4 ms·

I'm so over tablets for kids. If I give my 10 yo son a 15 year old Dell laptop with OpenBSD and wifi over a USB dongle, and a book (1), he learns python. Give

I'm so over tablets for kids. If I give my 10 yo son a 15 year old Dell laptop with OpenBSD and wifi over a USB dongle, and a book (1), he learns python. Give him a 27" iMac and he learns to find and play meaningless random crappy Flash games, watch Minecraft videos, and occasionally play minecraft or do something else, like looks something up, checks his homework assignments, et Give him an iPhone or an iPad, he just learns to find and play meaningless random crappy iOS games. I honestly think letting my daughter buy her own ipad was poor parenting on my part. (1) https://www.nostarch.com/pythonforkids https://www.nostarch.com/pythonforkids

sosborn 11y ago
Is it not possible to learn python on the iMac?
- NamTaf 11y ago
  Of course it is; the GP is pretty biased. they could just as simply give their kid the same book on an iMac. Equally, their kid could play the equally crappy flash games on a Windows PC, and pick up some nice malware along the way because flash is a disaster.
  - niels_olson 11y ago
    > they could just as simply give their kid the same book on an iMac. The old laptop, the iMac, and the book are all in the same room.
- gcr 11y ago
  Part of it is asking whether learning Python on an iMac is close to the path of least resistance. I credit much of my childhood computer engineering learning to having to hack on an old cruddy laptop, where either I got nothing or had to learn to make do with what I had. If Minecraft were more readily available to me back then, I wouldn't have much of a reason to learn Python or anything else.
- niels_olson 11y ago
  Sure, but you have to not do any of the other things you can do on an imac.
  - sosborn 11y ago
    That simply isn't true.
    - niels_olson 11y ago
      > That simply isn't true. Nu-huh! C'mon. Is this what HN has come to? Look, I'm made an observation: put a kid in a room with three objects, 2 computers and 1 book, and in only one combination does he in fact learn python! He knows the terminal is on the iMac. I know he knows, because he knows how to ssh to another server to launch our Minecraft server. I've shown him python is there. But he doesn't use it. He frankly seems quite proud of his "hacker laptop" that boots to console. He logs in, starts X, and gets a full-screen xterm running tmux. It even has an antenna sticking out. He thinks it's cool. Fine. Whatever floats his boat. But, seriously, if you're writing code, you are quite literally not doing any of the other things that you could be doing with that computer. E.g., browsing the internet, writing a document, drawing, etc, etc. It's like saying "When I'm writing with this pencil, I'm not doing any of the other things I could be doing with this pencil." E.g., throwing it in the air, braking it in half, pulling the eraser out, sharpening it, whittling it down with a knife, splitting the wood to get the whole lead out, etc, etc. I'm just stating a fact. There's no argument to be made there. If you want an argument, there are other things to argue about.
      - sbuk 11y ago
        Fact? No. Confirmation bias, certainly. The 'fact' that you are trying to assert is that kids can't learn to 'code' on an iMac, which is wrong (and also has nothing to do with the article). Before you argue that words being put in your mouth > Give him a 27" iMac and he learns to find and play meaningless random crappy Flash games, watch Minecraft videos, and occasionally play minecraft or do something else, like looks something up, checks his homework assignments, et I think that shows a remarkable lack of imagination. As a counter point, my nephew is happily learning Python on an iPad using both CodeAcademy online and the Pythonista app. When he wants to tinker, his dad will hook up the RPi he has. What I suspect happened here is the crappy laptop and BSD (iMac is also essentially running a BSD) was give as a "here, learn Python" and the iMac wasn't mentioned.
matwood 11y ago
Be careful not to turn them off of computers. One of the reasons I was so interested in technology growing up was because of games. I started playing them, then wondered how to write them. My Nintendo was constantly in pieces around my room, and still worked :) I begged for a computer and finally got a C64. Typing basic was soooo slow going then...
- coleca 11y ago
  Great point. Another anecdote. When I was in 4th grade, we had a class that had 4 TRS-80 Color Computers in the back. The teacher told us, "You guys can play all the games you want on them. You just have to write them first.". That kicked off my love of technology and computers. We learned how to code in ColorBasic, and since we only had 4 computers for 20 kids, we did most of our coding on paper. To this day I still feel most comfortable sketching algorithms or system flows out on paper before firing up the IDE.
illicium 11y ago
Just wait until he discovers video game console emulators :)
dcw303 11y ago
In Australia in the early 80s, we had MicroBee computers in our primary schools. I spent a good proportion of a whole year of out of normal lessons, and holed up in the computer room, as I was the only one in the class who had figured out how to operate the machine (including the teacher). The default MicroBee install came with games, but they were all written in basic, with source code included. My proudest earliest computing memory for the age of 10 is editing the game code to "Cricket" to get it to spout profanities when you hit a 4 or a 6. At this stage I didn't even know what the word hacking meant. Several years later I got my first PC, a 386 with Windows 3.1. I was thoroughly confused that I couldn't find the source code to change anything. Eventually I found Gorillas and Snake in gw-basic, but it wasn't the same. I'm forever grateful that the creators of the MicroBee chose to provide games in interpreted basic. I am certain that I wouldn't have pursued a career in programming if not for that initial spark of wanting to understand how things work underneath the hood.
- scoates 11y ago
  > Eventually I found Gorillas and Snake in gw-basic, but it wasn't the same. Pointing this out because (from this comment) you seem like the kind of person who'd want to be correct: Gorillas and Snake were qbasic (and they were DOS programs, even though you could run them in a window on Win 3.x (from MS-DOS 5.x or 6.x)). gw-basic was the old, numbered-line interpreter that ran on DOS 3.x (or maybe even earlier). Again, no trying to be "well-actually guy"; just trying to help preserve some nostalgia. (-:
  - dcw303 11y ago
    Good catch! Indeed, I was running qbasic in an ms-dos window :)
rimantas 11y ago
Funny, that 27" iMac comes with Unix, Python, Ruby, Perl and PHP preinstalled. May also contain Garage Band and iMovie. Good for consumption only.
- niels_olson 11y ago
  Don't I know it. The problem is getting him to stay on task. There's just too much to do there. Xterm, tmux, python, and mg (emacs-y editor he prefers) limit how much willpower he has to exert to stay on task. And like I said elsewhere in this thread, all three objects are in the same room. But only once combination leads to him learning. gcr's comment below is very insightful: why learn python if you have minecraft?
pjmlp 11y ago
Why don't you give her one of the programming, game developing or drawing apps that exist on the store? There are multiple to choose from, even if they aren't featured as app of the day. Granted, they are much more limited than a desktop version, but good enough to stir the curiosity of creating something.

