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I used to be a kid with a bunch of homework, but I really wanted to learn coding/programming. Now that I'm in high school, I regret not taking time to learn these things earlier as they are really fun. So what went wrong?Homework is not a main priority when you are young. This does not mean you should tell your kids to not do their homework, but you shouldn't put a lot of emphasis on it and let it slide if they don't feel like doing it. It's only middle school and they are kids.Let them pursue something that they are interested in. This is really important because it gives them the advantage to further develop those skills during high school. It is what a lot of colleges look for: something that you have been passionate about and have dedicated a lot of your time on.Having fun is imperative. The best way for kids to learn coding/programming is to give them something fun to do. This either means making games that they enjoy or creating websites for their favorite movie characters or favorite sport teams.You can't make a kid do what s/he doesn't like. How does it feel when somebody forces you to do something you don't like and you have no power to say no? This comes up a lot and really destroys many children's passions. If they don't want to learn programming, then let them pursue something else that they are interested in.Some good places to start with making games:Gamesalad: Personally, this was what I started with. A simple drag and drop user interface and lots of freedom. There is a lot of online tutorials also for this, and a really old blog of mine which I used to write tutorials on: CS GeniusUnity - Game Engine: This is a really hot program to use. The graphics are super sick and probably one of the best ways to learn to make first-person shooter games. This is a little more advanced and requires some more programming experience.Swift - Apple Developer: This is also a really nice way to make mobile apps. It also requires some programming experience, but has many tutorials online.For places to learn programming languages:Learn to code: The classic place to learn the basics of many programming languages.Free Code Camp: For those who are ambitious, this is a really good start to learning how to create websites (front-end development) and get a jumpstart at a junior development career.Learn - A platform for education.: Came across this a few days ago and this is a really nice way to learn Ruby on Rails. For more experienced coders, but really emphasizes how you can become a good coder from nothing.Competitive programming, whoa what is this? Personally, I love competitive programming and it is a delight to be able to solve problems. It is definitely an advantage to start early, but your child should have decent math skills and lots of persistence. Again, don't force your kid to do something s/he doesn't like.Here's a question I answered for a lovely person who wanted to prepare his/her cousin for a path of competitive programming: How can a beginner (no computer background) plan his way to IOI?Hope this helped!

(THIS ONE WILL TAKE A WHILE, SO BEAR WITH ME)Did any of you ever have these disgusting capitalistic scummy pieces of paper in elementary school?:[math]Not actual moose dollars[/math]We did, except for us they were called moose dollars.Let me take you back to elementary school, to my third grade teachers class, where my criminal business began!!!!So it all started out in my third grade teacher’s class, we had her last year, but this year everything changed… You see last year we had moose money, but it wasn’t as big of a deal. This year our teacher, who I will call Ms. Rice, decided to make it more of a big deal by incentivizing us far more, so that she could use it for dealing with behavior problems, and as a way to make us more likely to try hard in her class.So starting 3rd grade 20 moose dollars could get you into a movie every Friday, and for 5 moose dollars you could buy back your recess if you misbehaved, but if you did that once, you would lose out on going to that movie on Friday. (Idk why I brought that up, cause it has no importance, but whatever). And once a month/Every 3–4 weeks our class would hold a “class fair” where we would sell things we made/services we had to students from every class. Now these students didn’t have a regular income of moose money, and so every class fair each student got 20 moose dollars. That meant that if these students came to our class for the movie they had to get money from us to come, and if they wanted more money for items and services, they had to save it.^What a table at said fair would have looked like, if you replaced the adults with^ childrenNow unless you were one of those kids you could earn money throughout the week. Every week there were a list of challenges you complete by Friday to earn Moose Money, and at one point when I did the math, the average kid would earn roughly 5 moose dollars from those. You could also earn them bi-weekly on math quizzes (5 moose dollars), and monthly on math tests (20 moose dollars), but only if you got an A.Now seeing as I resented having to work for this money, I wanted a way to make easy money. See my father is a Civics and Economics teacher, meaning that I understood the basic principles of supply and demand, and I also resented my teacher Ms. Rice because she would send me out of the class because I was louder, taller, and more annoying (possibly due to my ADHD), than my fellow students. So I planned.