Julia is a great language, but I am wondering why you think it is the right match for children. IMO the comparative advantages of Julia are 1. parametric polymorphism, 2. macros, 3. ability to generate very fast code with very little help. I don't think that any of these appeal very much to beginners, and especially not to children.
At the moment Julia is comparatively weak in a. graphics, b. debugging (especially the kind aided by the IDE), c. progressive interactive development. I imagine that these would be very important to anyone learning to program, including children. Several languages have variations that provide these, eg Scheme (Racket, formerly PLT Scheme), or Python; there are corresponding books for children, etc. Best, Tamas On Thursday, May 7, 2015 at 2:00:30 PM UTC+2, Scott Jones wrote: > > Has anybody had any experience teaching Julia to kids? > This is *not* a joke, my almost 9 year old son has a science project due > next week. > He knows some Lua (which he originally learned from the ComputerCraft mod > in MineCraft, and then using the Codea > app for the iPad), but he's seen how I've fallen in love with Julia, and > he wants to use Julia for his project > (which is doing some tests of peoples visual and auditory memory, using > random 7 digit sequences, > and then doing some simple calculations on the results...). > He's basically a lazy boy [see the following link, to understand that that > is the highest complement I pay people :-) (see > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Enough_for_Love#The_Tale_of_the_Man_Who_Was_Too_Lazy_to_Fail > ] > and he wants the computer to do a lot of his work for him... > > >
