POINTERS IN C

[iC and iC++]

Trying to explain pointers to my 6 years old.. teaching him C and
getting good at it.. its time to move to pointers and i need some
insightful analogies that I can use to explain them.. any ideas

 

[jacob navia]

iC and iC++ a écrit :

Trying to explain pointers to my 6 years old.. teaching him C and
getting good at it.. its time to move to pointers and i need some
insightful analogies that I can use to explain them.. any ideas

Please leave your kid alone.

At 6 years he has more interesting things to do
than learn C and pointers. Does he know how to read?

 

[Eric Sosman]

Trying to explain pointers to my 6 years old.. teaching him C and
getting good at it.. its time to move to pointers and i need some
insightful analogies that I can use to explain them.. any ideas

Six? Wow ...

Does he understand telephone numbers? Perhaps you can explain
the number as the pointer value and the phone as its target. You
can write a phone number on many slips of paper and hand them out
to everyone in sight; they all point to the same phone; copying
the pointer doesn't copy the target.

Street addresses vs. houses, names vs. people (might confuse
him if he has three friends all named "Zaphod"), ...

Numeric street addresses have useful analogies when you get to
pointer arithmetic, if he doesn't get confused by the odd/even
convention for opposite sides. 41 Elm Street + 2 = 43 Elm Street,
57 Elm is 57-41 = 16 lot-spaces west of 41 Elm, 17 Elm is 17-41=-24
spaces west (same as 24 spaces east), there's no along-the-street
distance from 41 Elm Street to 79 Wistful Vista ...

 

[Morris Keesan]

Trying to explain pointers to my 6 years old.. teaching him C and
getting good at it.. its time to move to pointers and i need some
insightful analogies that I can use to explain them.. any ideas

Try the "Pointer Fun with Binky" video from the Stanford CS department:
<

> or downloadable from
<http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/104/>, where you can also get a
companion document.

 

[Tom St Denis]

Trying to explain pointers to my 6 years old.. teaching him C and
getting good at it.. its time to move to pointers and i need some
insightful analogies that I can use to explain them.. any ideas

I call bullshit. There exists not a child of six with enough patience
to sit and learn C. If anything start the kid on BASIC where with
less typing they can see more results.

I started on BASIC at 5 and taught myself the basics of pascal and C
when I was around 10-12. But even then I was kinda a hypernerd as a
kid so more the exception than the rule (I know there are others who
did the same sort of thing, but in the grand scheme of things we're
more rare than your typical hyperactive non-attention spanned 10 yr
old).

Tom

 

[Tom St Denis]

I was introduced to some of the finer points of computing at 6 years
old, but nothing close to programming or CS-related things. (This was
back in 1996).

To each parent his/her own, but I don't know if I would teach my young
child anything to that extent at such a young age. But that's just me.

inb4 you're only 19/20 so stfu

ZOMG you're only 20 NO WAI!



If your kid at age 5 or 6 has the patience to sit and learn non-
trivial things about a computer (other than just how to talk with
their bff on MSN) then that's already a step in the right direction.

Tom

 

[Keith Thompson]

On 5/28/2010 3:50 PM, Eric Sosman wrote:
[...]

Street addresses vs. houses, names vs. people (might confuse
him if he has three friends all named "Zaphod"), ...

[...]

Sure, but what's the probability of that?

Either 0 or 1. }

 

[Chad]

I call bullshit.  There exists not a child of six with enough patience
to sit and learn C.  If anything start the kid on BASIC where with
less typing they can see more results.

I started on BASIC at 5 and taught myself the basics of pascal and C
when I was around 10-12.  But even then I was kinda a hypernerd as a
kid so more the exception than the rule (I know there are others who
did the same sort of thing, but in the grand scheme of things we're
more rare than your typical hyperactive non-attention spanned 10 yr
old).

What about a 5 yr old that has already mastered the mathematics all
the way up to Calculus? I think such a child could probably learn C at
the age of 6. And yes, I think can of one famous math person in
history that did in fact have such a mastery of math by the age of 5.

 

[Seebs]

I call bullshit. There exists not a child of six with enough patience
to sit and learn C. If anything start the kid on BASIC where with
less typing they can see more results.

I don't know if I accept the premise. Admittedly, I don't know of a counter
example off the top of my head, but the diversity of human developmental
patterns is much, much, larger than most people expect.

-s

 

[Dann Corbit]

What about a 5 yr old that has already mastered the mathematics all
the way up to Calculus? I think such a child could probably learn C at
the age of 6. And yes, I think can of one famous math person in
history that did in fact have such a mastery of math by the age of 5.

I guess that this child could learn C if he wanted to (he was in the
Guiness book of World Records, IIRC). IQ somewhere around 200.

Since he is past the age of 5 and probably did not bother to learn C, I
guess that this example is not applicable, because a fact is only
provable if we can both get the result via test and measurement and then
repeat it.

I guess that there are better things for 6 year old children to be doing
than learning C. Even if they are capable, we will probably be turning
them into socially retarded individuals through such an exercise. So my
position would be: "Even if we could, we shouldn't."