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Aside from the good meta points made above, and regarding programming/hacking/IT: 1. Get him started with Lisp and/or Scheme first, on Linux. Here's a great story illustrating why (in addition to pg's must-read essays on his site), along with a reference to a great book, The Schemer's Guide (which is out of print, grab one while you can still find one in used stores): http://www.trollope.org/scheme.html 2. Linux only (or BSD, or Minix, or similar FOSS OS). You learn far more about how computers and computing work using Linux than with Windows or Mac. After he's become proficient with recursive thinking and all the other goodness Lisp teaches, get him K&R, a laptop or PC with Linux on it, and kernel hack with him. 3. Throw out the TV. 100% trash. Even 'educational' stuff is not really educational in that it is passive learning, which does no one any favors. Learning is doing, analyzing, deconstructing, hacking, making, building, not passively watching. 4. Second the advice to read to him and with him as much as possible. For all the reasons mentioned above. |