Frankly I would give the kid a break and give him a chance to play, enjoy the outdors and read before even thinking about putting him in front of a computer.

I know we all love computers around here, but I don't know why my son should. Why should I be force him to learn my trade, or even why he should be exposed to it before he asks for it.

Plus I don't want to raise an idiot-savant. I had never seen a computer before I went to college (yes, that's how old I am! My parents did not even get a TV until I was 10 or so), and I don't think that's a handicap when it comes to coding skills. Developing my imagination through reading seems to me the single most important part of my education, the one that helps me the most when I am programming. And even if I sucked at soccer, at least it taught me to respect other people's skills!

So please, give your kid a chance to grow up as a human being, not as a programer. He will thank you for that.

BTW, the paragraph about how scary it would be for you to see him take to VB instead of Perl is Hilarious, good job ;--)

I agree with mirod on this. I have had past experience with having certain sports forced on me when I was a kid, and it was not as fun to do those sports as ones that I chose on my own to play.

Let your kid decide eventually. You ultimately can't make your child do everything you do ... but you can be an example of what you do, and if the kid is interested, they'll let you know soon enough.

Andy Summers

Yes, Lego is great! I know that, I went through this stage 35+ years ago. Also, coloring books are fine. And just playing outdoors, running and biking...

To learn programming, children have first to learn to read, write and compute. Unless you have a very gifted child, you will have to wait until he is 5 year old or so. Until then, all he will do is use the mouse, or using PLOKTA-mode with the keyboard.

On the other side, I have seen a friend's son, 6-year old. At school, he was learning to read and write, on his very first year. And at home, he was playing Sid Meyer's Civilization. According to his father, he was rather good at it.

Also, coloring books are fine

But the anti-colouring book is better!

andy.

I'd been using BASIC on a Commodore-64 since the age of 10, I think. Then some JavaScript around 14 or so. C++ didn't work for me -- it was far too strict and rigorous.

Perl opened doors for me. Perl allowed me to use my brain, and not C++'s idea of a brain. It let me do things my way, which ended up being the Perl way.

_____________________________________________________
Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker.
s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;

Congratulations. My daughter is nearly three and I understand your joy, your awe, and your exhaustion.

The smart-aleck in me wants to answer your question with, "well, the moments leading to conception might be a little early, as well as self-defeating--er--I mean, inappropriate and/or distracting; however, any time after that would be just fine...provided you ensure that the desire to learn Perl is his and not yours."

I don't mean that to be offensive; I do mean the latter bit. In watching my daughter grow, I've noticed that she is her own little person. She has her own likes, dislikes, and desires. While my wife and I work very hard to curb her more selfish desires--and to teach her the finer arts of listening, sharing, and being nice, we also try to make sure that she (my daughter) knows that she can do anything she wants to do, if she's willing to work hard enough and (as Elmo says) "keep trying." Should she ever show an interest in what I do for a living, I will happily show her what I can. (I've already built her a dual boot Win98/Linux box.)

I can't speak for my wife, but I do it because my father is very good with cars. He grew up on a farm in the Midwest and the ability to tinker with engines was an absolute necessity. He loves to tinker with them until they work and tried very hard to instill the same love of engine tinkering in me. Put bluntly, he failed. I can't stand working on cars. I can do it if I have to, but much prefer to pay someone else to deal with it.

IOW, it's good to let your child share in your joys, but don't forget to encourage him to develop his own and then participate in them as fervently as he wants to help you. (And he will get to the "I want to help" stage...it won't last, but it will happen.)

I'm sure you're already planning this, so please forgive the fears of a square peg someone once tried to punch into a round hole.

And, please, before you get to chess, don't forget to play "Rock, Paper, Scissors, " "Checkers," "Tag," "Peekaboo," and whatever else he wants to play. Children are beautiful creatures. Let them enjoy (and take time to enjoy and reflect on) their childhood and their innocence, too.

--f

I like that rule, but be aware of how they handle it when you teach them a little bit about it. If every simple question on their part gets a lecture, the kid will learn to associate the subject with lectures and will avoid it. Let them set the pace.

I do think that easy graphics are key to enjoyment, so maybe something like Logo might be better for starting off.

I remember when I was around 5 or 6 my dad would teach me really basic math operations which I just loved. Every few evenings I'd ask him to teach me some math and he'd show me how to do some addition or subtraction, and then later multiplication and division. I thought this was the coolest thing ever because I was learning math which made me feal extremely proud and happy.

Alex might even ask you about programming. I know that I was always very interested in what my dad did at work and for play.

-Ben Jacobs (dooberwah)
Homepage: http://dooberwah.perlmonk.org
PGP Public Key: http://dooberwah.perlmonk.org/mykey
"one thing i can tell you is you got to be free"

-Blake

I guess if he were my child, and he started to show an interest in computers, I'd start off by making little logic games and puzzles, perhaps, and teaching the kid pattern recognition by playing card games like Concentration or even Go Fish. If you can find a good way to use simple games and fun little puzzles to illustrate concepts like decimal vs base2/base8 (not quite sure how you'd do that) I know those concepts would eventually come in handy for him.

To reiterate what the others here have said, however, I would be very wary of trying to push the young child in any particular direction, and certainly stay away from forcing the issue. If he feels like he has no choice but to do what you say, it might create a psychological barrier when it comes to programming that may be difficult to overcome. I know that I had a deep aversion to playing the piano for many years because my parents forced me into lessons and recitals, which I didn't enjoy at all at the time. Later I discovered a love for the guitar, but it took me a long time to overcome some of my feelings of anxiety and resentment and truly start to enjoy music.

If you are concerned about the visual aspect of programming beckoning him, you might want to look at the older language, Turtle, which allows kids to draw pictures by specifying where they want the turtle to go. It brings back fond memories, and there is probably an open source variant somewhere with updated code.

Above all, congratulations; bringing a life into this world is a precious gift, and you sound like you are going to be an excellent parent.

So in short, don't force it on the kid, but if the kid shows interest, it is never too early.

-panguar

Congrats, my spawn is two and a half. ('No nap, Daddy. No nap!') You're in for one hell of a ride. Spend as much time as you can together. You won't believe how fast he changes.

Pick up a copy of Seymour Papert's Mindstorms (Lego named their bots after this book.)

Teach the skills needed to analyze problems and learn. To this end teach mathematics, programming and logic. Programs are proofs and proofs are programs. As a 7 year old, Logo programming was the sh!t. Applesoft basic was also fun because of the easy graphics. IMHO, to make perl interesting, you'll need to come up with an easy way to make pictures.

TGI says moo