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I'm sure that plenty do. I somehow discovered Emacs in the Terminal on the family Mac when I was much younger and I consider that the start of my interest in ho
by snazz 6y ago
I'm sure that plenty do. I somehow discovered Emacs in the Terminal on the family Mac when I was much younger and I consider that the start of my interest in how computers work under the hood (aside: thanks to the GNU Emacs developers for making the manual so accessible immediately after typing `emacs` into a shell).
The biggest positive influence from my parents and other adults in my life was regulating my video game time but not my "playing with the computer" time. I was pushed towards reading and learning about computer stuff instead of playing games and watching videos.
I'm sure that some kids need more guidance, but in the age of the Internet, the subtle push away from entertainment activities might be enough for many.
- Jtsummers 6y agoI think it's important to remember that many of the people here are exceptional, not typical, computer users. I figured out (mostly on my own, my dad showed me how to get to the prompt itself and that was it) the DOS interface and BASIC (using contents from a math textbook) at age 8. But that's not normal, most of my peers who also had computers available to them figured out video games and that was it.