读《FT·金融时报》学英语：编程玩具：程序员培养从娃娃抓起

我们要对一个高深的世界去神秘化，帮孩子消除恐惧心理：电脑这东西并非专属于极客和怪才，也属于每个人。

Sunday morning saw me up early to try out an interesting new tech toy.It is called Cubetto, comes from a London start-up and is a beautifully made kit to introduce children from the age of three to computer coding.

一个周日早上，我起了个大早，要试试一个有趣的高科技新玩具。这个玩具名为Cubetto，来自伦敦一家初创公司，是一个制作精美的玩具套装，目的是向三岁以上孩子介绍电脑编程。

“Teach your child to code before they can read,” Cubetto's publicity proclaim Ms.One of the key investors is Randi Zuckerberg, sister of Mark.Made mostly of wood, Cubetto has already won a top British toy award and follows Montessori's early learning principles.

Cubetto的广告宣传称：“教孩子未学认字先学编程。”该公司的关键投资人之一是马克·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)的姐姐兰迪·扎克伯格(Randi Zuckerberg)。主要是木质的Cubetto，遵循蒙台梭利(Montessori)的早教原理，已获得了英国一个玩具最高奖项。

I was intrigued to see if Cubetto could, as promised, teach me “a host of programming concepts, including algorithms, the queue, debugging and recursions”.

我饶有兴趣地想看看Cubetto能否像承诺的那样，教会我“包括算法、队列、调试和递归在内的多种编程概念”。

I gave up after 30 minutes.It was instruction number seven, on “subroutines”, that did for me.Perhaps I am stupid but, as far as I could tell, it made no sense at all.

30分钟后，我放弃了。问题是出在说明书的第七条“子程序”上。也许是我太蠢了，但在我看来，这一条让人不知所云。

That said, I made Cubetto work and I could see the principle behind it.Using coloured blocks, you input a string of commands to send a 10cm by 7cm wheeled cuboid — with a face — trundling ahead, left and right.

‍尽管如此，我确实把Cubetto玩起来了，我也可以认识到它背后的原理。通过带颜色的积木，可以向一个长10厘米，宽7厘米、正面画着一张脸、下面有轮子的长方体输入一系列指令，使它向前、向左和向右运动。‍

‍‍I am sure it will stimulate some brilliant three-year-olds but it was one of the dullest toys I have seen.‍‍

我确信它会刺激一部分聪明的三岁孩子，但它是我见过的最无趣的玩具之一。

Worthy, tasteful wooden educational toys rarely impress children and Cubetto is as heart-sinkingly disappointing as any.It is not gaudy enough, not plasticky enough and not loud enough.

值得、有品味的木制益智玩具很少会让孩子们印象深刻。Cubetto和其他同类玩具一样，令人失望到悲哀的地步。它不够花哨、不是塑料的、也不够闹腾。

Toys involving coding are hot this Christmas, as my colleague Emma Jacobs pointed out last week.The better type of toy store or website has a variety of well-presented and exciting offerings from Kano, Sam Labs and Technology Will Save Us in the UK; Little Bits, Tynker and Osmo in the US; Meccano in France; UBTech Robotics in China, and BQin Spain.

正如我的同事艾玛·雅各布斯(Emma Jacobs)最近指出的，编程玩具在刚刚过去的圣诞节销售火爆。好一点的玩具商店或网站都有各式各样外观精美、令人兴奋的产品——从英国的Kano、Sam Labs和Technology Will Save Us;美国的Little Bits、Tynker和Osmo;法国的Meccano;中国的优必选机器人(UBTech Robotics)到西班牙的BQ。

I have my own research to back up Emma's argument that ambitious parents should not rely on a coding set to give their child a head start in the career scramble.

我自己所做的调查可以支持艾玛的观点，即望子成龙的家长们不应指望一款编程玩具让自己的孩子在职场起跑线上获得领先优势。

Last Christmas, I gave Kano's build-your-own-computer outfits — which I love — to two children.I asked last week, as tactfully as I could, how the recipients were getting on with them.

上一个圣诞节，我将自己喜欢的Kano的一款电脑组装套件送给两个小孩。最近，我尽可能委婉地问了一下两个孩子玩得怎么样。

“It's on Ellie's shelf,” reported Alice, a Whitehall ministerial adviser.“She loves the packaging, she loves the idea that one day she'll get it out, but for now it remains an exhibition piece.”

“放在艾莉(Ellie)的书架上，”在白厅担任部长顾问的爱丽丝(Alice)告诉我，“她喜欢那个包装设计，她喜欢这个想法，总有一天她会拿出来玩，但现在仍是一件展品。”

“We enjoyed building the computer,” said Neil, a tech entrepreneur.“We built a great 32-bit game, which Alfie played with for about 15 minutes, and then went back to Fifa.I'm afraid the Kano hasn't emerged since.”

