
The Little Coder's Predicament - soundsop
http://www.advogato.org/article/671.html
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bbgm
At OSCON, Nat Torkington gave a great talk about teaching kids programming
with Scratch (<http://scratch.mit.edu/>), which looks like a great environment
to get kids into programming at a fairly young age. In a world where kids have
so many distractions and a computer is not novel and exciting (like the
Commodore was), you need to keep their attention by keeping them engaged
somehow.

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shaunxcode
I think text editor+canvas+javascript is all anyone really needs now to start
making cool "wow look at the sprites move, scroll and scale!" apps that kids
thrive on! (I'm actually having a renaissance of fun/explorative graphical
programming on that tip myself). The browser is THE platform as they can email
an html file or stick it on their school hosting (no server side stuff
required) account or maybe even whack it into a facebook/myspace/xanga account
somehow.

Also it's free to get an MS xna account and the software required which lets
you develop games for the zune, xbox360 and windows. Blatantly not mac/linux
friendly but that's not what the article is driving at anyway.

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paulgb
A used computer from the late 90s can be found for as little as $5-$10 if you
know where to look. A computer-literate kid should be able to install Ubuntu
these days without much trouble. With Aptitude, the kid now has access to
dozens of great programming languages. The internet is a resource for new
programmers that was unmatched in the Commodore 64 days.

Kids today aren't at a disadvantage, but I'm guessing many kids just don't get
the exposure.

