AOPS started off with a bang!

[...................]

He sat down, read the entire introduction and prologue, and did half of section 1.  Then we had to leave to go to the doctor's appointment and he brought his MATH with him, and said he loved it.  Then he proceeded to sit there and do his math....

 

Then he came home and wanted to do math instead of the other lessons.  And he said, "This is exactly like my programming books.  They talk  like they are people, not God.  They tell you WHY you are doing things.  THey allow you to try your own way.  Then they tell me a better way and I can use it if I want, and the problems are interesting instead of 50 of the same thing in a row."

 

Now, obviously we are still in the honeymoon phase and I warned him that it would get a lot harder and that I would help him and it would be ok to go slowly.  He seemed to think that it would be better to have to figure stuff out when it's hard than to have to slog through 50 boring repetitive problems every day.

 

I mean, this is what he does with programming all day long for as many hours as I will let him- read books, take them in, study them, do the problems....so I feel pretty hopeful.  

[Nicholas_mom]

:hurray:  Wonderful and exciting!!!! 

 

(More confirmation that my ds will love this, too!)

[Matryoshka]

  And he said, "This is exactly like my programming books.  They talk  like they are people, not God.  They tell you WHY you are doing things.  THey allow you to try your own way.  Then they tell me a better way and I can use it if I want, and the problems are interesting instead of 50 of the same thing in a row."

 

So now we need to know what programming books he's using! :bigear:

 

My dd loves AoPS and likes programming, but the books we've tried so far haven't engaged her that much...

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He just reads everything he can get his hands on but he started out with Scratch and Scratch for Teens when he was 8.  Then he went on W3 Schools and did HTML and CSS until he passed all the tests. Then the next one was Lua For Beginners which had a lot of  exercises and was a really great programming language to start with. Lua is rare and hard to find and he doesn't really recommend that. But my dh really thought it was a good start to stretch his mind, but since there aren't a lot of tutorials it's a bad choice unless you or your dh are programmers.  Then I think after that he did a game one...

 

Then after that he started in earnest with JavaScript which is my husband's favorite language and then he started reading some very difficult and huge books and applying it all in his own programs as well as stuff my husband assigned. To learn JavaScript he used CodeAcademy and Learning JavaScript from O'Reailly,  Then he was ready for HTML5 Game Development and made some fun games.    He obviously has a little help here and there from my dh.  Then Professional JavaScript. Then, Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja.  In that order!

 

Khan academy also has programming vidoes now and he watches those to relax.  LOL