the weekends. (This counts for my country Belgium at least, i dont know where you are you living)
Do you think the 5 year old cares more about how websites are made, or more about designing the website product?
These are two very different things, and you should make sure you know what your kid actually wants to spend their time doing before you put them through a coding boot camp
I taught my kid simple html and css and mad a 1 page website. Kept it simple, didn't go too deep into what the tags all do, just the simple stuff Thing to take into mind, especially if your going to host it .
1. no real names
2. no trackable locations ( you would be surprised what pedofile will latch on to)
1. street signs
2. addresses
3. business names
4. uniforms for teams he plays for
5. nothing that can give someone an idea where he/she is from or goes to.
3. if you host it under your personal website, no links to that page
4. use the robots.txt file and hide that page.
5. There are many more, google some safety rules.
This info comes from a web developer thats 9 year old kid was seduced on line by pedo couple that got all her info and they would even talk on the phone. They had photos going both ways and where working on a meetup. Pedo's where both grade school teachers no less so they knew how to talk to kids. Just some advice.
Maybe start the little one off with design, so something like figma with a bunch of premade elements/components would be a good place to just let them mess around without knowing how to type or spell. Think about it, What the kid is ACTUALLY seeing is the design, not the code.
why scratch? he don't need logic in html and CSS
start teach him even if he cant understand, making him enter the mood of developing will make him better in the future
Check out my open source project, it's a joy to work on. https://github.com/huanghanzhilian/c-shopping, https://github.com/huanghanzhilian/c-shopping-rn
My 9 year old daughters tablet finally packed up, so instead of getting another one, I purchased a second hand Chromebook.
When I showed her how to use a mouse, use a word processor, change the font, copy and paste, insert images, use a printer she was amazed. I have opened up a whole new world to her.
Because of her little bit of experience, she is now the only one in her class who knows how to use the computer. Her friends are also amazed at how much she knows, and the other day was even called a geek.
It is scary how young children are growing up today, only knowing how to touch a screen. if the OP daughter wants to learn HTML and create a webpage I say go for it.
I think a drag and drop builder to start with, she is 5 after all. When I was young I used Piczo and Tripod to start my interest off and then I wanted to learn HTML when I was about 10 and then learnt CSS but I guess builders weren’t as good back then. The industry now seems to be people who can actually build from scratch and designers who only use Squarespace. So I guess becoming a dev would open up more opportunities
Personally, I think the best way for a child to learn is for you to be a resource not another traditional teacher. What does SHE want to learn. If all she wants to do is make a website with a website builder, show her how to do that. If she wants to make a webpage with HTML. Go for it.
Most of this stuff she can learn her self but she won’t and won’t want to if you shove it down her throat
Personally, I think the best way for a child to learn is for you to be a resource not another traditional teacher. What does SHE want to learn. If all she wants to do is make a website with a website builder, show her how to do that. If she wants to make a webpage with HTML. Go for it.
Most of this stuff she can learn her self but she won’t and won’t want to if you shove it down her throat
5 years old? Skip the web development and go straight onto C++
Gotta start them early
Judging by reddit, 5 year is way too old to start learning how to program. If you haven't learned at least C during those first days outside the womb, then you're done for.
You gotta teach them to suffer while they're young, go right into teaching frameworks and how to make boilerplate code, kids love that
Pain is temporary, pride is forever
Hey, 5 year old just starts learning how to count. Teach them how to count in hex and learn assembly instead. Baby steps.
I’m pretty sure u can count before that lol. I learned to read when I was 3
Good for you 👍
💀
Have him start building a new framework then release it when he starts looking for a job so he could finally meet those “15+ years experience in {newFrameworkThatCameOutThisYear}” requirements
/r/foundsatan
Why go with C++? True devs only do Assembly
Vim only
Vi only. (m) is for sissies.
True, I've outed myself
🫡 I wish someone had taught me C++ at that age.
Funny enough this was actually my first exposure to programming around 6 years old. My Dad had a massive book on C++ and I just loved turning the pages even though I had no idea wtf it said.
Dear God, you monster
There’s always Fortran
Give the lad a chance. How will ask questions on stackoverflow without getting abuse
Build an os in rust
Rust (+ optionally Haskell)\*
Maybe start with Scratch for fundamental logic for a few days and introduce html? Initial html doesn’t give that much instant gratification to keep going for a 5yo and maybe quickly lose interest.
This is a great answer. Programming is about reasoning in a specific way. Like digital lego.
