Unscientific Nerdchild Survey

[snarp]

If you learned a programming/scripting language at age 13 or younger:

1) Did you start trying to code before or after you started algebra in school?

2) Which seemed easier for you?

Comments

I never fully learned a language, but I can do things?

[untonuggan]

1) shortly before -- I think a couple years (though I was technically ahead in math, so it might have been a two for me instead of three for classmates). It was early computers though, so we learned things like "How to use command line to tell a choose your own adventure story." I didn't learn the full language, just enough to write a lot of those independently....Once I had already taken algebra, I learned enough html to make really ugly websites and also post links and photos in LJ.
2) Ummmm...I feel like I was annoyingly "gifted" in school and they were probably equally easy? I didn't do any coding that actually required much math though. It was around the time I skipped a grade and was dealing with a lot of bullying? So I kind of threw myself into a lot of school-related things, and also theater.

Not sure if that's helpful, but there you go.

[surskitty]

I started coding before algebra, and I found coding easier.

[yeloson]

I'm pretty sure I learned BASIC at or before algebra. Algebra was hard initially because I had a terrible teacher. The following summer I got a tutor and it was easy once it was explained to me.

BASIC was pretty easy, but on the other hand the Commodore 64 limited how much code you could jam into it.

Algebra turned out to be easier, though I think that has more to do with it's core value in tabletop RPGs and the state of computer programming books at that time so I can't make a clean comparison.

[snarp]

It's actually unbelievable that I forgot the important variable that is tabletop gaming when designing this survey about variables.

[vass]

Depends how you define algebra. Seventh grade we started learning what was called algebra, but which I think by US standards is probably pre-algebra? Like, a + 7 = 10, a = ? . Or 6x = 36, x = ? That level. And that was the same year I moved to a snooty school where they had a one laptop per student program, and we all learned Logo. This was 1993. The laptops were 386 Compaqs with a tiny hard drive (if you were lucky - about half the students had the older model Toshibas which booted from floppy) running DOS 5. There was no internet access at school or at anyone's home.

They dovetailed very nicely. I didn't find either one difficult at that point. There was a three day unit where we got to play with Lego-Logo, and I wanted it to last forever.

The next year the maths got harder and I started digging into Basic on my own time, hampered by the fact that I had no idea what I was doing and didn't know anyone else who did know, and desperately wanted threading without knowing that that was the name of the thing that I wanted. or that neither Basic or Logo had that. Sometimes I stared at binary files, trying to find patterns in the ascii because I thought that was what real source code looked like.

When they started getting hard it was in different ways: programming because I had no good resources at all and no mentors; maths because my working memory sucks rocks through a straw, my handwriting is impossible, and also I was a paranoid little shit who thought our teachers' introduction of the number line was an attempt at thought control.

[alias_sqbr]

Oops, I always forget to remember to reply here instead of rambling all over my tumblr feed.

Anyway, to reiterate:
1) Coding first by a few years.
2) I found algebra easier, which I think was a combination of two factors: a) it being taught properly and aimed at the average kid my age instead of being something I taught myself and then did in special academic extension courses (b) Me being the kind of kid who grows up to do a Phd in abstract algebra (admittedly, it was computational abstract algebra, and I do more coding in my day to day life these days)

[kareila]

1. before
2. both came pretty easily to me.

[petronia]

1) Well before (like 1st grade before), if you count the LOGO turtle on Apple II. Restarted last year of high school, I think, which was after algebra.

2) Neither was difficult, at least until the programming algorithms got to a university Math degree level (i.e. Calculus IV). Never related the two in my head. Other than having to understand binary, programming is about logic. If anything programming and "human" linguistics always seemed intimately related: the entire exercise is translating binary into something h00m4ns understand and vice versa.