I initially gave my two girls an old desktop computer with a linux on it. They started to use it before I showed them how and they started figuring stuff out without me and soon I was sitting riveted in the background watching them discover things and trying to learn about computer UIs and work out how they thought.<p>Here's an old blog post about it: <a href="http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/19500788060/my-tech-savvy-generation" rel="nofollow">http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/19500788060/my-te...</a> - I think its a fun read.<p>Fast forward to now; that blog post is hopelessly out of date!<p>I gave them old-but-decent laptops and, eventually, internet access.<p>As soon as they had internet access they stopped tinkering and exploring and started only using the laptop to watch repeat episodes of childrens TV.<p>And now they often want to use their mum's iPad - to play music and watch TV - but they are completely utterly uninterested in tinkering with any PCs.<p>Its sad but its true and I wish I knew what to do about it.
There is something about 1980's-era computers which make them so much more accessable to kids than today's systems.<p>It's probably to do with how much simpler they are - if I can put my finger on it, I'd say it's because they don't have lots of Things which can tempt you to distraction; for example - if they had a web browser of some kind back then, you'd be tempted away from learning to program in BASIC, or learning how to load that simple-but-fun game.<p>They generally were single task machines that allowed you to focus on one Thing.<p>I'm looking at my Linux desktop right now on this machine. I have a web browser I'm using to type this reply. It also has 8 other tabs open - more tabs will be added later as I continue on my search for knowledge. I have a Konsole terminal open with IRC sessions to multiple servers and channels open. I have PyCharm loaded. I have a VM running, and more to run later. All vying for my time and energy. A child using this machine would be overwhelmed.<p>Even a Raspberry Pi can distract the user of it in the same manner as my desktop.<p>Perhaps it's time to reintroduce kids today to the CoCo2's, the VIC-20's, the C64's, the Spectrums, the ZX81's and so on. Perhaps getting kids to use single-task-at-a-time systems to learn instead of the distraction-inducing tech. of today, would be a very good idea.<p>When my son was 2.5 years old, I put in front of him an ancient old Compaq laptop running Debian. It had Tuxpaint running on it, and I just put it in front of him and let him go on it. Within a short space of time he was using Tuxpaint like a "pro", and then he learned how to power the machine up, and type in his login name and password. Sure, you can do this with today's systems, but they do make it so easy to provide tons of distractions.
This is great. When my daughter was 11 and wanted a 'computer for her room' I gave her a VAX[1]. She had a lot of fun learning a bit of C programming and playing advent and rogue. And I had realized that for me and my generation we had these very accessible computers of that time and my kids did not. I think some of that need is being met by RasPi's and Arduinos (look at how successful the Kano Kickstarter was [2])<p>When you talk about folks like Gates or Jobs or Woz or pretty much anyone from the early PC days, the stuff they "learned" on was pretty straight forward. Any high school kid could write a driver for an ISA card in DOS, that is certainly possible in Linux but I find the learning curve to be much higher. And without those little triumphs to keep you going it is hard to stick with it.<p>[1] A VAX 4000/VLC which is a really compact and nice VAX, running netbsd.<p>[2] <a href="http://www.kano.me/" rel="nofollow">http://www.kano.me/</a>
When my son was about four years old, I gave him an old electric typewriter which I got from Freecycle. I also gave him a stack of paper and some ink ribbon.<p>Within days, he was "typing" away, loading new paper, working the lever to return the carriage to the start and replacing the ink ribbons. By the end of the month, it was in pieces as he tried to dismantle it to see out how it works. Luckily, I was supervising him so that he does not electrocute himself. The mind of a young child is an amazing thing to watch.
This is part of something I hope takes hold in CS education: ontogenous education. Ontogeny is the study of the development of organisms throughout their lifecycle. Technology develops in a way that often makes the present as dissimilar from its roots as a caterpillar and butterfly. So by starting at the beginning (or <i>a</i> beginning at least), rather than the present we give kids a full grasp of why things are the way they are rather than the millions of other ways they could be.<p>For many learners technology is a turn-off because it seems 'arbitrary'. It is, in the same sense that a biological organism or historical event is arbitrary. It's only with context that these things start to become intelligible. So ontogenous CS education is about giving a historical context to modern technology.
