Hi Devs. I have a friend with severe ADHD who really wants to learn how to script. I tried teaching him myself but it was too confusing for him. He knows how to do everything for game development (blender, building, GUI, painting) but not scripting. Do any of you have any tips or tutorials that are ADHD friendly?
List of things that probably won’t help:
Tutorials longer than 5 minutes - He really doesn’t like watching tutorials in the first place but if its 5 minutes he’ll be fine.
OOP - Way too confusing for him right now.
Dev Forum Links - He doesn’t like going on devforum (He has his own learning style), but if you have a documentation thats relatively short, you can send it!
List of things that probably WILL help:
Proper documentation on what something does.
Simplifying so that he can understand it easier.
Things related to writing code (He can read code fairly well but he’s not that great at writing it.
Telling me how to teach (I’m not sure how to teach him without being confusing).
I truly appreciate anybody who helps as I’ve been trying to help him out for a while and it’s just not working.
Perhaps let him learn programming logic via scratch projects before going into scripting. From your description I assume that he will get frustrated easily and give up so let him get a taste of the pain of coding before deciding to learn systematically.
Unfortunately, most scripting tutorials explain in a very bad way that doesn’t translate well to previous experiences. You’ll have to explain with a lot of metaphors and comparisons to real-life scenarios and language.
writing code is similar to writing English sentences. most people can do it relatively quickly, with many grammatical rules and words to remember yet the brain can do it easily. maybe it’s about a change of mindset when coding?
Yo, person with ADHD here; have them try this: when they wake up, immediately start looking at documentation, forums and videos. It’s easier to learn, and work when you start immediately after waking up. I’ve used this for years and it’s always worked for me.
Teach him the most interesting “result” of what you want to teach him. If you maybe can add a bit of excitement as a result of a code then maybe he will learn it.
It may be helpful to first gauge interests and then formulate a series of projects that are bite-sized and add up to a greater whole since focus is hard to engage.
My suggestion is to teach him to create a tycoon. That was my first project and I would recommend it to anyone because they’re not only a Roblox staple but also have very flexible levels of complexity.
If I were you, my initial curriculum would be something like this:
Introduce Studio interface with building a conveyor belt
Introduce variables with a click-to-spawn ore dropper
Introduce loops with your standard ore dropper
Introduce leaderstats and scoring with a ore collector
…and if all goes well, then move on to some of the more advanced concepts like systems design. If he isn’t into tycoons or it doesn’t seem exciting enough, my favorite oneshot project is to build a lasergun, which teaches all of the previously mentioned concepts plus raycasting which is a neat bonus.
Maybe some graphical learning, like drawing what is function, variable etc. and to connect it with practical presentation? Had to admit you have us hard piece of cake to eat.
Maybe teach him simple stuff and give him a challenge so it’s still fun for him to code and focus longer on scripting. And proceed this until he’s your average scripter. That might help.
