How teaching kids to code made me a better developer
summary
Runs a weekly one-hour afterschool game class for ~10–11 year olds using Ruby and the gosu gem, often with more girls than boys. Kids routinely “break” games (hundreds of enemies, absurd jump forces) and learn by debugging, which surfaces misconceptions like line‑by‑line execution and top‑left coordinate origins. Introduces tiny focused practice exercises, encourages pair programming, and tracks outcomes: working 2D games shipped to families, rising confidence that leads to community meetups, RailsGirls coaching, open‑source contributions, and some students moving on to Unity + JavaScript.
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chapters (9)
- 0:00Introduction and personal story
- 3:00Starting a coding club for kids
- 7:09Lessons from breaking things
- 9:55Teaching programming concepts
- 13:10Practicing with tiny steps
- 15:19Verbosity vs simplicity in code
- 16:23Encouraging problem-solving
- 18:54Gaining confidence and contributing
- 20:42Resources and closing
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