sosborn 11y ago

Is it not possible to learn python on the iMac?

NamTaf 11y ago
Of course it is; the GP is pretty biased. they could just as simply give their kid the same book on an iMac. Equally, their kid could play the equally crappy flash games on a Windows PC, and pick up some nice malware along the way because flash is a disaster.
- niels_olson 11y ago
  > they could just as simply give their kid the same book on an iMac. The old laptop, the iMac, and the book are all in the same room.
gcr 11y ago
Part of it is asking whether learning Python on an iMac is close to the path of least resistance. I credit much of my childhood computer engineering learning to having to hack on an old cruddy laptop, where either I got nothing or had to learn to make do with what I had. If Minecraft were more readily available to me back then, I wouldn't have much of a reason to learn Python or anything else.
niels_olson 11y ago
Sure, but you have to not do any of the other things you can do on an imac.
- sosborn 11y ago
  That simply isn't true.
  - niels_olson 11y ago
    > That simply isn't true. Nu-huh! C'mon. Is this what HN has come to? Look, I'm made an observation: put a kid in a room with three objects, 2 computers and 1 book, and in only one combination does he in fact learn python! He knows the terminal is on the iMac. I know he knows, because he knows how to ssh to another server to launch our Minecraft server. I've shown him python is there. But he doesn't use it. He frankly seems quite proud of his "hacker laptop" that boots to console. He logs in, starts X, and gets a full-screen xterm running tmux. It even has an antenna sticking out. He thinks it's cool. Fine. Whatever floats his boat. But, seriously, if you're writing code, you are quite literally not doing any of the other things that you could be doing with that computer. E.g., browsing the internet, writing a document, drawing, etc, etc. It's like saying "When I'm writing with this pencil, I'm not doing any of the other things I could be doing with this pencil." E.g., throwing it in the air, braking it in half, pulling the eraser out, sharpening it, whittling it down with a knife, splitting the wood to get the whole lead out, etc, etc. I'm just stating a fact. There's no argument to be made there. If you want an argument, there are other things to argue about.
    - sbuk 11y ago
      Fact? No. Confirmation bias, certainly. The 'fact' that you are trying to assert is that kids can't learn to 'code' on an iMac, which is wrong (and also has nothing to do with the article). Before you argue that words being put in your mouth > Give him a 27" iMac and he learns to find and play meaningless random crappy Flash games, watch Minecraft videos, and occasionally play minecraft or do something else, like looks something up, checks his homework assignments, et I think that shows a remarkable lack of imagination. As a counter point, my nephew is happily learning Python on an iPad using both CodeAcademy online and the Pythonista app. When he wants to tinker, his dad will hook up the RPi he has. What I suspect happened here is the crappy laptop and BSD (iMac is also essentially running a BSD) was give as a "here, learn Python" and the iMac wasn't mentioned.

