18 – How to teach programming, with Daniel Shiffman

In this festive episode, we discuss the joys and sorrows of trying to teach programming, and catch up with creative coder extraordinaire,  Daniel Shiffman.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Learning Processing (Orange Book) – //www.learningprocessing.com/
Daniel Shiffman – //www.shiffman.net/
Soma FM – //somafm.com
EaselJS – //easeljs.com/
Unity3D.com //Unity3d.com
Art+Code – //artandcode.com/3d/
ITP – //itp.nyu.edu/itp/
Processing – //processing.org/
Open Frameworks – //www.openframeworks.cc/
Cinder – //libcinder.org/
Nature of Code (Book) – //www.shiffman.net/teaching/nature/
Nature of Code (Kickstarter) – //www.kickstarter.com/projects/shiffman/the-nature-of-code-book-project
Magic Book – //sites.google.com/a/itp.nyu.edu/inprogress/magic-book-project
Nature of Code (Code) – //github.com/shiffman/The-Nature-of-Code
Most Pixels Ever Library – //github.com/shiffman/Most-Pixels-Ever

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Follow Daniel Shiffman on Twitter

Music: Iain dragged some loops onto the timeline in Sony Acid Music (featuring Seb on sleigh bells!)

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5 Responses to 18 – How to teach programming, with Daniel Shiffman

  1. Thomas54 says:

    This is the first of these podcasts that I’ve listened to. I was attracted by the mention of Processing as this is something I’ve played with on and off for a couple of years or so. I have Dan Shiffman’s “orange” book (among others) and was interested to hear about his “The Nature of Code” self-publishing project.

    I’ve been trying to get my 14-year-old son to learn programming as I reckon it would be useful, e.g. if he does a Science/Design degree. This was part of my reason for getting into Processing in the first place. Last summer hols I lent him my copy of “Getting Started with Processing” (Reas and Fry) and he did a couple of chapters but that’s all. He’d rather play WoW with his mates, I think (and who can blame him?).

    Re the “It’s never too late and you’re never too old” topic that was mentioned but not discussed in this podcast. Which podcast did discuss this? I’m 51 with 25+ years in IT but have been unemployed for a while and am considering getting involved in teaching part-time / evening classes. I’m not up on all the very latest web standards but my Java and Smalltalk are pretty solid. More recently I’ve played with Ruby, Lua and Go.

    I’d be interested in any advice you could offer. What kind of openings are available for someone considering the move into education?

    Looking forward to listening to more of your podcasts in 2012.

  2. Iain says:

    Hi Thomas, thanks for your comment. I don’t have any special advice about getting into education, other than to just approach colleges and tell them what you’re interested in teaching. Generally I guess it’s easier to find openings for the latest technologies (HTML5 at the moment) as they may not have those skills in their current staffing.

  3. Abe Pazos says:

    I also just discovered your podcast and wanted to say I really enjoyed it. I’m asking myself the exact same questions about teaching programming. It’s a very interesting topic. Thanks for sharing!

  4. taghag says:

    i thought you were both in the same room until the buns arrived!

    seb, thanks so much for being so candid about your experiences teaching. this was almost identical to my experiences teaching for the first time last semester (except the background check) so it was really good to hear that i wasn’t the only one…

  5. Pingback: Adrian Parr's Blog » Blog Archive » Creative Coding Podcast

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