On the Pedagogy of Programming

A few years ago I became deeply invested in curating a media library that shapes the culture my children will eventually embrace. Over the years, I’ve archived everything from classic children’s fairy tales to 3D models for woke homemade toys, and even entire website archives. Alongside this, I’ve developed a program designed to progressively expand their online freedom and foster their digital agency—which is deeply guided by an understanding of the principles of computational thinking.

When looking up online you might end up finding suggestions on keeping things ludic and playful. I’ll have to say I disagree. I don’t necessarily believe everything has to be engaging and ludic. I think if we had better lives and better plausible things to work towards people would be willing to just work. People have a massive capacity for rational work towards real goals.

But in the iPad age you don’t really have to work. All there is to it comes by default, under layers upon layers of abstraction.