Re: OFF TOPIC -- Starter programming language for a brilliant child

["M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>]

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 12:24 AM, Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2013/3/25 marbux <marbux@gmail.com>:
>>
>> The reason I am asking is that about a week ago I met an 8-year-old
>> girl named Hunter whose obvious brilliance very simply rocked me on my
>> heels. (I'm going on 67 years old and this was the first time I'd had
>> such an experience.) She has no computer. So with her mother's
>> permission I am buying her a used laptop. I'd like to equip the laptop
>> with that programming language's interpreter and its tutorials. (I'm
>> also going to bring her to the attention of some people I know who
>> work with gifted children.)
>>
>
> Just one of word from advice from a contemporary: don't choose
> something you yourself do not know well. You will be an honorary
> grandfather-cum-guru and don't want to be forced into confessing
> ignorance too soon.
>

Yeah ... exactly ;-)

Really, there are so many "programming for kids" resources that you
almost need a buyers' guide. Scratch, which is Python-based, seems to
be popular now. For that matter, if you build the laptop with Fedora,
you can get the whole One Laptop Per Child Sugar desktop, which
includes Scratch and e Toys, a dialect of Smalltalk/Squeak.  There's
also an openSUSE educational LiveDVD called Edu-Li-F-E that covers
pre-school through grad school. (Yes, really - every open source game
and professional grade math package, most of the desktops, a LAMP
stack, Linux Terminal Server, ...).



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