[BrandoElFollito]

My children were vaguely interested in programming but one thing they got of it was that learning functions in Python helped them enormously with formal functions in math.

This is one of the things I regret with how math is taught in France: it stresses way too much the formal part and this is terrifying for children (and teens and everyone except mathematicians).

We have a religious reverence to maths in France. It is better now but used to be simply ridiculous. Unfortunately it still means that some more advanced topics such as derivatives are introduced through definitions (the chapter starts with "be a function f(x) with x in the domain of real numbers, a derivative is a function such that f'(x) = lim h→0 ...").

My son came to me with a WTF? I told him about average velocity transitioning to instant velocity by reducing dt, or about acceleration - and finished by showing that a derivative is a function factory (a function gets in, a completely different, unrelated function goes out). He was then ready for the definition.

Same with physics which is tainted by chemistry, with terminally boring topics introduced first. No wonder that we have less and less STEM students.

[alexmojaki]

futurecoder was actually translated to French by three teachers working for the French Ministry of Education to use when teaching the maths/programming subject 'NSI'.

I love maths myself but I've made a strong effort to avoid maths in examples/exercises so that the course is approachable to students who don't like maths. The first page is a special exception as it lets users immediately try something familiar (like 1+2) without needing to introduce strings or any other new concepts.

[BrandoElFollito]

Sorry if I was unclear but this was in no way a criticism of your excellent product. It is truly fantastic.

It was an unrelated comment that popped up in my head when reading "my 8 years old daughter is learning to code". And it was a "yay!" - because programming helps with math concepts afterward.

I am not a mathematician (PhD in physics, long time forgotten) so I see maths as a useful toolbox to solve problems I can describe. Some of the tools are wonderful and I dream of them at night (analysis, mostly), and some are blobs I poke with a stick when I have to (algebra, geometry mostly).

The 'NSI' option in high school is a new one, and one of the modern ones. It is useful later (no matter where you actaully study) so I am glad that someone at the ministry is using futurecoder as a reference. When Python was introduced a few years ago, it was done in the typical "let's put some boring theory first to make them hate us" fashion and it is wonderful this is changing.

[alexmojaki]

> Sorry if I was unclear but this was in no way a criticism of your excellent product. It is truly fantastic.

Thank you! I don't think you were unclear and I didn't read any criticism in your comment, I'm not sure why you thought I did. I was just sharing and adding to the conversation.

[Obscurity4340]

This. Mathetmatical functions never reqlly clicked until after I started learning coding. It helps that the approach I've used is very functional-type programming

[BrandoElFollito]

The other advantage is that in programing you introduce functions with some hand-waving and "black boxes".

I told my children this is something you put data in , it does some magic, and your get some data out. I started with some built-in functions (or functions I wrote and hide) so that they understand the mechanics.

Then they finally asked "can I do my own function?" and, bam, there we were :)

Removing the ceremonial of mathematical correctness helped a lot.

This is also the reason I am sad we do not give children half- (or 3/4-) lies: we tell them something more or less correct so that they can play with it (making sure they do not stumble upon edge cases) and then refine their knowledge.

This is what my math prof on my 3rd year of physics did: he said "I will give you a neat trick I will not explain because it will be super useful to you now. Next year, when you understand it, it won't be of any practical use anymore". I was not traumatized.