Beefy Boxes and Bandwidth Generously Provided by pair Networks
Syntactic Confectionery Delight
 
PerlMonks  

Re^2: How to introduce 8 year olds to (Perl) programming?

by DrHyde (Prior)
on Apr 26, 2005 at 09:26 UTC ( [id://451467]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re: How to introduce 8 year olds to (Perl) programming?
in thread How to introduce 8 year olds to (Perl) programming?

This is an excellent idea. By using very simple encryption as your example - eg the Caesar cipher or the Vigenere cipher - you should be able to teach them something useful in twenty minutes. Start by teaching the Caesar cipher, then show how quickly and easily it can be broken using brute force or trivial frequency analysis, then introduce the Vigenere cipher and show that it doesn't fall to either attack. At least, it doesn't when you're working with a pen on a whiteboard.

And most importantly - don't teach encryption, or ciphers, or algorithms, or programming. Teach them how to pass secret messages to their friends that their teachers won't be able to read.

Details about the Vigenere cipher are here.

Log In?
Username:
Password:

What's my password?
Create A New User
Domain Nodelet?
Node Status?
node history
Node Type: note [id://451467]
help
Chatterbox?
and the web crawler heard nothing...

How do I use this?Last hourOther CB clients
Other Users?
Others exploiting the Monastery: (8)
As of 2024-03-28 18:50 GMT
Sections?
Information?
Find Nodes?
Leftovers?
    Voting Booth?

    No recent polls found