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My dad asked what to get our 13 year old as a birthday present. So I asked him, and he said Jon Duckett’s JavaScript and JQuery book - which he realises is a bi

My dad asked what to get our 13 year old as a birthday present. So I asked him, and he said Jon Duckett’s JavaScript and JQuery book - which he realises is a bit dated by now (2014), but he wanted it anyway (in part because he already has the other two books in the series), so that’s what he’s got. And sometimes a “dated” book is still valuable. One night recently I was having trouble getting him to go to sleep because he was getting overstimulated by Bob DuCharme’s The Operating System Handbook (1994) - which is valuable in getting into his head that there exist systems which are very different from his beloved Linux (it covers MVS, VM/CMS, OpenVMS, and OS/400) [0] For years I’ve been buying him books and watching him fail to actually read them-I’m pleased at 13 that’s finally changed [0] I have the hardcover edition which I bought in the 90s, but now you can get a free PDF from the author: https://www.snee.com/bob/opsys/part1intro.pdf https://www.snee.com/bob/opsys/part1intro.pdf

markus_zhang 5mo ago
For a 13 years old? Wow that’s so amazing. How did you get him interested in Linux and OS stuffs in general? Btw you can probably get him access to the actual systems — there are people offering accounts for those operating systems. I probably have another OS book that covers slightly different ones — instead of IBM mainframe OS it covers CP/M.
- skissane 5mo ago
  > How did you get him interested in Linux and OS stuffs in general? I’m sure I made some contribution, but a lot of it is just him-e.g. he’s an Arch Linux zealot, I never touched Arch until he started demanding I fix things he’d broken in it. I think he was converted to Arch by Youtube > Btw you can probably get him access to the actual systems — there are people offering accounts for those operating systems. I’ve run MVS under Hercules before, he doesn’t need anyone else, he can emulate and I can help him do it. (Except for OS/400, there is no emulator for that sadly, but I have a free IBM i account from pub400.com and he can get one too.) But he hasn’t decided he wants to yet
  - markus_zhang 5mo ago
    Thanks. How did he start? My 6 years old probably would love to play games or what not, but I don’t think he has the patience when he is a bit older.
    - skissane 5mo ago
      I bought him a desktop with Windows installed. At some point, he decided he wanted to install Linux. He wanted to try Arch, but got stuck on the install process, so I helped him install Ubuntu. Later on, he managed to solve his problem with Arch installation-so now his desktop triple-boots between Windows, Ubuntu and Arch, although he almost never boots into Windows any more. For his 13th birthday, we bought him a laptop that came with Ubuntu preinstalled. I forget when he became interested in Linux, probably around 11 or so? He’d already heard about it from me, but Youtube was also a big influence on him. As a preschooler he already knew how to use DOS (technically DOSBox’s command prompt), because he was in love with Commander Keen mods
      - markus_zhang 5mo ago
        Thanks! Looks like he started very early! What kind of things did you allow him to do when he was a preschooler? I’d assume maybe 30 mins everyday, mainly about typing games and maybe a bit of BASIC? Did he show patience back then or did you grow his patience somehow? Sorry about the train of questions…

markus_zhang 5mo ago

For a 13 years old? Wow that’s so amazing. How did you get him interested in Linux and OS stuffs in general? Btw you can probably get him access to the actual systems — there are people offering accounts for those operating systems. I probably have another OS book that covers slightly different ones — instead of IBM mainframe OS it covers CP/M.

skissane 5mo ago
> How did you get him interested in Linux and OS stuffs in general? I’m sure I made some contribution, but a lot of it is just him-e.g. he’s an Arch Linux zealot, I never touched Arch until he started demanding I fix things he’d broken in it. I think he was converted to Arch by Youtube > Btw you can probably get him access to the actual systems — there are people offering accounts for those operating systems. I’ve run MVS under Hercules before, he doesn’t need anyone else, he can emulate and I can help him do it. (Except for OS/400, there is no emulator for that sadly, but I have a free IBM i account from pub400.com and he can get one too.) But he hasn’t decided he wants to yet
- markus_zhang 5mo ago
  Thanks. How did he start? My 6 years old probably would love to play games or what not, but I don’t think he has the patience when he is a bit older.
  - skissane 5mo ago
    I bought him a desktop with Windows installed. At some point, he decided he wanted to install Linux. He wanted to try Arch, but got stuck on the install process, so I helped him install Ubuntu. Later on, he managed to solve his problem with Arch installation-so now his desktop triple-boots between Windows, Ubuntu and Arch, although he almost never boots into Windows any more. For his 13th birthday, we bought him a laptop that came with Ubuntu preinstalled. I forget when he became interested in Linux, probably around 11 or so? He’d already heard about it from me, but Youtube was also a big influence on him. As a preschooler he already knew how to use DOS (technically DOSBox’s command prompt), because he was in love with Commander Keen mods
    - markus_zhang 5mo ago
      Thanks! Looks like he started very early! What kind of things did you allow him to do when he was a preschooler? I’d assume maybe 30 mins everyday, mainly about typing games and maybe a bit of BASIC? Did he show patience back then or did you grow his patience somehow? Sorry about the train of questions…