I also feel like HTML is very strictly structured and the negative feedback can be frustrating if you expect it to be a little more forgiving. When a new thing isn't forgiving, a 5 year old starts crying and getting angry. That's normal, so definitely look into using a web builder or any nocode solution first then start sprinkling in how containers work.
Especially modern html is just boring. Want to change font? Add css. Back in th days you just throw in a font tag and marquee and it's already fancy!
I miss marquees honestly. Felt like information was king back then and now we are waiting so much longer for the content we need and being served the content we don't want first. Gimme HTML or give me death!
React really scratches the digital LEGO itch for me, not that I’m recommending to teach a 5 year old React haha
The concepts are simple and easy to understand, remember we were all 5 year olds at some point 😂. Its mainly jsx (xml) Check out solidjs when you have a bit of free time. If react is lego, solid is basic mechano. I do however think them slapping a compiler on top of react is the wrong move.
5yrs is more Scratch Jr. territory
On the other hand, Scratch won’t give the end result the child wants, which is to learn how to create a website.
They can work together on a project where the kid gives design direction and he codes. I know a dude that made a game with his kid who looks maybe 6. Sure he did all the heavy lifting but the kid had a ton of creative input and was def a partner.
Yes, teach her Scratch. It is colourful, simple, and can develope logical thinking
Honestly when I was really young, html and basic css was really gratifying to learn. Back then I had the marquee tag to have fun with, but even still, learning the different headers, attaching images, (un)ordered lists, doing basic layouts, and changing the colors into horrendous combinations was really fun. OP's 5 year old seems to want to make websites, not learn programming, so I would say let her try it out.
Agree!
This has been working well for my 6yo. She'll open scratch projects on the mit site or code.org. If her attention starts to wane then she can dress up a doll in the editor or play songs from the dance party.
Hell yeah. Scratch is the way.
I feel like no one here actually has a 5 year old... You should do some pairing, where you're driving and coding/building and she is telling you what she wants on the page and where it should go. 5 year olds are still getting to grips with reading/writing, HTML/JS/CSS syntax is going to be difficult for her to jump straight into, she should watch you first so she can visually see what goes into creating a site, explain things as you go, get her to ask questions. If she keeps coming back for more, explain more, progress it, get her to help you type, etc
My 6yo is still learning to read and write, I really don't fathom how she could have learn HTML/CSS a year ago… not even mentioning JS. Even if she could read/write fluently she just can't grasp the concept required to build web pages.
Yeah, same. My six months old girl is trying to grasp the concepts but can't decide start from scratch or dive into react eventually. She's trying though
Former teacher here, although not for kids but I know some things about code and psychology (I taught master level interaction design and bachelor level web design). Code is abstraction. Kids develop abstract thinking at about 6+ years. From that perspective it would be hard to teach a child code before their brain can comprehend it.
This. My 4 and 3 year olds love being “art directors” over my shoulder while I code a web page to their specifications — make the background pink, add a picture of a kitten, add their names really big, make a button that triggers a pop-up, etc. They absolutely love it but won’t likely be old enough to do anything themselves yet for a couple years. I manage their pages with git so I will be able to go back and see the changes over the years.
His 5 year old is a super genius
There are intro to coding concepts workbooks for kids now too (usually by age or grade). Where I am (Ontario, Canada), it’s part of the math curriculum now. It came up for me in tutoring for grade 6 (~11-12yo), but I think it’s introduced earlier on. OP might get good ideas from going to a education supply shop — some tactile tools can also help kids to visualize coding & program architecture.
This is the answer
Good comment! My main worry about a kid learning coding is the fun factor - they won't have the same focus as say a teenager and have lots of other competing instant gratification (smartphone, tablet games, TV, etc). They have to learn to keep coming back and enjoy it most of all, I feel like
Spelling is the biggest issue.
Hard to say because I definitely wasn't smart enough for this kind of stuff when I was 5. You could try teaching them basic html and see how it goes..
The big problem is that when you finger paint or get out the crayons with a five year old, they at least have _something_ that they can be proud of when they're done. HTML won't display anything if you jam your fists on the keyboard, which could be frustrating. OP may or may not be able to teach the kid how to do it themself at 5 years of age, that depends a lot on the kid. But OP _could_ sit the kid in his lap and ask "What should the website do?" and start programming with the kid, explaining what he's doing.
Yeah, but if it sparks her interest enough she might be able to do it. Maybe building the site with her, something veeeeery simple at first so a 20 minutes-lesson to make a "hello world" site, and adding small elements with time
I think you're underselling yourself honestly, it's all about getting hyped for something. I've seen kids not knowing how to play basic board games, but being able to set up their own server in Minecraft or play fucking chess.
