computers for children

From: Francois <fauradon_at_pclink.com>
Date: Tue Jan 12 19:58:11 1999

One of the main problem in getting a kid interested in one machine is not
really at the level of what they can do with it but more IMHO to what
machine they are used to play with.
My daughter (4) and my son (2) are both used to play with thepentium running
Winblows. If I show them a game on a c64 or Apple ][ or any other machine
for that matter they look at me weird and ask if they can play with the
pentium since I'm not using it...
I belive that if a kid is interested in programming (mine are not yet:( it
is better to let them choose what machine they are attracted to. I don't
know yet whether any of mine will have any interest in old machines but for
the time being I'm just happy that they show any interest at all in one of
them. What I'm trying to do is show them as much as I can (or as much as
they can take) about other machines. I'll let them choose what they want
later if they keep the interest.
I can see ten years from now trying to tell my son that the C64 had an 8X1
byte for sprites and having him replying ok but how do you do hollographic
simulation?
Of course skill learned from old machines are valuable to understand what's
going on inside of the machine but the trend today is to make abstraction of
all those _annoying_ facts and use the proper library or API. (I work with
Winblows programmers who have no clue how a computer operate)
So I say let the kid choose.
Francois.
Received on Tue Jan 12 1999 - 19:58:11 GMT