So You Want to Raise a Computer Geek

My wonderful husband put this together to answer a homeschooling mother's question about raising a child to be a computer Geek. He truly is my partner in educating our children.

Unfortunately, computers now days are not what they were when I was in high school at the dawn of the PC revolution. In 1980 it was possible to buy an Apple ][ computer and eventually know everything there was to know about how it operated. The original 1977 version came with a complete listing of the operating system source code for heaven's sake! Now days, the operating software in your computer is unimaginably more complex and the inner workings are closely guarded trade secrets. It is no longer possible to truly peek under the hood and see exactly how it all works. And the systems are so complex now that it's virtually impossible for any one person to know everything there is to know about how the system operates. On the other hand, computers now days are far more powerful and the kinds of things you can do with them are far more interesting. Now days, we each have a super computer on our desk. Also, we now have the internet and that means that if you have a question on how something works, you stand a good chance of being able to find the answer without paying a dime. These days, Google is a programmer's best friend.

One of the best things you can do for a would-be computer programmer is give him (or her) the tools. If you're reading this, one can assume that you already have a computer. So go out and get a programming language. Visual Basic is a reasonably good place to start because it is well supported, has a mature community, is reasonably easy to learn, and is something that is actually used professionally by millions of people. C++ is the industry standard these days so that might also be a good choice but the learning curve is quite a bit steeper. I've been starting my young kids out with a small language called Lua (
<http://www.lua.org/> http://www.lua.org). It's a lovely language that is extremely simple to learn but I would only use that as an introduction. While it's becoming quite popular in the computer gaming industry (as a scripting language) it's not really a language you can build a career on. As a general rule I do NOT recommend that people start by learning computer languages that are purely academic. In my opinion, there's very little to be gained by learning a language that nobody really uses. I think it's better to teach programming concepts with a real working language that actually has a large community of programmers behind it.

The next best thing you can do for a would-be computer programmer is find him (or her) a mentor. While it's certainly possible to be entirely self-taught, it's really not the most efficient way to learn anything. It's always better to have someone who can help point you in the right direction and keep you from having to make the same mistakes as others before you. Don't try and do it all on your own. Get enrolled in a class. Find other people (real flesh and blood people, not just names on a computer screen) who your budding genius can learn with.

And finally, please supervise what little Einstein is doing. Now days, with nearly every computer connected to the internet, there is real potential to get into serious trouble. When I was a kid it was cool to try and duplicate copy-protected software, it was a great way to learn. Now days you can get thrown in jail for that. It used to be cool to write prank programs that messed up (or appeared to mess up) someone's computer. Now days you can get thrown in jail for that too. Please make sure that your kid stays far away from the hacker community. You'll be doing us all a favor.

by Steve Blanding

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