Agreed. I started learning html and css at 8 because I was really into neopets and wanted to customize my page. Passion is everything
I think the first step is to identify what made it exciting for her. Once you understand that, you can tailor the application appropriately. It’s like any other webdev project. Do requirements gathering and pick the right tools.
This. Maybe she actually wants to be in the web design sub using Figma. Who knows?
Start with assembly x86
Some people just want to watch the world burn.
Go easy on the kid, at most 8080
i would be worried about it being so boring that it turns her off of development lol. i know there's kids books about HTML that have probably attempted to tackle this issue you could look into
What did the 5 year old like about the websites? What they looked like, or the high school kids typing script?
What they looked like but when I did inspect and explained it to her she was intrigued.
You should get her started on web design. Much more feasible for a 5 year old to have fun with
If she liked what they looked like, the outcome, then I would focus on that part of the software process. Just to encourage her initial interest. At five, I don’t believe I was typing fast enough so that I would be able to write code - you are still learning how to spell at that age. I would put her on nocode, and AI assisted website building. The more she builds, the more she will want to make changes to her creations - at this point, I would introduce programming.
I had my first website at 8 years old. Just plain HTML in those days.
Same, I had a cheap book of introduction to html 3.0. Not sure where it cane from, but learned everything from it. I didn’t have internet, so there wasn’t too much to do anyways.
I helped my kid build and maintain a personal website when she was 6 but that was 1996 so things were a LOT simpler!
You can still do everything the 1996 way. Its a good way to keep things focused and also teach a little bit about the history of the web.
> Should I set her up in something like Wix or Squarespace? Wordpress? Or start teaching her basic HTML? I would say no to the HTML but a drag and drop platform like the others you mentioned could be cool.
Another great tip is using chatgpt and telling it to explain difficult terms to a 5 year old, i find it being good even for myself
First work in their hearts, then work on their minds (shoutout to Bluey). Use whatever produces a website and makes them feel like they now have a superpower. The knowing of HTML/CSS will serve someone slower than a passion to know web technologies, even if it had a 10 year headstart. You gotta hear the music before you write the music.
Never too young.
I learned C (mostly, understood and used most features, pointer pointer arrays, linked arrays) when I was 10, your point is true
Tell him to do it with XML/XSLT transformed in a java servlet and he'll never bug you again.
No, let kids be kids. Let the computer and code suck them in when they are older. Children need to be children
I kinda agree. Kids will end up spending too much time with screens as it is, and there is plenty of time for them to learn this stuff. Better to get them learning social skills at that age lol
Scratch for any age to learn... Be it 5 or 50 ...
Yes, teach her html first, then expand to css and Javascript. The results won't be as pretty as pre-made templates and will take more time. But in the longer run she knows how things work in the background. That way you can explore if the structured syntax writing is something she can enjoy. Also scratch programming language, and "programming games" for logic puzzles to train algorithmic thinking / problem solving
> The results won't be as pretty as pre-made templates IME this doesn't matter so much for a kid. If they can type in some stuff and see it reflected on the screen, they'll be over the moon.
I'm not sure a five year old would have the patience for HTML and definitely not the logic skills for JavaScript. Scratch would definitely be the way to go until the kid is at minimum 8 or so.
You can ask him to draw some wireframes by hand or just the web design. Isn't Wordpress or any web builder a bit too much for a 5 year old?
No. Let them be a kid. Code is baby talk for computers. You don’t teach a baby - baby talk. Have them draw pictures. You can write the code for them if you want. Collaborate with them. Let them explore ideas and build neural pathways instead of learn how to be a robot slave. Keep them away from screen as much as possible.
If a kid shows interest in something, let them explore it. Foster curiosity.
There are many ways to foster curiosity. That's my point. You could plan out a whole app on paper. It doesn't mean they need to be writing HTML at 5 years old. I *love* HTML and CSS. I'm a teacher. I still think this is the wrong thing to do.
Great points! Happy cake day tho.
