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I keep thinking of ways to get my kids involved with computers in a more intellectual way. The oldest likes the gamified programming with blocks but has no real
by shirro 10y ago
I keep thinking of ways to get my kids involved with computers in a more intellectual way. The oldest likes the gamified programming with blocks but has no real desire to explore further. He has been interacting with iPod touches or iPads since before he could walk. I think it was a mistake in retrospect.
Just the eagerness to get your hands on a computer is hard to describe today. Studying the ads in magazines. Hanging around electronic stores. Riding bikes miles to friends who were more fortunate. Even today looking through an old Byte magazines at obsolete hardware almost has me salivating.
I know that today there has never been more capable hardware, more available, more affordable and with the level of help and documentation that we have on the Internet. But it is still hard to let go of the 80s. It was a time when kids with no Internet or peers to help would spontaneously disassemble ROMS and hand code asm. I had two television channels which played no more than an hour of content a day of any interest and the only console game we had was a Pong made from a kit. Although the primitive nature of old computers helped their learnability the lack of distractions was also helpful.
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoGet him into Zachtronics games: start with Spacechem. Then give him TIS-100. Then give him a micro (of some sort). Hope that helps.
- Zardoz84 10y agoTry Techcompliant. Where you can use an 8 bit computer to control a spaceship or a whole space station.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago...hang on a minute. AFAICT, that's another 0x10c spinoff. If you don't know, 0x10c is a (semi-famously) aborted game project by Notch, which was was known for its 8-bit DCPU computer, which would control your spaceship. Techcompliant seems to be one of several continuations of the concept. I'm pretty sure Project Trillek is the most active continuation project, but this also seems worth looking at. Until they're done, though, you can pay TIS-100, or backdate your mincraft to 1.2.5 and install RedPower2. Or you can wait for RedPower3, the game of that mod, which goes in a similar direction.
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoActually, scratch that. Trillek is less active. Hopefully, Techcompliant is good. I wouldn't know, because there's no way to actually get the game.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Fr0styMatt88 10y agoIf they play Minecraft, there are some very cool modpacks that you can install which add programmable computers into the world, eg: http://www.computercraft.info/ http://www.computercraft.info/ http://technicpack.wikia.com/wiki/Forth_language http://technicpack.wikia.com/wiki/Forth_language