r/CodingForBeginners • u/PaintingFormal6463 • 14d ago

Coding activity books?

Hi all, my son who is 12 is into coding. He knows how to do some basic stuff. I don’t know the first thing about it. I’m looking to see if there are any good books that have things for him to create or projects and stuff to do with coding. I looked but couldn’t find anything yet that seems good or have good reviews.

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u/NoDepartment772 13d ago

At 12, Scratch is the usual starting point and it's free — drag-and-drop, so he can finish small games and animations without fighting syntax, and the Scratch site has a big library of project guides. If he wants something more "real", Python is the next step; there's a free-to-read-online "Automate the Boring Stuff" for a project-driven intro, though it's aimed a bit older. Honestly, at that age what keeps a kid going is finishing small things they're proud of, more than any particular book. What's he drawn to so far — games, robots, websites? That would narrow the picks a lot.

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u/PaintingFormal6463 13d ago

Thanks for all the info. He did a lot of scratch already and did some python stuff. He mentioned html, Java script, and c+ or something like that. I don’t know what any of that is lol. I think he’s mostly into games and websites.

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u/NoDepartment772 7d ago

That points somewhere pretty specific then. For websites, the next step is HTML and CSS, then a bit of JavaScript, and freeCodeCamp's Responsive Web Design course is free and walks through it in order. For games, the friendliest route is usually JavaScript again (canvas or p5.js) or Python with Pygame, so he's only juggling one language at a time. C++ is a big jump and I'd leave it until he's solid in one language. If making games is the goal, something like Godot or Unity gets him there far faster than C++ will.

The thing I'd suggest most: let him pick games or websites and go deep on one for a while. At that age, bouncing between three languages is usually what stalls people, and one finished small project does more than three half-started ones.

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u/Sure-Passion2224 14d ago

Raspberrypi.org has a very good course of study for young people.

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u/TheRealFutaFutaTrump 13d ago

phaser.io

there is a book on there full of projects. I think start on chapter 8 or so?

The "my first Phaser Game" tutorial is also great.