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bjb568
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How can I help a child learn to program?

How could I help a smart preteen child (pre-teen) learn programming? He does well in school, and he has skipped 2 grades and is an introverted stereotypical nerd. He is very interested in web development and has mastered the fundamentals of HTML, CSS, and JS, which I don't know anything about (I'm not a programmer). He built a personal website from his knowledge. He's learned this from the internet on various tutorial sites and Stack Overflow.

How can I encourage him in developing these skills? Is there a way to help with his learning given that I don't know programming myself? I don't think I can learn all that he has learned, since he spends so much time on it and is so devoted.

I think the greatest danger is losing his motivation and quitting. Debugging can be frustrating sometimes, and I don't want him to stop because of it. In other subjects, I could help him work thru it, but with programming, I can't since I don't have any domain knowledge.

What should I do to keep his motivation to code so that he won't likely get discouraged when faced with difficulties given that I can't overcome those difficulties myself?

(not a parent myself)

bjb568
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