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The Java tutorial for kids is available for free download

« H E Yakov Fain :: email
posted Saturday, 19 May 2007
A couple of years ago when my son asked me about the book on programming for kids, I could not find one, and have written my own e-book called Java Programming for Kids, Parents and Grandparents. For some reason computer books targeting teenagers are very rare. There are reader-rabbit kind books for very little kids, but 10-16 years old people do not have much of a technical literature, and 17-18 years old are studying computers using boring adult technical books (the Head First series is a lucky exception).

By the time kids are out of school, they know from their own bad experience that computer science is not an exciting career, which eventually will lead to a “death” of such profession here in the USA.

Adults do not want to admit that kids are smarter than them. They keep saying something like, “My son is not too good at math – he can’t be a programmer”. But most of the programming tasks require only minimal knowledge of arithmetic and algebra skills. To start programming, a kid needs to understand what x = y+2 means. Another important concept is an if-statement. This is pretty much it.

Kids learn much faster than adults, and they do not have "previous programming experience", which may actually be a good thing, because they do not have to switch from a procedural to object-oriented way of thinking. After learning about inheritance in Java, my son called my wife a super class.

Some people recommend using simple languages to teach people programming – I disagree. Java can be a good first programming language, but you should do it right. That’s why I’ve included lots of color cartoon-like characters that act like a Java-fabric softener.

This e-book was never printed. I’ve got some offers to publish it in black and white because it’s cheaper. I rejected these offers – this book has to be printed in color.

This book was written about three years ago, but it’s about core Java, which did not change that much. I’ve been using Eclipse IDE in the book, but IDE does not really matter – use NetBeans or whatever else you have handy.

You can download The Java Tutorial for Kids, Parents and Grandparents in English or in French from Farata Systems Web site . I hope you’ll enjoy the reading and will introduce your kids to an exciting world of programming.

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comments (6)


1. Doug Kretzmann left...
Monday, 21 May 2007 3:25 pm

thank you.. my oldest just turned 9, so it will be a year or two before I start him on this. He's currently besotted with Runescape, which is written in Java, so I figure that's a good incentive to learn the language..


2. Anna Bendersky left...
Saturday, 26 May 2007 4:55 am

A tutorial for kids is a nice idea. I'm sure that many kids would enjoy learning a new computer language for writing computer games.

In the download website there are translations of "Chapter 3" to different languages. Notice that the Hebrew translation isn't very good (well, most English-to-Hebrew translations aren't very good...), mainly because Hebrew is a right-to-left language. The code paragraphs in the Hebrew version have their brackets all mixed up. In addition, there are some misspellings, and some unclear paragraphs.

I wonder about the difficulty of teaching a computer language to a non-English-speaking kid. It would probably be more complicated, because the kid will have to study some English terminology along the way.


3. Yakov Fain left...
Saturday, 26 May 2007 8:29 am

@Anna Based on my experience with this three year old book, people around the world get excited and feel that they can contribute to their country's kid education by translating the book to their language. That's how all these translations came about. In many cases though, excitement did not last long, and I have not heard back from many translators. I do appreciate the efforts, but can not evaluate the quality of the translation to languages that I do not know. If you do not mind, I can send you the Herbrew version of the sample chapter in MS Word format for editing.


4. Anna Bendersky left...
Sunday, 3 June 2007 11:53 am

Sure, please send me the hebrew version. I will fix the brackets and misspellings. I am not sure I will be able to help with style issues, though. Anyway, it will be an improvement.


5. Danish left...
Saturday, 23 June 2007 12:02 am

IT is really beautiful that u have done sucha gr8 job ... from last seeveral weeks i was thinking to teach my son java ,who is 10 now ..i am a software eng ..and being a mom i didn't want to teach him something boring ..... so if u woun't had wriiten this book ..i might had to start one now ..... so thank u very much for sharing ur time and knowledge for kids .... I wish u best of luck ....and thanks a lot


6. Minstrel Mike left...
Tuesday, 13 January 2009 11:53 pm :: http://blog.MinstrelMike.com

Yakov,

I just started back into your book; I had begun a year ago, but lost it for one reason or another, and decided to make it a "New Year's Resolution" to finish it, and move beyond this level.

It may seem odd that a book intended for teenagers is being used by an "experienced" programmer (who, admittedly, is a bit scared of heading "over the hill"), but I'd originally picked it, because it was the only "freebie" I could find, which featured Eclipse (which I also wanted to see) as the IDE.

So, I just wanted to drop you note. I'm re-started the book with chapter 7's "Tic-Tac-Toe" program "Practice" exercises, and I'm planning to blog about. My blogging style may need a bit of tweaking as I go along, but I'm planning to basically just write about my own personal reactions to attempting to learn Java. If you'd care to take a look, feel free, of course.

I was thinking of making some comment about the need for "English-language editorial efforts", but I'm thinking now: "Hey, here's a guy who's a professional software developer, and English is NOT his first language! I shouldn't criticize!" ... You've done a commendable job! It would be interesting to see the results if this book were re-edited for print, though.