“我们享受了组装电脑的乐趣，”科技企业家尼尔(Neil)说，“我们构建了一个很棒的32位游戏，阿尔菲(Alfie)玩了大概15分钟，然后就去玩Fifa足球游戏了。恐怕后来再也没玩过Kano。”

I discussed this seemingly inconvenient truth with Alex Klein, the founder and CEO of Kano, at his HQ behind a coffee shop in east London.

在Kano位于东伦敦一家咖啡馆后面的总部，我与公司创始人和首席执行官亚历克斯·克莱恩(Alex Klein)讨论了这个貌似令人难堪的真相。

Mr.Klein, a 26-year-old Londoner brought up in Seattle, was surprisingly open about the niche appeal of coding kits.“I know it can be like getting kids interested in broccoli and Brussels sprouts,” he says.

26岁的克莱恩是伦敦人，但在西雅图长大，对于编程玩具的细分市场吸引力，他坦诚得令人惊讶。“我知道，这就像让孩子们对花椰菜和球芽甘蓝产生兴趣，”他说。

A quarter of children are still using their self-made computers after six months, “but even if they use it just for a day, the moment they make a real, powerful computer in as little as an hour is a big thing for them.

四分之一的孩子在6个月后仍在使用他们自己组装的电脑，“但即使他们只用一天，当他们在短短一个小时内组装起一台真正的、功能强大的电脑的那一刻，对他们而言也意义重大。”

“We are about the demystification and democratisation of an otherwise impenetrable world.The simple putting-together of the computer starts to break the cultural fear that this stuff is for geeks, hackers, techie boffins, not for them.”

“我们要为一个本来高深莫测的世界去神秘化和大众化。只是将一台电脑组装起来，就有助于打破一种文化恐惧，也就是以为电脑这类东西是极客、黑客、科技怪才的，而非他们这样的正常人的。”

Mr.Klein says that even if children are not interested in technology as a job, “Kano is about capturing what is culturally relevant to kids, like knowing how an app like WhatsApp works and replicating one.”

克莱恩说，即便孩子们对于投身科技类职业不感兴趣，“Kano的意义在于在文化层面捕捉到与孩子们相关的东西，比如了解WhatsApp之类的应用如何工作，并进行复制。”

He adds: “You have to have exposure to these things as a kid to feel at least conversant with the subject, so you have the ability to talk to others about it.”

他接着说:“你必须像孩子一样去感受这些东西，至少达到熟悉的程度，这样你才能跟别人讨论它。”

Indeed, coding lessons for children as young as five are part of the British national curriculum.Introducing the initiative in 2014, Michael Gove, then education minister, said learning how computers work made old-style technology education as obsolete “as teaching children to send a telex or travel in a Zeppelin”.

的确，面向5岁儿童的编程课程是英国全国教学大纲的一部分。2014年宣布该倡议时，时任教育大臣迈克尔·戈夫(Michael Gove)说，学习电脑如何工作使得旧式的技术教育“像教孩子们发电传或搭乘齐柏林飞艇旅行”一样过时。

What nails the case for these toys for me is the desire of education authorities for children to be conversant with coding, even if they do not master it.

最终而言，说服我认为这些玩具值得肯定的关键因素是，教育部门渴望让孩子们熟悉编程，即便他们不能完全掌握。

I had a Philips Electronic Engineer set as a kid.For a couple of years, when school holidays were dragging on, I would build gadgets — radios, intercoMs., crummy electronic organs.

我小时候玩过一套“飞利浦电子工程师”(Philips Electronic Engineer)。在两年时间里，当假期让我觉得没完没了时，我就会自己做些小玩意儿——收音机、对讲机、粗糙的电子琴。

I never read the swotty section of the manual that explained what was happening — how the transistors, diodes, resistors and capacitors worked — but exposure to that granular level of electronics has served me well.

我从不读操作手册上那些晦涩的说明——晶体管、二极管、电阻及电容元件如何工作——但亲手摆弄这些电子器件让我受益匪浅。

I am often shocked to find that my contemporaries — who are accomplished in their own field — are illiterate when it comes to technology.

我经常发现一些在本职领域颇有成就的同龄人居然对技术一窍不通，这令我震惊。

I am still unsure about coding for three-year-olds but, mostly, the children playing with 21st century versions of my Philips kit over this Christmas will gain at least an acquaintance with code, computing, directory trees, subroutines and the rest.I suspect it will serve them well, too.

我仍然不能确定编程对三岁儿童的影响，但多数情况下，在如今的圣诞节玩着21世纪版本Philips Electronic Engineer玩具的孩子们至少可以了解代码、运算、目录树、子程序之类是怎么回事。我觉得他们也会受益良多。