I completely agree with this. A lot of the games seem to appeal more too, because they've been written simply, with straightforward rules.<p>The BBC Master (which my children love) was also a terrific platform to learn to program on. It's just a shame that a lot of the disk drives and disks haven't survived very well.
I've been doing a similar thing with my 6 year old who wanted to learn to programming. I've been using JSBeeb (a browser based BBC Micro emulator) and have started to put together a Coding for Kids "book" based on our "lessons".<p>It's still very rough and only partially complete but I'd appreciate any feedback <a href="http://c4k.rabidgremlin.com" rel="nofollow">http://c4k.rabidgremlin.com</a>
My kids absolutely love our 8-bit rig!!<p>Fire up some Defence Force, Harrier Attack, Doggy, or Zorgon's Revenge, from the good old days! YAY, 8-bit party! Space 1999, 1337, Pulsoids, Skool Daze .. STORMLORD! W00t!<p>:)<p>What's really great, is that the 8-bit days are <i>not</i> over. I see this now, with my kids getting attracted very much to programming on the 8-bit machines. "10 PING:WAIT 10 20 GOTO 10", represent!!
Great read.<p>A big difference emerges in how young folks develop their skills are developed when spending one's time as a creating vs. consuming novelty/distraction in mindless screen time.<p>We know the path of seeking/consuming novelty and distraction is a limited way of engaging both abstract and critical thinking skills when imagining how the hardware/software/network stack comes together. There's lots of studies on gaming (I was a voracious gamer until it got in the way of my creation and learning time), but I'd wonder if spending time in someone else's virtual worlds helps people get out there and solve real world problems.<p>In a way, learning by seeing, and mastering a C64 is a timeless experience, only we don't have many C64's today as true, starter computers.<p>It's where projects like Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and others are so exciting, but there's little like seeing a physical floppy drive spin up and being witness to so many more steps in slow motion.
I've long thought that the original GameBoy Advanced would make a great platform for kids to learn about hardware. Being solid state, it doesn't have the physicality that OP describes, but it does have a very understandable hardware and software model. Basically, 100% of the machine can be controlled via memory-mapped structs. No need to call a magical function from some Nintendo-sanction wizard. You can stomp the bits yourself and make stuff happen. I've written a toy program to draw on the screen in half a page of C. No includes, no libs. int main, vidmode=3, pixels[n]=255;
Oh, nostalgic moments...<p>I owned an Spectrum, Atari St, Amiga, and Apple II. I learned 68K assembler and BASIC on them, to load programs from tape...<p>...and I hated them and got rid of them as soon as I could. Seriously, I don't understand how people love to use floppy disk or tapes that sounds like the machine is doing coffee or something, takes minutes to load a single program, no 3D, no Internet, requires a TV that emits X rays, small and ugly.<p>If I want my kids solving something hard, I will give them robots or 3D printers, not trying to force them to live the life that I lived 30 years ago.
I love 1986 computing too! Everything was so simple. Just a single thread of execution to worry about.<p>Then again, Javascript is also single-threaded essentially.<p>Thus, from another point of view it looks like we're stuck in the 80s...
This brings me back to my junior high days, when I bought a Centris 650 Mac at a yard sale for the express purpose of installing OpenBSD. That was my first real delve into open source operating systems, and it deserves much of the credit for my professional developer career.
Nice post. I <i>loved</i> my CoCo2 back in the day. I doubt their enthusiasm will last if they have alternatives, but it is fun to see the exploration, even if it is just for a little while. Planting the seed is important.
a similar story: David Brin got a C64 for his son, because he thought that would be a better tool for learning how to code.<p>"Why Johny can't code"
<a href="http://www.salon.com/2006/09/14/basic_2/" rel="nofollow">http://www.salon.com/2006/09/14/basic_2/</a>