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Your parents deserve credit here for that great response.

My parents mostly encouraged me mostly by providing the tools and leaving me to it; I spent some of my early years (pre-teen) reverse engineering/cracking (education only, never released), then an inordinate amount of time playing the Discworld MUD.

Once I got bored of BASIC my dad bought me some books on C++ and took me to a college course on PC building with him; though initially the college were reluctant to let a child take the course (I was 12). He'd often take me to work and answer all of my questions about what he was doing; PLC/panel-building at the time, with some very cool fibre optic tech and DIN rail mounted devices of all kinds; I'd help make wiring looms and labelling.

He and I would build a new ("family") PC every year until I got my first job after uni and could pay for my own damn computer;

He just uses laptops now and hasn't built or used a desktop since the last one we built together with my first pay-packet over a decade ago.

I was lucky. During the "core" years of my childhood (8-12), my dad worked from home. This is also when I started getting into computing. He always arranged his days so that he was off work by the time we kids came home from school. My desk was in his office, and in the summers he'd always answer my questions or at least point me in the right direction if I asked him something when he wasn't on a call. He always seemed to have this superpower of being able to switch his full focus instantly. Mom was a full-time mom until I was 15, when financial conditions ('08) meant they both needed to work. She has a masters in math education, so there was always at least one well educated person I could annoy at any time.

I remember when dad first gave me the ability to use the internet by myself (2001, iirc). He told me how it was an unprecedented way of accessing information and learning, something he felt would have put him years ahead of where he was if he had it when he was in college. I discovered so many niche communities for the things I was interested in (LEGO Mindstorms, AVR, Rokenbok, model trains, etc.). I kinda yearn for the days when the internet wasn't the advertisement ridden and siloed hellscape it is today.

Incredible. I hope my children are interested in programming/IT as I am; because it's both something I'm good at an passionate about and I'd love to share that with them.

I work from home now, and have done since Covid; so I've spent (almost) every day of my children's lives at home with them. I'm currently trying to work out how best to set up the older child (3yo) with a computer to learn on; Something like a child-friendly / fun version of Monkeytype [0] to get her reading/spelling/typing as she's always shown an interest in what I'm doing on the computer.

I have a bunch of Pis and mechanical keyboards so I'm thinking I'll let her choose some sort of enclosure we can "print" (3D printing is just "printing" to her, because how could it have fewer than 3 dimensions?) and set her up nearby.

The internet really isn't what it was when I was a child (not too far from yourself), but I guess that's the price for it going mainstream.

Monkey see, monkey do.

One of my earliest and fondest memories is my father taking apart and fixing the family PC at the kitchen table while on the phone with Zeos support. Seeing your parents genuinely interested and doing these activities is priceless.

Zeos! I remember wanting their sleek notebook after seeing a bronzed ad in Byte. Of course, sleek was like, under 2" thick.

I didn't have a parental example with technology, but at least they bought computers and let me play with them.

I think gcompris might be what you're looking for. It runs nicely on Raspberry Pis and there are several activities that are suitable for three year olds, as well as activities for older learners.

I'll be looking for a similar project soon. My 2yo also just knows 3d printing as printing ("blue tape... printer hot!") and we recently built the Otto DIY robot[0] together. I'm looking into building something like a modernized TRS-80 model 100[1] with bigger font and maybe a better screen angle. The robot has been great in that we could build it with minimal components and add parts to improve functionality, and I'd like to carry that spirit into our computer build as well. (Bonus points if I can get the computer to send instructions to the robot!)

I've learned a tremendous amount on the internet and I'm still learning. There's never been a better time to get information, but some of it is getting harder to find.

0: https://www.instructables.com/Otto-Build-You-Own-Robot-in-Tw...

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100

> Your parents deserve credit here for that great response.

Well, half a great response

No way I would tell my kids to take up with some a-hole online that is more interested in trolling than anything else

I don't know that trolling was what it is now; I don't remember trolls so much in those years (mid 90s-early 00s for me), and they might have just thought that this person could be reasoned with, though depending on how old my children were, I'd certainly be keeping an eye on that conversation.