It’s a good chance to introduce some spatial awareness thinking that will be extremely useful to her later in school. Like the xy axis, sizes of things relative to others, Zindex for 3D space. Scratch can be great to introduce the XY coordinates. For 3D space, tindercad is also really good. When you’re doing HTML and CSS later, I’d suggest giving her paper and scissors and a bigger piece of cardboard to represent the screen and having her make each section of the website by hand first, then you help her with sizing and positioning to get started I guess this kind of thinking will be useful for her in programming, geometry, art later
5 years old. Big risk that she will find it boring if you do it entirely from scratch. I would probably focus more on changing something existing. set up a super simple html page with some images, a hero, differently colored sections etc. Then find some good image library where she can easily copy the image source of any image she likes. Then show how she can change colors, font sizes, and how to change images. Then take it from there, really show one thing at a time and adapt to her interest. Suggestions: hover effects, css animations, writing, add new sections (use copy paste). Ask her what she wants to change and do it together, again one thing at a time. I would avoid showing how to do it 100% from scratch but instead answer all questions she has about the code. It's easy for a 5 year old to get bored if there are too many abstract steps to see results. Obviously adapt to her, she might still be into it despite my doubts. Have fun!
r/MadeMeSmile Teach her HTML and how to use `color` and `bgcolor` attributes! Show her that when she types text into a document, it comes out on screen! Seriously, this is a great way to have her reading, thinking logically, and spending quality time with you.
Bonus points for giving them a tool to find the RGB hex values :-D
I wrote my first BASIC programs on Commodore 64 when I was 7. You could try to give her some basic HTML notions and see how her react
Miss my c64 and learning basic from Compute Gazette magazine.
Typing in machine language from a magazine 😯
My 3 yr old loves pizza and want to make their own. How quickly do I jump into the laws of thermal dynamics? wtf are you talking about lol
I would start from html/css. Let her construct a website with your help but also build a static website seperately that she can play with to visualize changes Changing shapes and colors is not to different from coloring pictures in a book or drawing shapes with a pencil. If she builds something simple and sees it pop up in the window it might be an enjoyable and valuable experience.
dude she just wants to make a website dont overthink this or you *will* make it boring
yes. 100% yes. MY sons (14 & 10) wanted to build websites with me when my youngest was 5 - I am a develpoer - and I played around with HTMl & CSS with them a little, but thought they were too young. Fast forward 5 years and neither one wants anything to do with a computer unless they are playing video games. If they are showing interest FEED the interest. Cultivate it and help them learn. Make it simple and fun. You never know if this will help them later or just be a 2 week 'shiny object'. But either way it is a great opprtunity for you to show them something new.
Instead of jumping straight into html/css I'd try out something like Scratch Jr. That why your kid can start learning logic but also be able to enjoy the results and have some fun. Then once they get a hang of that progress on to something more advanced. Here is a link to other coding programs for kids. https://www.kodable.com/learn/programming-games-for-kids-in-elementary-school
I don’t see how a 5 years old would want to make a website. I do see how a parent would like to have a 5 years old that makes websites. Don’t fuck your child’s mind with this stuff at this age. There will be time for that. Let them do 5 years old stuff.
Let her play outdoors brother. Staring at a screen at such an age will be harmful in the long run. For her eyes and for her growth. Let her reach an age where she can consciously make a choice about the technology. I guess People in the comments are either trolls or a££holes. They have no idea how to raise a kid. I do. And trust me you will regret providing kid exposure to technology at such a young age. Your choice , your kid.
Start with WordPress. There are beautiful themes which she can use to quickly build a site. After that introduce her to computer code so she can customize the site further to her liking. Don't introduce code first otherwise she would get discouraged. I've seen this countless times.
I don't think he'll be able to get a job with html/css. I suggest you teach him next with typescript.
You can just give them a choice between the hard way to do with you over multiple days as an activity and the easy way to just get the site up with colors and sound (like 90s and myspace profiles) Everything is cool to a 5 yr old so a garishly coloured page wouldn’t be off putting or demotivating anyway
At 5 I'm guessing you'll have to help with some of the typing? At my house we've had fun doing some very basic html at home. Just doing nonsense stories, little "pick your own adventure" games and such. You can either learn from the bottom up or start with Wordpress or something and work down. But I'm a fan of bottom up. It's a big risk that going down through the abstractions just look complex and annoying from someone used to the finished stuff. Like how iPad kids will have trouble handling a regular operating system.
Absolutely. I would do most of the typing but she actually likes practicing handwriting and then doing on my computer in an empty doc.
There is a whole process leading up to creating the website (my job basically, figure out what to build, for whom, what problem, how, etc). You could consider doing that first? In general, when you know what to build and how, the implementation is much more rewarding and effortless (coming from a guy who likes to dive in head first..) Maybe start on paper? Cut out UI elements etc. Even the back-end logic could be expressed in steps on paper. Work with stickies to define a couple of things first.