^Actual portrait of Ms. Rice^I started a “Spy Ring”. The real purpose of which was to take money from the richest people in the class. I had 5 people in my “Spy Ring” and each one was charged 5 moose dollars a week. Basically, I had another one of my friends start another one, and I created a bunch of drama by having my spies steal the other spies “passwords” and then copy them, and vice versa. In the meantime I spent my resources wisely.You see there was a high demand for movies in Ms. Rice’s class, and since all the cool kids were going, all the other kids were willing to go into debt in order to take their friends, and look rich. So I started loaning money with roughly 10% interest per week. The minimum I would accept payment in were 5’s, since 1’s were rarely used for anything. So knowing that let me do the math for you, that my scheming 9 year old self had come up with.1 kid asks for $20 so s/he can go to Ms. Rice’s Friday Movie, but he won’t have enough money to pay back until at friday after next, on a good week (for me), that means that by then he owes me $19 after payment. That’s right. He only payed off $1 of his debt.[math]20/10=2[/math][math]20+2=22[/math][math]22/10=2.2[/math][math]22+2.2=24.2[/math][math]24.2-5=19.2[/math]Each week I would lose roughly 40 moose dollars, but some people got smart and realized that I couldn’t possibly force them to pay up, until I realized what I was really missing, lackeys. So I went to my Spy Ring and got two enforcers, who were both smaller than me (to be fair I was pretty tall), but twice as strong (fat). After that I got my money much faster. By the end of my enforcers run, I had made roughly 800 moose dollars. (Of course, I had to pay my 2 helpful spy/enforcers, who got 100 moose dollars each)However, Ms. Rice caught on that not all of her money was making it’s way back to her, so I had to hide half of what I didn’t return to her evil redistribution scheme and spend it slowly.However my deviant age did not pass.No no no.You see, unbeknownst to me, the 5th grade teachers saw what was going on in Ms. Rice’s class, and copied it. Except they called it math money.By the time I was in 5th grade I had another plan.You see, my second from my spy ring had stayed my friend, even though there was no competing ring in 4th grade, so instead we spied on the teachers.Once we got into 5th grade we learned about math money, but this year there was another problem: Robbery. You see, unlike our 3rd grade counterparts, we had all experienced the 3rd grade Criminal Syndicate, and no one wanted to live under that, so people started to rob each other to gain the power. My solution was to start a bank/insurance agency. You could pay $10 a week, and if you were robbed, we would cover some of your money, or for a scaling fee, you could put all of your money into my lock box.^Benjamin Franklin, mascot of my bank/insurance company^You see, this was all a cover though, because my friend, I’ll call them Jaime, was the one stealing the most money, and needed a place to hide it. They were afraid of getting caught, so I decided to help them hide that money, for a little cover charge. I managed to convince half the class to join at list a little bit in the scheme, but then I ran into a problem.I knew Jaime couldn’t ever completely stop stealing, because then I would be implicated, and then I would get in trouble, and I also knew I couldn’t keep all my money in that safe because if the amount of money in the room stayed the same, then the teacher would know it was me (Also because then my service wouldn’t be in demand). So I decided to keep a flow of cash between classes.During recess, I started an underground playground Olympics. See it had just been the summer Olympics that summer, so everyone had a little bit of hype going on, so I organized some events, like monkey bars, basketball, soccer, etc. and offered a prize for the winning player/teams of each event. Each team paid an entrance fee, and won (most) of the money that went into each event.Unfortunately, not all of the teachers were stupid, so that got shutdown, and because of that, the thieving had to slowly stop, which meant I slowly lost my clients.(So there we have one ban already, get ready for me to do even more damage!)But I developed something much better, and much more addictive than sports.Gambling.You see, some of us got addicted to playing this dice game we called All or Nothing. The rules of all or nothing were simple, roll two 1’s, and you have to put all your money in the pool, if you roll a two 6’s you take all of the pool, if you roll anything else, you hand the dice to the person to your left. Everyone sits in a circle, and you have to bet on your turn. You lose when you don’t bet on your turn.Anyways, this was all just for shuffling money around the classrooms for my schemes (because I hated having these stupid incentivation programs), the biggest one was because of Jaime. See one day after Thanksgiving, she discovered that the teachers had whole sheets of math money, which was printed on a sheet of green printer paper. I made an investment of $20 on a sheaf of the same type of paper, and 4 of those sheets from the teachers room, which was used for the high level reading group, which I was a part of.So over winter break, I used my home copier/printer to print over $2000 of math money. Some of which I sold to other classmates who wanted to discreetly add to their accounts.Total I sold around $500 (math money), for $50 (legal us currency), which we split evenly between the two of us.What I didn’t know was my friend who had found the money had also been stealing sheets of it, and cutting it herself, unbeknownst to the teachers. But the teachers had started to notice that my class was becoming very wealthy. We spent more than average in class fairs. Also, we had double, or triple, what the well- behaved, good grade, students had; we shouldn’t have had that much, for obvious reasons.One day, some fucking snitch from our class saw that Jaime kept sneaking into the advanced reading room, for which she had no reason to be there. After a long and arduous process of yelling, Jaime called me in as a witness of her being in the classroom. Needless to say, when I was called in I fucking panicked. I saw Jaime and immediately assumed she had snitched, so when I heard that she had been spotted by the snitch I started laughing.Anyways to make an already long story far shorter, she got busted and I kept most, if not almost all of her math money, which I then gave to a 4th grader at the end of the year.FINEdit: 5k upvotes, holy shit!I've gotten some good recommendations for TV shows based off this answer, so here are my favorites:OzarkBlacklistWhite CollarThey're all available on Netflix, so feel free to check them out, and thank you to the people who recommended them!