A question from a young kid 🙏

@josevalim my kid want me ask you a question for her:

“What is the only thing you need to learn in Elixir?”

She learned 24 chapters Elixir Guide for 8 months and earned a M1 MacBook Air😂

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What is the only thing you need to learn in Elixir?

My answer would be - how to have fun. All other things are just a way to have fun, but not something worth learning on its own.

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Have fun is very important, I tried teach her Rust, but stop at the first class and crying :grinning:

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Rust is hard, as it requires some conceptual knowledge that may be too abstract for kid. However I tried to explain ownership and borrowing in a way a kid would understand.

But for such kid higher abstraction is something better, as it hides all the complexities of the computing behind nice facade. That is probably why Smalltalk was so easy for kids.

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Rust is hard, even for non kid :slight_smile:

There was this Logo language done for children…

But it might be too simple after learning Elixir and FP

The thing I like about Elixir is everything looks like Lego, You build your blocks with composable functions.

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I am not José but I would say ‘the possibility’ - of what can be achieved with it. That she can change the world with that tiny little computer and the language she already clearly loves :003:

I love it when parents nudge their children in the direction of programming. Programming is perhaps the most fundamental way in which almost anyone can change almost anything, and in ways that many people might not even think possible. The possibilities are endless and have the potential to shape the future of our species and our world… and it all starts right there, with your first little program and nothing other than an inspiring thought or person who nudged you in that direction :purple_heart:

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Actually kids they don’t really think Elixir is difficult, they think Elixir is kind of same like Scratch or Logo.

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I told your answer to her, I think your answer is great, buy she just doesn’t buy it, she think José is a pop star :star: :joy:

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Maybe we grown-ups learned too much about the computers’ underlying mechanisms so we think in assembly or C from time to time. Maybe Elixir is more intuitive than we thought.

By the way, macros are really hard. I’m trying to build an Ecto-like query builder, and I find myself constantly bouncing back and forth between “how the builder should work” and “how the programmers should code using my builder” (i.e. how many features can be put in compile-time and how many features have to be left to run-time).

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My daughter asked me today about her question, I answered with so many people replied. She is a little disappointed the José doesn’t reply, I told her that her question is not easy to answer, but she just said:

The only thing need to learn in Elixir is Elixir ! :rofl:

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Wow, your daughter is so wise! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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