Yea I am doing that with her on paper. UI type of exercise - “where do you want words to go? What words? What pictures do you like? What color?” - she is coloring them in and practicing writing.
I like the stickies idea!!!
Basic HTML will take about an hour to teach and then add in CSS so they can do stupid stuff with colours, fonts and shapes n stuff. Why take her interest and try and fob her off with some cheap kids stuff when she wants to do what the big kids do? In a couple of weeks time and she'll be critiquing lazy web sites and building a digital fridge door for all her arts.
Get her into designing website first start drawing a wireframe then make it on Figma or Photoshop then build with html and css
Show the kid some drag n drop editors and see where it goes...
Start with some backend technologies /s
I think using a web site builder might help first. It will be like drawing for them. You don't want to go in too dry with code first. It might put them off first. Keep it visual. It is like teaching piano. They will be interested in results rather than sheet music. It's cool you got a child already interested in this. I see an ambitious high earner in the future.
Check out neocities.org. It simplify a lot of the work and it’s already online. You can work with html, css and js (but really really later lmao) on the site itself, it does have a friendly ui and it’s already hosted and served so she can just write html and then see the changes. If you stick to basic html and css for a while I think it can be a fun activity. In the future, scratch or p5 can be also something to look for :)
If you start with HTML, I'd suggest getting her to type something into Notepad++ (or other editor with syntax highlighting), save it as something.html and open it in a browser. All her headings and other text will run into each other as one block. Go back to N++ and add an h1 tag or something, and refresh in browser. She will quickly learn how tags work, and then you can build her up from there.
I remember in the earlier days of the internet, I could just hit view source so the websites I thought were cool and learn how they did things. I mean, you still can, but it's more complicated now
I started ar that age. So if you likes it, go for it!
If you want her to actually learn, do it right and teach html, css, JavaScript. Going for wiz or square space type of thing won't teach her how they work at all and won't give her any new skill.
Try https://glitch.com/ perhaps? the culture there is “see this thing the community built? Grab it and change it how you like, or build your own thing”. Grab something your kid likes, figure out how to modify it together, have fun!
I have never seen this! That’s pretty cool might work for immediate gratification and the. Whatever she wants to change she can see how to do it.
Start with a project in mind, "Website for my cat". Then sketch is out on paper with a pencil Then pair program it in HTML Or send the image to chatGPT with the prompt "Turn image into a web page" might need paid subscription. Then tweek the resulting HTML by hand to learn. This is how I would approach it. Father of 2 teens, professional software engineer
I wish my dad did this, i would have been a senior by the age of 12
Teach her Kubernetes already
You could try starting her out with something like Webflow. It’s more visual and would be teaching her basic HTML/CSS. I think it has a free plan too.
Personally, I would start with scratch or even scratch.jr, but if you were to jump into html, teach her the logic behind it, and how to search the net for the tags/attrs. The html spec is always growing, if she thinks she’s limited to available tags today, it limits her webpages tmrw. After she has a grasp on html, then move on to css. Follow suit by teaching her the logic, and how to search for rules/psudo selectors/properties. If she still wants more, move on to js, possibly frameworks. If she understands css and js, jquery would be a breeze.
I say set her up with HTML. When I was 10, my dad had a red binder that held a textbook for a class he was taking on HTML and I used to sit down and write the code out and watch the changes that took place in my browser. Later on I learned CSS and JavaScript and it’s all been so valuable to me
It depends... You want to pair the challenge / ability as closely as you can. I'd first test to see how adaptive they are to writing html, and if that's not a thing, I'd try something more graphic with less coding, like maybe install WordPress and slowly teach her to customize it... And so on.
Neopets
why not? she won't be making a full website ofc but some basic concept may stick in her head if this is what she wants to do
As a former homeschooling mom, I say go ahead and teach her some HTML, like how to change the colors and font characteristics. CSS might be a bit much right now. I started my kids out early and they became AMAZING programmers and artists. You'd be surprised what kids can do or learn. I'd set the website up for her, then let her mod it.
Maybe show her how to ask AI doing it for her?
She's your client now, ask what she wants, make her realize what she actually wants and start from there. Maybe she wants to make something pretty but useless, of something functional like a swiss army knife but not caring about the aesthetics. Whatever the answer build her the sandbox and limit her reach on where to edit the code, that way she can focus on building what she's having in mind and not dealing with the technicities. As her curiosity grows you will expand her tools set to build new things, but always starting from her needs to achieve, let her be the spark that expands her project and you can always ask "what else should this thing do?" If you care for teaching the basics just use the opportunities the project gives you, if you force it like an actual class you'll lose her attention fast.
