Just sharing my experience on doing workshops about programming. For context, I conduct 2 hour workshops with 12-14 year old students to promote the interest in coding as an extracurricular activity in school. I would get them to play this card game called Potato Pirates which teaches them basic coding concepts in a gamified experience while eliminating the need for syntax. Its fairly simple to understand and quite fun for the whole class as they usually get the hang of it quickly and tend to have the understanding after each class. Would like to share this experience and like to know more about what other similar games I can introduce to my students

I want to start posting movies that could inspire kids to get into programming.

To start, here are three movies that can introduce kids to some programming concepts and mindsets:

1. War Games (1983)

What it teaches: Importance of perseverance, problem-solving, thinking outside the box, and the value of trying different approaches even if they seem unlikely.

Story: The movie follows a young hacker, David Lightman (played by Matthew Broderick), who unknowingly accesses a U.S. military supercomputer programmed to simulate and control nuclear war scenarios.

Persistance and Outside the box thinking: David's determination shines when he uses social engineering and a brute-force attack to guess the password to a restricted system. He meticulously tries various combinations until he cracks it, demonstrating the value of persistence and thinking outside the box.

Hacker Mindset: Another pivotal moment is when David is captured and held in a military base. Using his wits and knowledge of technology, he manages to escape a locked room by short-circuiting an electronic door lock. This scene showcases his ingenuity and ability to think outside the box, traits that are crucial for any programmer and problem solver.

During the movie, David, tries different approaches even if they seem unlikely or naive, a great skill that we tend to lose in formal education.

2. Tron (1982)

What it teaches: Visualizes abstract programming concepts like programs, firewalls, and bits as tangible, interactive elements.

Story: The movie's protagonist, Kevin Flynn (played by Jeff Bridges), is a computer programmer who gets digitized and enters the virtual realm. "Tron" transports viewers into a digital world where programs are personified and interact within a computer system.

3D Representation of Programming Elements: Tron visualizes abstract programming concepts like programs, firewalls, and bits as tangible, interactive elements. This visualization can help kids understand these concepts better. Two examples: The character Tron (Bruce Boxleitner) represents a security program, and Bit is a small, binary entity that can only say "yes" or "no."

With my 4-year-old son, we took inspiration from "Tron" to create these elements using LEGO toys, turning abstract programming concepts into physical objects. For instance, we represented a variable as a cuboid that could hold values. I have evolved this idea into a board game to teach the fundamentals of programming and it really helps him to see, touch and manipulate concepts.

3. Tron: Legacy (2010)

(Might be more suitable for older children).

What it teaches: Artificial life, evolutionary algorithms, evolution strategies, evolutionary programming, and genetic algorithms, Game of Life, origin of life, morphogenesis.

Story: "Tron: Legacy" continues the story, this time focusing on Kevin Flynn's son, Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), who enters the digital world to find his missing father.

Evolutionary Algorithms: The movie introduces ISOs (Isomorphic Algorithms), a spontaneously generated form of digital life within the Grid. This concept can help children discover artifitial life, artifitial intelligence, evolutionary algorithms etc.

Artificial Life: The spontaneous generation of life within electronic components/chips, as portrayed by the ISOs, brings the question of what is life and the possibility of life existing inside a digital / electronic world.

BTW: Could you tell a quote by Joshua (WOPR) in WarGames and Kevin Flynn in Tron Legacy that are almost identical?

I hope you enjoyed it!

Do you have other movies you would like to share that could help kids learn programming or develop a programming mindset?

My 12 years old son loves coding and vibe coding and is working on a project called “FlareOS”. It’s a web-based OS with built-in apps.

As he’s still young, he cannot have a reddit account to share it, but he would love to get feedback and ideas for new apps and features. He’s dream is that other people start to develop their own apps for FlareOS one day.

He used Cursor and Lovable, but now his also working with Claude.

Below is the message he wrote and asked me to share. The link is: https://flareos.lovable.app/

—

I made this thing called, "FlareOS". It's a web-based OS with a design language I call "flames design". FlareOS has around 10 built-in apps, its own world-wide web alternative for anyone with flareOS to use titled, "embernet", and an AI that can browse the embernet. For devs, FlareOS has a built-in app framework, and you can create websites in embernet.

It has a very small community, so please, devs, normal people, tech enthausiasts, whoever you can be, check it out. I need to grow the community, and I'd really appreciate it ;)

By the way, let's NOT use embernet as a place to host our company sites. We don't want to end up like the world wide web: a cold, corporate place where self-expression sites like geocities suddenly stopped having visitors because of companies.

This August, Citadel and Citadel Securities along with Correlation One are partnering to bring you the biggest coding competition for high school students. We have hosted 20+ Terminal events for 5,000+ students across the world's top universities, and we’re bringing Terminal back to high school students. Check out this brief clip to see Terminal in action!  

What’s in it for you?

✅ Gain hands-on experience building an algorithm and coding strategies to play a tower defense game.

✅ Compete to win Apple iPads, Apple AirPod Pros and JBL Bluetooth Speakers.

✅ Gain global recognition and exclusive recruiting opportunities with Citadel and Citadel Securities.

• When: August 4-11, 2025

• Where: Online

• Who: All current high school students in North America, including Class of 2025 seniors who have graduated

• Cost: FREE to apply and participate!

The competition will have a flexible structure so that participants will be able to work anytime during the week to accommodate their schedules. All students are welcome to register, even entry-level students with little experience with coding just to have fun!

🚀 APPLY NOW and get ready to test your skills!

Applications are reviewed on a first-come, first-served basis, so I encourage you to sign up now! The application deadline is Friday, July 25.

Feel free to email us at [email protected] if you have any questions or would like to learn more about the event. We look forward to receiving your application!

Hey folks :)

I'm a pretty big hardware geek but I never really dived into the coding and programming world. I am far ignorant of where those avenues start.

For christmas I want to get something for my 12 year old niece who has fallen in love with gaming and has spent some great time coding on her own and using whatever she can find to learn.

Is there a strong "kit" that I can buy for her this holiday to really teach her strong fundamentals and set her up with tools to launch onward?

I am a music teacher so that linear thinking is kind of engraved in my teaching process. Music is all about fundamentals being mastered and then your own passion takes you into millions of possibilities in the musical world.

I have no idea if that functions well in the programming world or if there is a product targeted at that age range.

In the end she wants to create her own games, animations and learn about design.

Thank you for any help you might be able to give.

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