[yarcob]

I've tried to get my kids into tinkering with computers by showing them how to write Python code (with Thonny) and installing lots of programs for drawing etc.

They are curious, and they do tinker with stuff when I'm there, but about 10 minutes after I leave the room they'll find a way to watch cartoons.

Somehow the internet has become this huge distraction and mostly just a replacement for a TV. I kinda miss what it was like in the 1990ies and early 2000s.

[tomcam]

You should forbid them to program.

[fouc]

Turn off internet then. A computer with a bunch of tools to play with and documentation, and no internet.

[sandworm101]

https://xkcd.com/466/

"Moving: There are few forces more powerful than geeks desperately trying to get internet in a new apartment."

If my parents turned off the internet, or just blocked youtube, my #1 mission would be to restore that service by whatever means possible.

[bcrl]

I resemble that. Somehow the lack of internet out where I live has ended up with me building an 85km FTTH network over the past 4 years. Hopefully it will double in size this year now that it's finally bootstrapped to profitability.

[brianush1]

Restoring the internet would be a pretty geeky and tinker-y mission on its own

[xyanb]

Agreed! I had a recent experience with no internet and was running around my house yanking coax cables, checking my electrical cupboard and whacking the router.

Turns out, there was a line issue outside my house :P

[user-the-name]

Cutting your children off from their friends because you want them to copy your own hobbies is not, in any way, a healthy or sane thing to do.

[dang]

Would you please not cross into personal attack? It's not allowed here, and it's particularly destructive in highly emotional areas like parenting. Please make your substantive points without that and without name-calling.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[slifin]

Something I'm noticing more and more is that programming is for the most part is not fun

Fun things are visual, immediate full of feedback and introspection, a sensible curve of difficulty and reward for effort

A raspberry pi doesn't spark joy, in fact most computers don't

I'm not exactly sure how we could do better but Bret Victor's talk inventing on principle and his other talks are always an inspiration

[yarcob]

Thonny and the turtle package are pretty neat. Not quite as direct as Bret Victors examples, but you have immediate feedback and a debugger.

The Python arcade package is also absolutely fun. We spent a day programming a Snake-clone, and some things like the predefined color names are just hilarious. (But I realised that building a game with a run loop is probably too hard for beginners)

My main problem is the difficulty part you mention: There's a pretty big step before you can do rewarding things like moving the player with keyboard control in a fun way.

[slifin]

Along these lines I'm tempted to try out game maker studio 2 at some point, I think in code we rely way too much on text

I'd love lots of custom project specific UI in my ide showing all kinds of things to help me out with my larger projects

[jojo2000]

Creation vs. consumption. If everyone consumes, who creates ? And why is everyone pushed towards consumption of content. Easy vs. hard. The hard way is the right way.