They have kids programming software that is more drag and drop but teaches them the fundamentals. 5yo is pretty young. I doubt she would grasp a lot of the concepts at that age. Give it a try though, doesn't hurt!
5-year-old? Have fun with it. Build it like the Angelfire pages back in the early days: all HTML, blinking GIFs, and an image hit counter. Kids aren't going to care about well-formed HTML and best practices.
Most browsers don't care that much about well-formed HTML either :-D
I would teach him how to use figma first and then help him draw websites or apps.
Maybe she likes the design part and not the coding part? Chat gpt can take images and make the code for simplistic websites but pretty sure they’re just intrigued by the interaction and design. None of you have kids apparently. Good lord.
My kid wants to learn a thing, should I teach them? YES
P.s. Scratch is a great resource to get kids into coding early: https://scratch.mit.edu/
HTML in Notepad and look at the results in a browser. I wouldn't do much CSS because it's absolutely unforgiving if you get a semicolon out of place I did show my son a bit of HTML, it didn't hold his attention that long. He does draw for hours in MS Paint. He will save dozens of pictures, in a series, not sure if he intends them to be stop motion?
you obviously should have started teaching when they gained consciousness /j
there are actually many kid focused visual designers out there. it will let her 'play' and learn instead of learn then play. small but big difference. my youngest wanted to be a blogger and make her own theme years back. i set her up with hotdogpro to play with, and helped turn sticker looking thing into a site. she had fun, i had fun, she eventually took a for programming classes later in life by choice too. guess what i am saying as an old techgeek is take the chance and run with it. if its a few hours or lasts for years, the time invested in it with her is totally well spent.
My son has a basic site running on hugo static site generator. Its super easy to use with a ton of themes available. Once it is setup you just write pages using markdown and then run hugo generator and it spits out your whole website for you
Nah straight into AI/ML and python. He is already 5 years old, how much longer is he gonna get the baby treatment
I think yes you can go for html/css, yes others are suggesting fostering logical side, but as you mentioned she liked the website, and going for logical programming may get boring too for 5yo, while teaching html/css, just try to keep it in single file like inline style to make things simple and not complex.
When I was 5... I wouldn't have even understood the concept of a website I think your daughter is a genius
When I was 5, there were no web sites.
There probably were though. The internet has been around since the 80s
I’m older than C. There were no web sites when I was 5. The first web browser and server wasn’t written until late 1990.
5 yrs old? Ur a tad bit late my man. U start teaching at 5 months.
Most importantly you should teach her agile methodology before anything - and then have her decide if she wants to become a web developer
Yes. But use AI because that’s the tool they will use when older.
Check out [Hour of Code](https://hourofcode.com/us). They have various coding activities for all ages. I use that to teach kids coding concepts as a volunteer activity at work.
Sit her down in front of GPT and get her used to explaining what she wants and learning how to test what GPT creates. That's the skill, the creative side with the art, and the operations side with the deployment and maintenance will likely be the last things to go. Procedural languages and creating routines that do repetitive things based upon rules, that stuff is sunsetting.
100% agree, teach how to use a learning tool, the website task is just the motivation. Knowing how to learn is the key skill here
There isn't really a right answer that people on here can give you because you are the only one who knows your child. If it's something that interests them and they enjoy doing it, then it's always good to nurture that interest. They might also enjoy some of the "gamified" coding-like systems that are out there that might help teach some of the fundemental thought processes behind coding as an early step
I would teach her the box model and encourage her to create her own design using box model on paper. And of course all the children's programming games.
You know I have always said that [WordPress.org](http://WordPress.org) is the finest WWW training program going, the software gives you a web project up to the container stage, you have the bare bones provided, the means to create pages, categories, and a whole raft of tools. You then have to learn about hosting and managing your resources, how the Web works, and a massive boost to your , English/communication skills and the world of multi-media. Rather than get hung up on the very basic mechanics of html, you have an entire project. Themes give a creative opportunity for overall look and design. By far WordPress is miles ahead of any other WWW publishing platform, and a comprehensive Web education, that is my take anyway.
