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Would this be a good way to teach my son technical skills? He's 6 years old, homeschooled and is interested in technology. He's already figured out how to bipas

Would this be a good way to teach my son technical skills? He's 6 years old, homeschooled and is interested in technology. He's already figured out how to bipass the parental controls on his Kindle. We're trying to figure out how to stimulate that desire when you can't read well yet.

patio11 12y ago
Geek to geek and parent to parent: honestly, no. Can I recommend Besiege? It doesn't require literacy. It has the same sort of freeform expressiveness you're allowed to do in Minecraft. "Syntax" errors are inherently fun rather than demotivating. There's fun, rewarding visual feedback for success. It doesn't teach programming qua programming, but it is almost perfect for a gateway drug into engineering. (You get to build catapults! And airplanes! And catapults which fire airplanes!)
- tptacek 12y ago
  Teenagers, though: I wish I had excellent CTFs when I was growing up.
  - andars 12y ago
    As a teenager: yes. I am working through microcorruption right now and loving it. Starfighter is vey exciting. Thank you
    - tptacek 12y ago
      \o/
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  Besiege as in http://store.steampowered.com/app/346010/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/346010/?
pjungwir 12y ago
Rocky's Boots and Robot Odyssey might be great things to try. You can run both on an emulator. I'm pretty sure you can play Rocky's Boots pre-reading. In fact I would not be sad if v1 of Starfighter was playing Robot Odyssey on a web page. :-)
- sea6ear 12y ago
  I was going to suggest Robot Odyssey. That was my first introduction to digital logic, although I didn't realize it till years later, when I actually studied some digital logic. There used to be a clone in java called Droid Quest that would run without an emulator, but I went looking for it a little while ago, and the web site appears to be empty. The only remains I found is a github repo with the source code, but I haven't tried to see if I can build and run it yet.

patio11 12y ago

Geek to geek and parent to parent: honestly, no. Can I recommend Besiege? It doesn't require literacy. It has the same sort of freeform expressiveness you're allowed to do in Minecraft. "Syntax" errors are inherently fun rather than demotivating. There's fun, rewarding visual feedback for success. It doesn't teach programming qua programming, but it is almost perfect for a gateway drug into engineering. (You get to build catapults! And airplanes! And catapults which fire airplanes!)

tptacek 12y ago
Teenagers, though: I wish I had excellent CTFs when I was growing up.
- andars 12y ago
  As a teenager: yes. I am working through microcorruption right now and loving it. Starfighter is vey exciting. Thank you
  - tptacek 12y ago
    \o/
pbhjpbhj 12y ago
Besiege as in http://store.steampowered.com/app/346010/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/346010/?

pjungwir 12y ago

Rocky's Boots and Robot Odyssey might be great things to try. You can run both on an emulator. I'm pretty sure you can play Rocky's Boots pre-reading. In fact I would not be sad if v1 of Starfighter was playing Robot Odyssey on a web page. :-)

sea6ear 12y ago
I was going to suggest Robot Odyssey. That was my first introduction to digital logic, although I didn't realize it till years later, when I actually studied some digital logic. There used to be a clone in java called Droid Quest that would run without an emulator, but I went looking for it a little while ago, and the web site appears to be empty. The only remains I found is a github repo with the source code, but I haven't tried to see if I can build and run it yet.