From owner-freebsd-chat Mon Mar 12 19:59:49 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-26-235-186.mmcable.com [65.26.235.186]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 7B9E337B719 for ; Mon, 12 Mar 2001 19:59:45 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from mwm@mired.org) Received: (qmail 59737 invoked by uid 100); 13 Mar 2001 03:59:44 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15021.39728.193728.726045@guru.mired.org> Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 21:59:44 -0600 To: David Kelly Cc: "Daniel O'Connor" , Rob , "freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG" Subject: Re: How do you get kids interested in computers- other than play In-Reply-To: <200103130320.f2D3KCe08320@grumpy.dyndns.org> References: <200103130320.f2D3KCe08320@grumpy.dyndns.org> X-Mailer: VM 6.89 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org David Kelly types: > "Daniel O'Connor" writes: > > You could just install Python for Windows and see if he plays with that, > On an iMac? :-) What - you mean an iMac won't run Windows software? Good for it! Guess you should install the Mac version, then. Actually, I've been pretty impressed with the Python+tkInter stuff. I write code on FreeBSD, and give it to people to run on Windows or the Mac, and it just works - with the exception of the one time I needed select(), which Windows doesn't do. They force programmers to use a more error-prone approach. In my experience, people (as opposed to geeks) start fooling with computers because 1) Someone with authority makes them, or 2) there's something useful they want it to do. Since I assume #1 is out, you might look at what gets done away from the computer, and point out how the computer could help with that somehow. If you really want them to start programming, or scripting, write the appropriate tool yourself (in Python on your FreeBSD box, of course), and let him know you wrote it. Add the first change request. *Help* him add the second one. http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message