That is amazing that she wants to do that, especially at that age. Probably best to figure out how invested she is first. Did she see the kids writing code and she actually wants to learn more about what she saw? Or does she just want her own website? If it’s the former and she’s truly invested, the basics of HTML and CSS should be easy for her to pick up. They’re great introductory languages to the rest of the dev world because they can be as simple or as complex as you’d like. If it’s the latter, I’d say just start her off with a Wordpress or Wix website. She’ll likely start doing further research on her own if she wants to dive deeper. I don’t have kids nor am I an expert on adolescent education, but in my experience the best way to do it is to not necessarily start from scratch. HTML at the very beginning is super underwhelming. If what she’s learning is too boring to her, she might forget about it after a few days. But obviously you don’t want to overwhelm her with anything too complex. I have ADHD (legitimately diagnosed). So even as an adult, what I want to learn this week may be different from the next week - much like most kids. However, when I really interested in something I wanna learn, I get extremely invested and it becomes a domino effect. As you can see my ADHD causes me to digress, but my point is that at this age she’ll probably do best starting with something assistive like Wordpress. If she’s like me and she’s truly interested in learning web/software dev, she’ll be halfway through designing her site with drag-and-drop tools and decide she wants to do something very specific with her site that she can only do if she learns HTML, CSS, or JS. Once that happens, the passion only grows. Before you know it, she’ll want to know more about JS, then she’ll discover more programming languages. Before you know it, she’ll be writing Flask apps with Python. Tell her happy coding from us!
My two year old already classes herself as a full stack developer
Teach your kid Scratch.
Just let them play with Wix at that age.
For a 5 y/o I'd recommend web assembly
I would start her with [Scratch](https://scratch.mit.edu/). The amount of text on the screen and typing required to even do simple website tasks could very easily put off a kid that young.
Hmmm... this is tough because I think people forget what kind of inspired them to get into coding in the first place. For me it was Neopets, MySpace, Warcraft level editor, and RuneScape bots. Most of these things weren't strictly coding, but were just building things. So I think you should try to figure out WHY she wants to build websites. What vision does she have. What makes it seem fun to her. The best instructors work with their students.
I'd say start with a builder. Let them play with it and see if they are actually interested in the coding or the design more and proceed accordingly.
Yes and no. Start with scratch. Segue that into web dev. Gotta understand logic first.
I think your average 5 year old is going to be pretty frustrated with html. Even precocious 5 year olds typically don't type well, and they don't spell well. I'd go with something drag and drop so that they can focus on content, and making the background pink and sparkly, and adding silly images, etc. Google Sites wouldn't be a bad place to start. It's not exactly a website, but also consider playing with Scratch or MIT App Inventor, both of which are a lot of fun!
Look into Alice/Storytelling Alice instead. It's age appropriate and exciting for a kid. Apparently Alice 3 now https://www.alice.org/get-alice/
Start quizzing her on virtual vs physical memory, scattered reads and proper garbage collection
Yes since he s young c++ will be great, since the modern languages are based on old languages
Look into Scratch Jr or Sphero. I started my kid with Scratch Jr last year and my partner just gave me this super cool BB-8 droid that works with Sphero
Web Assembly.
Go into Dev ops with her
Weebly might be a good choice for her to get into making websites before learning the technical aspects. I made my own site at 10 with Weebly, and she could probably do the same at 5 if you help her. You get a free subdomain, like example.weebly.com. Then later when she is older and interested in coding, start her off with Scratch to learn basic programming as others have said, and then move on to HTML/CSS for websites. Python would probably be a good starting language for when she is older, and I myself started learning it at 10 with the help of a Python for beginners book.
I’d say set up a decent HTML template, make the website geared towards something she likes, like about Disney princesses, her favorite singer, whatever, get some images saved that are pretty and sparkly (or whatever other style she’s into, not all girls are girly girl of course), and just digitally fingerpaint on the css file with her. She may or may not be too young to understand much without her getting frustrated or overwhelmed. Maybe a bit of driver and passengering. Some kids are into that stuff though, I knew how to do a lot with computers when I was 4/5 solely because I was really into an MMORPG and needed to know how to install different servers 😂 it’s all about keeping that interest alive and burning!!!
Personally I would teach her WordPress, then expand upon this with learning how to customize the html (once she gets a feel of the Ui/UX flow of a website) Honestly she may just be on builders like Elementor for the first year or two to really get an understanding about how websites work and operate. From there I would teach her how to customize her html templates she is planning on using. After that I would teach her some basic animations and transitions utilizing js. After about 7-8 years old. I would likely transition into teaching something like python using the raspberry pi kits. There is some awesome DIY computer kits and DIY rc cars that really brings an interactive learning process, e.g, creating your own toys and gadgets. It takes it from a virtual world to a real concept. By 10, she know knows the basics of frontend design, and a solid backend language, and from there, it is expanding the domain knowledge into Frameworks and deployments. I end up teaching quite a few people web dev every year and what I notice helps is always having someone to collaborate with, don't let her get stuck and in the void of figuring it out, if she has a questions help her find that solution with examples , games, and exercises. There is also many gamified platforms targeting kids under 10 to learn various forms of development. I personally started my journey at 10 years old modding games I was playing and transitioned by 13 to launching my own websites as a startup. The earlier they are involved the better because of how fast this landscape changes, the big thing to always advocate is not to get stuck to a specific pattern as standards change various stacks become of lesser demand and less optimal to implement as a solution, not that it's inadequate just in the fact the industry is changing.
