[imesh]

No disagreement from me. Without gaming on Windows systems I would may never gotten involved in programming in the first place. I'm currently watching what looked like my nephews Roblox/Minecraft addiction turn into some real amazing content creation utilizing youtube as a very real learning source.

[bitwize]

> Without gaming on Windows systems I would may never gotten involved in programming in the first place.

I'm just the opposite. My first computer was a Commodore VIC-20 -- with no games! As far as I was concerned, all it could do was BASIC. It did come with a helpful instruction guide to teach you the rudiments of programming.

I got later systems and games for them later on, but my experience with the VIC-20 put this bias in my head that computers were meant for programming, like pencils were meant for writing with. If it is difficult or impossible to program a digital device, I have trouble considering it a computer at all (even though it technically may be).

[mixmastamyk]

Me too. Here's a blast from the past I recently came across:

https://archive.org/details/Personal_Computing_On_The_VIC-20...

Personally I had the most fun with the sentence generator, but I did find a game somewhere. Something like Missile Command. Had to type it in from a magazine I believe. It never worked quite right however. Had a few obvious bugs which I corrected, and a few I wasn't able to.

The manual is amazing from today's perspective. On the first few pages it has cartoons and teaches you how to use the shift key and such rudimentary things. A dozen pages later you are learning how to PEEK and POKE memory locations. It assumed you were intelligent. I miss that.

Recently I've read there was assembly language book and modem addon, that I never knew existed, a shame really.

I think I'll submit it.

[mixmastamyk]

Kid has Linux, every programming lang available, Minecraft, ebooks, wikipedia, educational websites, etc. We live a block from the library. No shortage of quality learning materials basically. Perhaps ya'll've misread the list.

It's a preference for quality over quantity.

[imesh]

Everybody has their parenting preferences based on their experiences. I believe educated parents making an effort have favorable results. I can't imagine anyone with your lists of rules not raising intellectually stimulated and curious individuals either.

[bradlys]

> Kid has Linux, every programming lang available, Minecraft, ebooks, wikipedia, educational websites, etc. We live a block from the library. No shortage of quality learning materials basically. Perhaps ya'll've misread the list.

Yes - because every kid wants to program purely for the fun of it. There's never an end goal in mind - they just learn functional programming for the fun of it! They all enjoy finding ways to chain esoteric commands together in a terminal.

[mixmastamyk]

What's your point? The programming languages reference was due to comments above that tech folks wouldn't have become who they are without the ability to program.

[bitwize]

There's a place for kids who aren't into that shit.

It's called "Outside".