Skip to content Presumably aimed at children, NHK World’s Texico program teaches the main ideas about programming without actually using a computer. Instead, it uses items like a toy train, playing cards, and other gadgets to teach concepts such as analysis, combination, simulation, abstraction, and more. There are ten episodes in English and French. Some of them are more about critical thinking, which, admittedly, is important for solving problems in general with or without a computer. For example, a “magic” trick relies on the observation that tearing a sheet of paper into nine rectangular pieces will mean each piece has at least one perfectly straight edge except for the center piece. The videos are short and light-hearted. We’d like to see a set of companion videos or posts that relate the lessons to some actual programming task. Of course, you could produce that yourself and host it on a platform like Hackaday.io or YouTube. The episodes show programming algorithms in strange places.…