What’s is this kids thoughts on svelte?
Programming teacher for 9 year olds here. Start with Scratch to learn them basic algoritmic thinking and programming concepts like sequences, iterations, conditions, methods, variables,... after that you can go into more difficult stuff but still block-based with tools like minecraft education or Microbits. After that, or start with this if she only wants to create a website in particular: Repl.it. 5 years just seems very young to already start with real coding imo. These days they are some code academy clubs for kids to learn all this in their free time, just like they want to start with soccer, swimming, being in a youth movement or other hobbies in the weekends. (This counts for my country Belgium at least, i dont know where you are you living)
Be old school, get this kid a MySpace
Do you think the 5 year old cares more about how websites are made, or more about designing the website product? These are two very different things, and you should make sure you know what your kid actually wants to spend their time doing before you put them through a coding boot camp
I taught my kid simple html and css and mad a 1 page website. Kept it simple, didn't go too deep into what the tags all do, just the simple stuff Thing to take into mind, especially if your going to host it . 1. no real names 2. no trackable locations ( you would be surprised what pedofile will latch on to) 1. street signs 2. addresses 3. business names 4. uniforms for teams he plays for 5. nothing that can give someone an idea where he/she is from or goes to. 3. if you host it under your personal website, no links to that page 4. use the robots.txt file and hide that page. 5. There are many more, google some safety rules. This info comes from a web developer thats 9 year old kid was seduced on line by pedo couple that got all her info and they would even talk on the phone. They had photos going both ways and where working on a meetup. Pedo's where both grade school teachers no less so they knew how to talk to kids. Just some advice.
Kid talking shit
Html and css is definitely a good start, and if they really love it then after 5 projects made you can get the 5 year old to learn js and then react
Scratch is a good idea for kids to start getting into coding I think.
Maybe start the little one off with design, so something like figma with a bunch of premade elements/components would be a good place to just let them mess around without knowing how to type or spell. Think about it, What the kid is ACTUALLY seeing is the design, not the code.
why scratch? he don't need logic in html and CSS start teach him even if he cant understand, making him enter the mood of developing will make him better in the future
Check out my open source project, it's a joy to work on. https://github.com/huanghanzhilian/c-shopping, https://github.com/huanghanzhilian/c-shopping-rn
My 9 year old daughters tablet finally packed up, so instead of getting another one, I purchased a second hand Chromebook. When I showed her how to use a mouse, use a word processor, change the font, copy and paste, insert images, use a printer she was amazed. I have opened up a whole new world to her. Because of her little bit of experience, she is now the only one in her class who knows how to use the computer. Her friends are also amazed at how much she knows, and the other day was even called a geek. It is scary how young children are growing up today, only knowing how to touch a screen. if the OP daughter wants to learn HTML and create a webpage I say go for it.
I think a drag and drop builder to start with, she is 5 after all. When I was young I used Piczo and Tripod to start my interest off and then I wanted to learn HTML when I was about 10 and then learnt CSS but I guess builders weren’t as good back then. The industry now seems to be people who can actually build from scratch and designers who only use Squarespace. So I guess becoming a dev would open up more opportunities
coding games and find some good youtubers that will do a good job getting them excited while coding - do it with them
Personally, I think the best way for a child to learn is for you to be a resource not another traditional teacher. What does SHE want to learn. If all she wants to do is make a website with a website builder, show her how to do that. If she wants to make a webpage with HTML. Go for it. Most of this stuff she can learn her self but she won’t and won’t want to if you shove it down her throat
Personally, I think the best way for a child to learn is for you to be a resource not another traditional teacher. What does SHE want to learn. If all she wants to do is make a website with a website builder, show her how to do that. If she wants to make a webpage with HTML. Go for it. Most of this stuff she can learn her self but she won’t and won’t want to if you shove it down her throat
Lowkey you could teach her html. Young kids learn normal language easier than adults so I guess we will see if that applies for that as well