THE VIDEO SHELF · exact instructions
Exact Instructions Challenge - THIS is why my kids hate me. | Josh Darnit
A family video in which kids write instructions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a parent follows them exactly as written, with comic results. It demonstrates how precise instructions must be.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN uses it to teach kids computational thinking and as a joke whenever specs, requirements, or LLM prompts are taken too literally.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- Josh Darnit
- Topic
- exact instructions
- Format
- demo
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 9
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2017–2025
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
Have you seen the exact instruction challenge on youtube? I thought it was a great segue into technical thinking for young kids. [VIDEO]
zyang on Hacker News · 2017-02
In Ask HN: How should I teach code to kids?1. Tell them what to do but do not tell them how to do it. (Just give a few pointers otherwise they'll be lost.) 2. Give them a playground to fail - Offload any non-business critical tasks and let them make mistakes. No one I …
srirangr on Hacker News · 2019-04
In Ask HN: How to Teach Coding?
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.