4 ms·

Just had my first baby 2 weeks ago. I guess I'll be returning that Haskell book I bought for him...

• fishnchips 11y ago
  True that, you'll be better off with Python for the first few months, at least until weening.
  • nier 11y ago
    Don’t you think hardware development might be a better start? My daughter’s 10 months old and still can’t read, let alone pick reasonable variable names. But she’s been able to hold the soldering iron for at least 6 months and I believe I see progress.
    • fishnchips 11y ago
      Did you plug it in?
      • nier 11y ago
        There is little sense in doing that at this time. That’s just my personal opinion. The way I see it, she needs three skills to succeed. First, hold it the right way up and realize this thing is not an eye poker or lollipop. Second, develop a steady hand. The doctor says alcohol is bad for her, so there seems to be no easy way. Third and last but not least, learn resistor markings. I’m praying she didn’t inherit my color blindness. When we’re there we can playfully discover Ohm’s Laws by letting her gut decide on the right voltage and current applied to her circuits. It’s going to be magic.
    • 50CNT 11y ago
      I've heard that at 12 months Duplo's and Visual VHDL/Verilog editors become suitable for the child. You can get them started on very simple PLDs, move on to FPGAs along with some more palatable Assembly. If the child cannot solder BGAs by age 2, you may want to consult a child psychologist to check for development problems. They may suggest Agile or Kaizen, or a number of other frameworks to keep your daughter on her milestones.
      • nier 11y ago
        Your comment gave us a lot of food for thought, so thank you. But the truth is we’re a very traditional family and this is our first child. We are trying hard to make the right choices for her. So although your suggested milestones are most reasonable, we’re ultimately going to stick with analog for the time being. I’m saying this fully aware that she might not be able to lift her creations the better she gets, but we all have slight scoliosis from carrying too many school books. She will survive. Once she’s comfortable with the basics and hopefully frustrated with the limitations, she’s going to be ready to embrace digital.
        • dccoolgai 11y ago
          /switch to serious for a second. Do you have any suggestions for toys/games that are more facile than a soldering iron that delop or impart systems logic for 8-24 months?
          • fishnchips 11y ago
            Perhaps wooden building blocks with different colours and shapes? You can't go wrong with these - worst case they'll learn category theory ;) But to be fair (and completely serious now) I would not get too obsessed about that. Kids have a way of showing you what they find interesting at any given moment and I think it's best to just go with the flow without planning for specific outcomes.
            • JoeAltmaier 11y ago
              My first-grade son was playing at 'DAP time' where they checked out a kit (blocks, string, whatever) and did whatever they wanted with it for 30 minutes. He had the box of keys. Now, nobody checked out the box of keys - it was boring. Nothing you could build; no clear categories (too many kinds of old keys of too many shades of color). But the teacher noticed him taking them one at a time, dropping them over his shoulder, picking them up again and putting them in a row on the table. She didn't disturb him - that was a rule of DAP time, nobody gets to interrupt you. But when he was done and had put them away, she asked "What did you find to do with the keys?" He answered "I was putting them in order by sound". See, he was constructing a scale of sorts, by the sound they made when they hit the floor. Wasn't another year when we discovered he had perfect pitch. Went on to master the piano and the cello before junior high; played in every school orchestra and event. He was playing professionally in High School (City orchestras; Orchestra Iowa) and competing at the national level. Anyway, never underestimate the use of simple toys.
    • fishnchips 11y ago
      Anecdotally my son is 2 years old and he's getting really interested in what I'm doing on my laptop. I explained that I write code, except where I come from the words 'code' and 'cat' sound almost the same. So... my son deeply believes his dad deals a lot with cats. Ultimately he might be quite right - the Internet is all about cats ;)
      • awl130 11y ago
        where the heck does code sound like cat??
        • fishnchips 11y ago
          Poland. Cat - 'kot', code - 'kod'. Trailing 'd' is always soft when spoken so there you go.
          • awl130 11y ago
            :)
    • gjkood 11y ago
      Have you gotten her the beautiful Resistance Color Code charts yet? You can learn the colors and resistance values. A fantastic twofer if I may say so myself. :).
• bcook 11y ago
  Congrats on the baby! (Kinda, I hear the manufacturing process is less than arduous.)
  • fishnchips 11y ago
    Shipping sucks though.
    • paulddraper 11y ago
      Especially if it ships late.
      • fishnchips 11y ago
        Reportedly too early can be even worse.
• deleted 11y ago
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