[lloeki]

> on her own initiative

My daughter is 3yo so a bit early ^^, but 2 years ago I bought my nephew (then 8, loves to tinker) a Pi 400 plus a couple of kid-oriented introductory programming books (about Scratch and Python, very nicely done I must say, I reviewed them beforehand). Of course he started with playing Minecraft Pi but an hour after he was moving a cat around in Scratch.

Now I heard he's tinkering with Python. Pretty sure the GPIO is going to get some heavy use down the road, bridging the digital world to the physical one (where he tinkers with mechanical and electric stuff already).

There was zero pushing nor action on my part (except showing him how to operate the mouse), I literally just handed him the device and books over, he plugged it in and went exploring his merry way. Curiosity is a powerful engine.

[adastra22]

Yeah my daughter got her start with the Piper computer, which is just a rebranded raspberry pi (albeit at a much higher price point), in a balsa wood case you put together yourself. The built in software is a customized Minecraft Pi, with built-in subquests where you learn how to put together the peripherals on a bread board.

That's all she needed, really. She graduated from that to Swift Playgrounds on my iPad, then once she had some understanding of Swift and programming in general she was solving problems on replit. Not sure yet how she'll jump the gap to making actual apps, but that's her goal and she's trying. She doesn't have to do it alone though; I'll help out as needed.