matwood 11y ago

Be careful not to turn them off of computers. One of the reasons I was so interested in technology growing up was because of games. I started playing them, then wondered how to write them. My Nintendo was constantly in pieces around my room, and still worked :) I begged for a computer and finally got a C64. Typing basic was soooo slow going then...

coleca 11y ago
Great point. Another anecdote. When I was in 4th grade, we had a class that had 4 TRS-80 Color Computers in the back. The teacher told us, "You guys can play all the games you want on them. You just have to write them first.". That kicked off my love of technology and computers. We learned how to code in ColorBasic, and since we only had 4 computers for 20 kids, we did most of our coding on paper. To this day I still feel most comfortable sketching algorithms or system flows out on paper before firing up the IDE.

illicium 11y ago

Just wait until he discovers video game console emulators :)

dcw303 11y ago

In Australia in the early 80s, we had MicroBee computers in our primary schools. I spent a good proportion of a whole year of out of normal lessons, and holed up in the computer room, as I was the only one in the class who had figured out how to operate the machine (including the teacher). The default MicroBee install came with games, but they were all written in basic, with source code included. My proudest earliest computing memory for the age of 10 is editing the game code to "Cricket" to get it to spout profanities when you hit a 4 or a 6. At this stage I didn't even know what the word hacking meant. Several years later I got my first PC, a 386 with Windows 3.1. I was thoroughly confused that I couldn't find the source code to change anything. Eventually I found Gorillas and Snake in gw-basic, but it wasn't the same. I'm forever grateful that the creators of the MicroBee chose to provide games in interpreted basic. I am certain that I wouldn't have pursued a career in programming if not for that initial spark of wanting to understand how things work underneath the hood.

scoates 11y ago
> Eventually I found Gorillas and Snake in gw-basic, but it wasn't the same. Pointing this out because (from this comment) you seem like the kind of person who'd want to be correct: Gorillas and Snake were qbasic (and they were DOS programs, even though you could run them in a window on Win 3.x (from MS-DOS 5.x or 6.x)). gw-basic was the old, numbered-line interpreter that ran on DOS 3.x (or maybe even earlier). Again, no trying to be "well-actually guy"; just trying to help preserve some nostalgia. (-:
- dcw303 11y ago
  Good catch! Indeed, I was running qbasic in an ms-dos window :)

rimantas 11y ago

Funny, that 27" iMac comes with Unix, Python, Ruby, Perl and PHP preinstalled. May also contain Garage Band and iMovie. Good for consumption only.

niels_olson 11y ago
Don't I know it. The problem is getting him to stay on task. There's just too much to do there. Xterm, tmux, python, and mg (emacs-y editor he prefers) limit how much willpower he has to exert to stay on task. And like I said elsewhere in this thread, all three objects are in the same room. But only once combination leads to him learning. gcr's comment below is very insightful: why learn python if you have minecraft?

pjmlp 11y ago

Why don't you give her one of the programming, game developing or drawing apps that exist on the store? There are multiple to choose from, even if they aren't featured as app of the day. Granted, they are much more limited than a desktop version, but good enough to stir the curiosity of creating something.