Episode 436 with Chris Svec: Programming for kids and The Joel Test

Chris Svec joined us to talk about kids programming?and how well the Joel Test has held up.

Svec’s son (“The Kid”) developed an interest in programming by playing games. Most of his programming desires are around building games of his own.?

Any time we talk about kids and programming,?Scratch?comes up. It really is that neat and is The Kid approved. Some resources to get you started (actually, getting started is easy, you may want a book to do more than the basics):

• The Everything Kids' Scratch Coding Book: Learn to Code and Create Your Own Cool Games!?by Jason Rukman?
• Scratch 3 Programming Playground: Learn to Program by Making Cool Games?by Al Sweigart (hey, we know that guy!)
• griffpatch on YouTube?

Digipen.edu?had two courses The Kid (and Svec) took. Both are free on YouTube:

• Introduction to Game Design Lessons
• DigiPen Basic Game Development Series

Finally, in a shockingly unrelated twist, we talked about the?Joel Test?for determining the health of a software development organization. No determination was made on how good The Kid finds his current position.

The?transcript?from the show is now available, feel free to read, search and repost at your leisure.

T-Shirts are here!

A new run of shirts, sweatshirts, and hoodies is available now?until the end of 2022.?Head on over to Teespring to get yours!

Items of Interest

• Memfault's latest panel discussion?with Phillip Johnston,?Tyler Hoffman, and?Kerry Scharfglass is coming up this week, Thursday Dec 8 at?9AM PDT. The topic this time is "Building Firmware Teams in the Modern Era".
• Phillip also has?a?blog post with advice on working with Co-op students and Interns. As you think about hiring for next year, it's good to think about goals and expectations.
• Finally,?since we are talking about teams,?Camille Fournier The Manager's Path?is an excellent book about managing and being managed. If you aren’t getting the projects you want or you have been asked to lead a team, this will help.

Upcoming Show

Daniel Situnayake returns to the show to discuss his new book?AI at the Edge: Solving Real-World Problems with Embedded Machine Learning, ethics in AI, and what the future might hold.

Patreon

To join the Embedded?conversation?on Slack, support us on?Patreon.

Interested in sponsoring the newsletter or the show? Drop us a line at?sponsorship at embedded.fm and let's talk!

Sign up to our email newsletter?here.