________________________________________________________________________________________________Edit because I found some stuff while cleaning my room (11/20/2020):At one point I got in trouble for loan sharking in 3rd grade, so what I ended up doing was offering loans to people by using their Yu-Gi-Oh cards as a “Security Deposit” if they ended up not paying me back, and then I would resell their cards to other people for the money they owed me.I actually got into serious trouble for that, and I almost got suspended because several students claimed I “stole” their cards. I got out of trouble because I had made sure they signed contracts with me, but those got voided by the school principal since he claimed that minors cannot sign legal agreements. That’s part of the reason there was so much chaos in my 5th grade class, because students remembered all of my (now defunct) schemes, and didn’t want to experience them again, hence why I was using Jaime as a business partner.Also some more questions I answered in a recent comment;What happened after Jaime got caught? Was she mad at you?Jaime got caught with a bit of the money, but she didn’t rat me out. She wasn’t mad at me, because I didn’t snitch on her, and we had a mutual understanding. I let her spend a bit of our money because she was one of two people who were my friends in elementary, and pretty much everyone including the snitch who ratted on Jaime, hated me. I think she got punished, but I’m not really sure what actually happened to her.Are you still friends with Jaime?We were good friends through middle school because we both went to a small middle school (only 120–130 people in our grade) and lived one neighborhood away from each other and didn’t know anyone else nearby, but in High School we stopped hanging out because we were in different social circles (And it was significantly bigger, with roughly 500 people in our class). We chat once or twice a year on facebook, but not frequently.Was the scheme ever found out?The scheme was never found out. Some people had a little bit of an idea what was happening at the time, but didn’t question it because we had more money than other classes. I ended up telling the story to a few people, and I have no idea what the 4th grader I gave the money to said about it, as we didn’t ever hang out again after elementary school on the bus, despite going to the same high school later on.Where did you get the idea for the original scheme?So the 3rd grade one (loan sharking) started by me hearing about how Walt Disney got conned out of his original cartoons by signing a bad contract, and quickly got out of hand. I used to ask my Dad questions about money and economics since we were studying it in school (like producers and consumers) but my dad had explained that there are also people who make lots of money through banking and finance, so I got a little inspiration from that. The 5th grade scheme was just an extension of that.Why didn’t you flood the market and destroy it?Well I wasn’t interested in destroying my only source of attention in that class, and also I didn’t have a firm grasp on the concept of inflation at the time. I suppose I realized that it would be possible to do that, because I had noticed prices for stuff getting higher in my class (hence why I used proxies to purchase stuff for me), but I also knew if I flooded too much money into the classroom that the teacher would notice since they occasionally printed new bills, and they were beginning to realize that there was too much money in circulation at the time.I remember hearing in 7th grade that they had to change the color of the bills and also the print on the math money, because they didn’t want that happening again, and they also required students to keep the money with the teachers after that, so that black and grey market deals weren’t happening. Thank god I wasn’t there.Do you work in finance or something like that now?No. I hate math. I’m currently in Community College right now, and I’m not sure what I want to do, but I love STEM (minus the M part), and I might persue something in that field, or just do business and then go to law school. I did a lot of speech and debate and High School, and I love arguing and memorizing facts and such. Not really sure at the moment what I want to do though.The math doesn’t really make sense?Yeah, like I said, I’m bad at math. I wasn’t really doing percentages at the time, I was tacking a fixed amount of money based off a fraction of the total owed each week. The math I used to justify it in this answer was done while writing this answer, and I hid my the book that I used for keeping track of the loans after I got in deep shit, so I have no idea where it is. I think I remember shredding pages at one point because my parents got a little pissed.Are you a libertarian?No, I’m more of an Anarchist.Thanks for your praise and continued support on this answer! It was one of my favorite writing pieces I’ve ever done, and I really appreciate y’all!

