ExDOS is developed by Omar, “almost 14 years old”

Here is an archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150810162221/http://exdos.eu.p...

I've had some success teaching middle schoolers with Chip8 and a structured assembler: http://johnearnest.github.io/Octo/

That looks like 6502 but it doesn't have ADD, only ADC. I prefer the Z80 though. :-)

I also think starting with Asm is a good idea, because it forces you to think about things like data representation (often glossed over in HLLs) and breaking down complex operations into a series of simple steps - something that you have to internalise effectively to become good at programming. If there is time for it, going one step lower to logic gates would be even better to dispel the "magic" and see that CPUs are actually very conceptually simple and logical machines.

Of course to become productive they should move to a HLL and learn the higher-level organisation (functions/procedures, objects, ...) but I agree that the basics are important to understand first.

This is a book I strongly recommend, it's definitely written at a level readable for kids and young adults:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code:_The_Hidden_Language_of_C...

In my personal case I am not sure if it didnt end up 'bad' for me. The first language I've learned was 6502 ASM on C64 (and learned is a word of many degrees here, I can't say I've written anything serious in it, ever) and for some reason I've been struggling with many other languages for years to come after that - tried Perl, PHP, C, AmigaE, without being able to grasp any of those. Until I've met Python, that in few days took me from ground to the stratosphere (which today again looks like a ground, but that's a different subject). And even then, old habits of counting cycles and thinking about what the hell is the language doing made me to prematurely optimize my code (like doing 'while 1' instead of 'while True' because in 2.7 True is simply a variable, what means the interpreter will have to check its value first and that means lost CPU cycles, and lots of other things that made sense in 6502 ASM) instead of getting it to do shit ;) It took me a while to 'unlearn' those habits and to simply enjoy the language in its own form.

> That awkward phase of internalizing that '=' is an assignment operator and is different from another operator meant to test equality gets a lot shorter for a beginner.

I'll probably have to thank one of my highschool math teachers for inadvertently helping me skip this phase altogether then :)

He always pestered us to use the "equivalence" operators ⇔ or ≡ (the latter mostly for geometry stuff), and only use the regular equal when you had unambiguous contexts like "Let f(x) = x + 2" or "if x = 5". At the same time I was learning programming (with C++ as my first language...), and I could easily see "=" as being for assignment, since in other contexts you either used something more fancy (like ⇔ or ≡ in math, and "==" in code) or you used explaining words like "let" or "if" to clarify meaning. Though I think it took me a while to get things like `while (x = getch()) { ... }` :)

> That awkward phase of internalizing that '=' is an assignment operator and is different from another operator meant to test equality gets a lot shorter for a beginner.

Pity language designers don't take the more obvious solution of making their maths-derived operators behave like the language they're drawn from.

I've talked about the x = x + 2 / x == 0 "problems" with a couple of people during university and it seems there's different levels of problems/irritations people have with the syntax. For me it was mostly a "shrug ok so that's that, don't see the problem" when it came to accidentally using "=" instead of "==". A couple of friends seemed to have mental blockades and often wrote code containing the typical bug of "=" instead of "==" (the hotfix of 1 == a instead of a == 1 helped some).

For me the irritating thing was x = x + 2 since it triggered my math brain which protested and simply said...well that can't be, error. So I guess I did have the exact reverse problem always seeing the assignment as an equality. Thankfully this passes really quickly after you immerse yourself in it for a day.

Of course years later one of the first sentences from our Prolog 101 prof was "so you have been programming for a while now...let me write this down...i = i + 1...someone explain what this does...what would you suppose a (stereotyped) mathematician (that only knows math) would tell me" Kind of made me smile. /offtopic_anecdote

Surely something like Logo has similar advantages (small set of simple instructions) without requiring students to learn about CPUs before they can start? Plus it means they get to draw pictures instead of relatively boring calculations.

And switching to assembly seems like a pretty overkill solution to the = vs == problem.

> Plus, no sound rules out gaming and media; no internet (let alone Wifi) rules out any connectivity; no strong filesystem rules out moving data around easily; no USB rules out loading things from external storage, gamepads, etc.

> Only strong use case would be for embedded; but ARM platforms have this area beat substantially in cost, power, tooling, etc.

http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/linux/run/ch01_02.htm

Linux started out as something quite a bit less impressive than what you see today.

It is much less work to tune Linux.

http://electronicdesign.com/embedded/how-boot-linux-under-on...

http://www.makelinux.com/emb/fastboot/

Sure, but it's impressive nonetheless. A 14 year old kid is building an operating system. What was I doing at 14? I was not building operating systems, thats for sure.

Maybe we should get rid of weight classes for boxing, women's leagues for sports, and anything that acknowledges accomplishments for anyone that is not 100% objectively the best on the planet.

> "Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not criteria such as degrees, age, race, sex, or position"

That should be valid for just any activity/profession, not just Hackers. I don't see the need for the specific segment here.

> While it is great that we recognize good work like this, bringing up his age in the title is focusing on a pretty irrelevant

It's relevant because it's remarkable and it puts the author in a much smaller circle than he would be if he were older. Trying to pretend otherwise is silly.

Being able to read at age 18 is a lot less interesting than at age 4. Same goes for rare technical feats (and writing an OS is such a thing, most developers wouldn't be able to pull it off, so doing so at age 13 is certainly a lot more interesting than when you're older).

Regarding ExDOS (or your EyePC), would we be discussing it right now if it weren't for the creator's age? Not to discount this work, but if it had been the side project of a mid-career engineer, it would be a non-story. Not because the work is good or bad, but people simply wouldn't care.

The point being, you benefitted tremendously by your work being judged relative to your age, so it seems disingenuous for you to suggest Omar shouldn't get the same treatment.

I doubt ExDOS or EyePC will be remembered in the annals of history as engineering marvels, but that's irrelevant. They are indicators that the creator has the talent, intellect, and dedication to accomplish a lot in a very short amount of time, and they hint at great potential.

That interview says he started working for Connectiva at 14 and started maintaining the 2.4 kernel at 18.

(still impressive)

He's a kid. Just let him be. You can pick his brain when he is a little older. People forget that even prodigies need time to grow up.

My free web hosting is limited. It seems the maximum view limit has been reached. :/

Eh, let them enjoy their early formative teenage years without the stress of a job. There's a time and place for working but barely 14 isn't it.

Thanks for mentioning me, by the way. Oh, and I don't need a job--it's against my ego to ever work for someone else for money (though, I'll definitely help you, if you need it).

Keep in mind that I rarely use Twitter. However, feel free to contact me through email or Facebook.

But don't real programmers use a magnetized needle and a steady hand?