Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 18:39:21 -0800 From: Rob <europax@home.com> To: David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net> Cc: dannyman <dannyman@toldme.com>, "freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG" <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: How do you get kids interested in computers- other than playing games? Message-ID: <3AB02B59.3CEFCF52@home.com> References: <200103140308.f2E37ve16140@grumpy.dyndns.org>
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David Kelly wrote: > > dannyman writes: > > On Mon, Mar 12, 2001 at 09:29:37PM -0600, David Kelly wrote: > > [...] > > > Put MacOS X on it two weeks from now. It should have a pretty enough > > > interface to keep him amused. And a solid foundation underneath. > > > > > > My brother started his kids early. They could type before they could > > > talk. About 8 years old now and still not programming. But for the last > > > couple of years they have been "writing books." They write the darndest > > > things which almost make sense. Much like in the moments before waking > > > when dreams almost make sense. > > > > I'm no parent, but I like this answer best - MacOS X is probably good (like > > the Amiga I cut my teeth on) where you get a cuddly GUI but over the years you > > roll up sleeves more often to get down and dirty. > > > > But the real answer is that "maybe the kid don't want to code, but he'll find > > something else cool to do." You sure he wants to grow up to be a l33t h4XX0R? > > Maybe he is interested in writing, or art, or music ... Mac is a good platform > > for this, as far as I can tell. Go for OS X. Linux is not yet a good > > plaything for a youngster looking to find his interest. > > Come to think of it, I did get my brother's twins started on FreeBSD > only a little bit after they started on the Mac. One Christmas I hauled > my 386sx16 4MB luggable (bigger than a laptop, smaller than an Osborne, > has an old version of FreeBSD on it) out there. Kids spotted it and > recognized a keyboard. Only keyboard they saw at their Grandma's house. > And asked if they could type on it. Up to that time that was the most I > had heard them talk when one said "type?" and pointed. > > Am not exactly sure but believe I turned these 4 year olds loose in vi. > Only had to be told once, "type v i enter and hit i again to start > typing." They didn't learn editing. Didn't know it but they didn't want > to pound. They wanted to type the alphabet. Funny, they didn't like what > the letter "q" looked like so they'd get that far, decide it was a > mistake, hit return and start over. Five or six times before somebody > noticed and explained, "that's what a Q looks like on this computer." > > You see, this really was a FreeBSD story. :-) > > -- > David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@hiwaay.net > ===================================================================== > The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its > capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system. Would be interesting to take twins, start one on VI and the other on Emacs, then see how they turned out 20 years later :) Rob. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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