

How to encourage younger brother to teach himself CS. - dayoldsoda

I have a younger brother who is just starting out in high school. He's just started to think about long-term career/college interests and he's interested in computer science. I know that in my freshman year "Intro to Programming" course in college a few years ago, most of the real CS majors already knew how to program. I also know from perusing this site that you can get started early and be very successful.<p>My questions is: How do I encourage him to teach himself programming now, and hopefully by extension give him the tools to succeed in life (and probably do better than me)? I gave him my old Java textbook which is introductory and starts out with parts of the computer and all that jazz. I know there are a lot of web resources, but I think a few great books would do the trick. (Christmas is coming up.)
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stonemetal
You have to drive it off of what interests him. If he is into video games grab
a copy of Panda3d or unity or the UDK and help him write a video game. If he
is into facebook help him write a facebook app. Maybe a copy of MAKE:
Electronics: Learning Through Discovery and some tools.

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blhack
Tell him to build a website. This was the catalyst that finally got me going.
If you can afford it, buy him his own VPS and let him go crazy.

It's cool because new things can happen _really_ quickly, and he is going to
need to learn a lot of other things along the way (databasing, some sys admin,
etc.)