Wow! It's like a time travel question to me. And my answer would be based on my 4 years of Engineering. So you can always change things according to you. Here it goes my friend:If you are staying at hostel or away from your parents, then the first thing to do is take a week-off as the hectic exams are just over and you deserve that mini-vacation no matter what. So pack your bags, book a ticket and meet your parents and friends. For those who are already at their homes, take a week long trip to some hill station or beach with your friends. Just chill out and relax yourself.Now you are refreshed and ready to utilize 100% your summer vacation. So I'll start off the plan:I know that 1st year is very hectic as its all new and you don't really have an idea about what you like and what your don't. But the only that should be very clear after the 1st year is the basics of your programming. If they are not clear take a step back, revise the basics in 2-3 days time. There are some very good courses on Coursera,EdX and (*my favorite*) Udacity. Just search Introduction to Programming on these sites. You will surely get a ton of information and courses.Now that basics are clear there are 2 directions in which you can move on with the time you have in hand.First is Competitive Programming(CP)Second is Web Dev/Android Dev/iOS Dev/General DevI'll start with CP first. The path here is a bit dusty and rough. People often give up and move on, but one's who perspire go a long way. So chose this path carefully, although I would suggest everyone to give a try. If you are not comfortable with it try it a second try and even if then it doesn't work for you leave it and move on.So firstly you will need a whole lot of stuff to learn and understand first. The places good to start are HackerRank and Codechef. Start with simple math based problems. But after that you will reach a stagnant point. So take courses on Data Structures and later Algorithms. As said previously search these courses on Coursera (*Very Good Courses on Data Structures and Algos*) and EdX.Start taking part on Codechef's long contest, read their editorials, read blogs.If you cannot solve a problem for too long, its better to see the solution.Most people give up here as they waste too much time on finding the solution and get frustrated. I could go on and on with CP here but this shall suffice for your summer vacation, if needed I put links below for your reference.Now comes the second path. The fun and interesting path:Web Dev - It the most common path that everyone chooses to follow as it is quite standard and things are quite easy to learn. But these days even this field has become quite complex. There is Front End Developer, BackEnd Developer, Full Stack Developer and MEAN Stack Developer. So the choices are wide and things to learn are more. You can start with Intro to HTML,CSS and JavaScript as this is the base of all Web Dev. Many courses can be found on various platforms but my favorite is Udacity this is the best place to start with as there courses starting from Beginners to Expert Level. So if you want to start with Web Dev Udacity is the place. And one most important thing on this path is Building Stuff. Build Stuff small or big, but build because that's what help you learn and grow.Android Dev/iOS Dev - Mobiles are the future. Everything you want is on the mobile and that's why Mobile Dev is hot favorite these days. Choose your path carefully. Select Android or iOS depending on your liking. If you want your app to reach millions then Android is the way to go because more than 80% of the mobiles are Android Powered and hence your reach increases much more.iOS is also very good as more and more people are now buying Apple devices the number of users is also significant.As earlier said, Udacity is one of the popular and recommended places to start with. As their courses are well structured and better organized. I gave a shot at Android Programming and it was amazing experience. I had built small apps with minimal coding. So that would suffice your summer vacations. Later you can always keep moving forward by building more stuff.General Dev - It is the most under-rated path as hardly anyone notices it. There are many things under this and I cannot cover everything, so I'll just specify what I know about.Scripting - There are various languages under it like Python,Perl,JavaScript,etc but my favorite is Python and JavaScript. These two are two Powerhouses of their own. Many things can be achieved through them especially Python. You can write scripts in Python for showing score alerts of your favorite sport, scraping the web for analyzing the data, scripts for downloading songs and movies. You can build games in JavaScript, build Dynamic Websites and Web Apps. There is also Bash scripting languages for Linux environment which helps a lot when working in Unix based environments.You can learn C and C++ which can be useful in a lot of places. You can dive deep into making your own OS using Linux kernel but that will take time and a lot of efforts but still a doable task for summer vacations if you strive hard.Apart from all this start building your resume and making good connections on LinkendIn. And if you are reader like me, don't shy away from those favorite books. Grab a cup of coffee and read it in your free time.And last but not the least take ample amount of rest as they say "A Healthy Mind Lives In a Healthy Body"Good Luck for the valuable time you have.P.S. : If anyone wants I can add links to the various resources mentioned by me.