I am blessed with a *very* gifted nine-years old daughter for whom I
have recently installed an old GNU/Linux Mandrake 7.2 on an equally old
Pentium Pro box.  She is enjoying it tremendously and has no problems
understanding simple desktop operations and the file system basics
(Needless to say - she has already mastered the 30 or so games I
installed for her).

Now, I would like to teach her programming basics using Python (because
I believe it is best suited for this purpose and, yes, also because it
is my favorite language).  The only tutorial I have found so far is
"How to Think Like a Computer Scientist - Learning with Python" which,
while very good indeed, is geared towards adult newbie students.

Is there something out there like "Python for kids" which would explain
*basic* programming concepts in a way which is accessible and
entertaining for kids aged 10-14 (that about where her brain is right
now) and which would allow them to "play around" and have fun solving
small problems?

Many thanks in advance,

"""
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in
waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht
the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a
toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae
the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a
wlohe.
"""

the algo whold be something like

openfile
for word in file
   tmp=word[0]
   tmp+=permut(tmp[1:-2])
   tmp+=word[-1]
   print word

She could enjoy sending letters like this, neat secrete codes for a
nine year old ;)

Linky http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/personal/matt.davis/Cmabrigde/

G'Luck
- Haz

It is widely held that the intellectual capabilities of children
are inferior to the capabilities of adultes. Nevertheless,
I wonder to which extent this is true.

There is no doubt that the critical sense is much less developed
in children than in adults: for instance, as a child, I would never
had thought of questioning the existence of Santa Klaus ;)

But here I am discussing other kind of intellectual capabilities,
in particular the ability to learn a programming language.

I think the problem most kids face is *not* lack of intellectual
capability, but lack of concentration. Most kids cannot keep
their concentration focused on a single topic for a long period
of time, so they start one thing and never finish it, since
they have a thousand other little things to do in the mean time.

Becoming older, the ability to discipline themselves increases,
so it is probably easier to learn a programming language for a
15 year old than for 9 year old.

This as a general rule. There are, of course, exceptions. Many
people will never have the needed discipline to learn a programming
language. On the other hand, some people are able to maintain their
concentration focused for a long period of time even in early age.

When I was 2-3 years old I was able to spend whole *days* working
on my Lego construction set. The problem was to keep me out of
my work and explain me that it was time to eat! ;)

I am pretty much convinced I could have mastered Python at the age
of nine. Of course, I cannot prove it, since when I was nine
I had no computer, I did not know English, and Python was not
yet invented. But apart for this minor circumstances, I don't
thing I was dumber as a child than as an adult.

Actually, one could even make the case that children are much better
than adults at learning new things. Adults are better at understand
things, seing the correlations between them, and the inconsistencies
(if any).

The problem teachers face when explaining computers to kids, is
to keep them interested, so they prepare courses about graphics,
videogames, etc. But if you get the right kid, he/she will be
interested even on "IBM Fortran IV with WATFOR and WATFIV" ;)

Personally, at that age I knew everything about the solar system
planets, distances from the Sun, masses, diameters, albedos, etc.
Fortunately, now I have forgot nearly everything ;)

<snip>

This was the challenge that marked my life, I can say.  Next year I
managed to get my parents into buying me a ZX Spectrum 16K, the year
after that I managed to get them into buying me the 32K RAM upgrade
(first hw upgrade I ever did!), and one year and a half later, I managed
to get the Sinclair QL, with better BASIC, multitasking capabilities,
and something more like an OS than any other home computer till then.
And man, wasn't 68k assembly a joy :)

<snip>

Linus Torvalds also bought Sinclair Ql back in the day - I was
quite surprised to find out that it had a 32bit CPU (according to his
autobiography).

MOVE.L ($18000), ($18004)

to copy the long from address 98304 to address 98308.  Intel provided
such functionality much later; I am not sure if even the 386 could use
memory indirect on both operands...

Hi,

On Thu, 23 Mar 2005 tn...@yahoo.com wrote:

regards,

My kids like
  http://www.alice.org
(although they run it under Windows).

Good idea.

1) Have u noticed that whn yu raed that srcamled text luodly, it sounds
like spoken by a deaf person. (because severe loss of hearing makes it
hard to learn correct pronunciation).

2) Is this the same fennomena like in the (ancient Hebrew language?)
that in written form uses consonant letters only.  The reader then fills
in the missing vowels (aeioyäö). Like: kck th bll nt wall nd ctch t bck.

hmm, maybe not!

3) Anyway, gnna love that srcmbled format simply because rerrors do not
appear, show up ;-). (having English as a foreign language)

// moma
    http://www.futuredesktop.org/AsteriskPBX.html  <-

    http://www.futuredesktop.org/hpc_linux.html
    Why run one PC obi  when you can hvae a cluster ?

import turtle

for i in range(4):
    turtle.forward(100)
    turtle.left(90)

Then build some simple functions, like 'square':

def square():
    for i in range(4):
        turtle.forward(100)
        turtle.left(90)

square()

Then add arguments to your functions:

def square(size):
    for i in range(4):
        turtle.forward(size)
        turtle.left(90)

square(100)
square(50)

And so on. At each stage, you can see what's happening.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=310
http://members.lycos.co.uk/csarchive/gilbert.htm

Modern RISC-structured machines have at most one memory operation,
so the instruction is simply completed or not, and can safely be
re-executed if it is not complete.

If you imply that any child's "value" is measured only by their competitive
performance rank in some arena, or that their OWN value as a human being
is insignificant compared to the value of their prodigious talent,
that may be an effective motivational framework for some of them,
but I'm not sure it's not ultimately cruel to celebrate the gift if
ignoring whose burden or blessing it actually is.

Emotionally, they may grow to see themselves as ugly, with their own gift
being a stunningly beautiful sister who gets all the attention.

Or they may identify with their gift and become insufferable narcissistic
egotists as a refuge from human isolation and emotional starvation.

Or they may become wonderful human beings after all, happy stewards of
what becomes a gift to humanity, not just an advantage to exploit meanly.

    Bengt> Or they may become wonderful human beings after all, happy
    Bengt> stewards of what becomes a gift to humanity, not just an
    Bengt> advantage to exploit meanly.

Or they may determine to be exactly what they feel like being at the
moment, independent of what their parents or the surrounding world
feel they should be.

(urgh, way too serious to be pythonic, but it's 5:14am here)