5 ms·

this seems to me like a male equivalent of "8 year old girls in beauty pagents", honestly... At that tender cognitive age, the terminal is not the reality..

mlyle 5y ago
First-- hyperbole. Spending an hour with your dad tinkering with a terminal prompt is hardly the same as preparing for and entering a beauty pageant. My 8 year old doesn't sit at the terminal, but he sure likes going to Scratch and editing the computer games there... sometimes writing his own, but usually just finding amusing ways to cheat or make existing games do weird things. I wish it was a little easier to get into the "under the hood" stuff for kids. A whole lot of kids can do it and would enjoy it, but there's too many things with shallower learning curves in computers competing for attention. As far as "tender cognitive age"--- not everyone picks up the mental models and procedural thinking needed to be a decent programmer. A little bit of early exposure probably makes this more likely. Of course, too much of anything is bad.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  > My 8 year old doesn't sit at the terminal the title of this article, that I commented on, is literally "How many Linux commands can a 7 year old learn?"
  - mlyle 5y ago
    > the title of this article, that I commented on, is literally "How many Linux commands can a 7 year old learn?" Did you just willfully skip everything I said to focus on this? The article is about a kid who spent an hour, once, with his dad experimenting with a terminal. He's interested and curious and probably wants to do it again. I told you that my 8 year old doesn't sit at a terminal, but has spent a fair bit more than an hour doing a somewhat similar computing task. He's also hyper-social and well adapted dealing with other living beings.
ivanche 5y ago
I certainly didn't intend to sound that way! When my son asked me about the terminal, I didn't have an idea whether 2 minutes later he'll say "Dad this is boring" or I would have to pull him into bed an hour later because next day was a school day. It just turned out to be the second one and I felt the story was interesting enough to share it.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  he wants to do it because he sees you do it.. that can cut both ways. At that age, play and engagement with living beings is the priority, right? not Disney or Dad's work? in an age of overwhelming signals, too much is too much, completely agree.. there is no ambiguity, children and teens are overstimulated with synthetic signals, and emotional health is suffering for it

mlyle 5y ago

First-- hyperbole. Spending an hour with your dad tinkering with a terminal prompt is hardly the same as preparing for and entering a beauty pageant. My 8 year old doesn't sit at the terminal, but he sure likes going to Scratch and editing the computer games there... sometimes writing his own, but usually just finding amusing ways to cheat or make existing games do weird things. I wish it was a little easier to get into the "under the hood" stuff for kids. A whole lot of kids can do it and would enjoy it, but there's too many things with shallower learning curves in computers competing for attention. As far as "tender cognitive age"--- not everyone picks up the mental models and procedural thinking needed to be a decent programmer. A little bit of early exposure probably makes this more likely. Of course, too much of anything is bad.

mistrial9 5y ago
> My 8 year old doesn't sit at the terminal the title of this article, that I commented on, is literally "How many Linux commands can a 7 year old learn?"
- mlyle 5y ago
  > the title of this article, that I commented on, is literally "How many Linux commands can a 7 year old learn?" Did you just willfully skip everything I said to focus on this? The article is about a kid who spent an hour, once, with his dad experimenting with a terminal. He's interested and curious and probably wants to do it again. I told you that my 8 year old doesn't sit at a terminal, but has spent a fair bit more than an hour doing a somewhat similar computing task. He's also hyper-social and well adapted dealing with other living beings.

ivanche 5y ago

I certainly didn't intend to sound that way! When my son asked me about the terminal, I didn't have an idea whether 2 minutes later he'll say "Dad this is boring" or I would have to pull him into bed an hour later because next day was a school day. It just turned out to be the second one and I felt the story was interesting enough to share it.

mistrial9 5y ago
he wants to do it because he sees you do it.. that can cut both ways. At that age, play and engagement with living beings is the priority, right? not Disney or Dad's work? in an age of overwhelming signals, too much is too much, completely agree.. there is no ambiguity, children and teens are overstimulated with synthetic signals, and emotional health is suffering for it