Question about web sites/coding...

[Mac'nCheese]

My son is getting into computers but not in the way that could really help out his education. We recently built a computer together but he uses it for gaming. Anyway, I would like to turn his interests into something more productive like coding and building web sites but really have no idea about them myself. I will sign him up for the free introduction classes at the apple store but was wondering if anyone had any advice to help point me in the right direction. Is coding just programming or is it also what you need to know to design web sites? He has a PC but we also have macs and ipad, does it matter which he uses to learn on. Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[m00min]

Coding is just another way of saying programming. It doesn't matter what you learn on but if you want app or web development I would say don't try it on an iPad, it's way too restrictive.

Designing websites is a slightly different discipline, more creative, but then learning to write HTML and CSS and build what you've designed might be more accessible to start off with.

To be honest though, if he's not showing a lot of interest in it forcing him may just put him off alltogether. I had a technical dad, he built us computers way back in the 80s, he let us play games. He wouldn't let us have consoles though. He always said that if you're playing on the computer you have the capacity to do something else on it, that's not the case with a console. He was right, both my brother and I would stray into the basic interpreter and write little programs, we got into it because we got curious, not because we were pushed into it.