Oh, there was no shortage of troll those days…

> No way I would tell my kids to take up with some a-hole online

That was my first instinct as well. But thinking about it, the second interaction seems to have solidified to him that the person didn't have any actual argument against his participation, that it was just an asshat being unpleasant.

What's the inverse of rose-colored glasses? Looking at the past through the lens of today? That's kinda what this comment suggests. The internet of the 90s was much safer than the internet of today is.

This has nothing to do with internet. There were assholes long before the internet who would bully whoever looks weaker. They would do it in person, on meetings, in friends group, against students if they were teachers, against waiters and other service staff. This guy definitely seems like one.

Plus, that assessment turned out right.

I think it was necessary to build resilience, so it doesn’t affect you in a worse way when you are an adult

Imo, teaching kids to assert healthy boundaries is better then teaching them to accept being insulted or doormats.

Heya from a fellow Discworld player! What was your character’s name if I may ask?

Hi! My main was "Beholder" (Warrior), I also had Mythrandyr (Witch), an (PK) Assassin whose name I forget (his dual-wield poison-daggers were named Atrum and Lucis) and a couple of other minor character's I rarely used.

I met some incredible characters in my time playing that have had as much effect on my life as any IRL person I've met. I would love to be able to get back into it again but I don't think the experience will be the same any more, decades later.

Damn that mirrors my experience with my dad pretty much (bar Uni)! He'd also take delight in renting out my support services (mainly as a proud parent but also so I could make some pocket money) by fixing his mates machines, which were usually a piece of cake. Helped me get a career in IT.

Ha, my dad did exactly the same to me; except he wouldn't let them pay me. I guess if you're gonna raise tech-literate kids, you've got to be able to call on them for favor-making. I'm sure he is (I am) owed more than a few returned favors by now.

We were all teenagers once, newbies, neophytes; we all wrote our first function at some point.

It's odd how some of us forget that once we become competent -- once upon a time, we weren't. We needed a helping hand, a tip, some advice on a problem, and we went to people and asked for help and got it.

I never ever fault anyone for being a newbie; I only fault them if they don't try. If anyone tries to do something, they should be commended for the attempt. A lot of people never bother to try anything at all!

I went to be a guest speaker at the high school I went to a few weeks ago.

I was honestly surprised that the teachers were surprised I loved answering the students' questions. Like, why else am I here? Maybe they can identify with me more because I'm only 12-15 years into their future rather than mid to late career like their parents.

I kinda did my 20-ish minute ramble on what studying CS looks like, what learning programming practice looks like, and getting into the tech industry after school. I tried to leave a bunch of places for them to probe and I was so happy that they did. Couldn't even get close to answering all their questions in the remaining 35 minutes.

Actually, I didn't go to people and ask for help. Instead, I was sitting in front of a computer for half a year, wondering why my source files I typed off some programming magazine would not run. I settled on batch programming for a while, because those .bat files DID run! Well, I figured it out after a while, but there never was a live human in the loop.

Obviously this guys response is not nice, but I CAN understand wanting to restrict the quality of contributors I get. Trying out things is great, but do it on your time, not mine. Luckily, in real life for most projects, the number of contributors is so small that quality moderation is not a problem.

I definitely don't like replacing proper technical design and documentation by social channels. Recently I tried to use a promising framework with very little documentation of its concepts, and their answer was to seek help in their Discord channels. I quickly ran into weird problems and bugs with the framework; I wasn't surprised.

> "children" need to stay out of programming

Before I could drive, my father would taxi me to computer user group meetings and such.

I've always talked too much, asked stupid questions. One time, a guy dismissed my question about tablet input devices, something like "You're too young to know about that kind of thing."

It was one of the few times I've seen my father get genuinely pissed off.

“There is no stupid question” is something any teacher should get ingrained in the minds of the students.

Of course once the student STUDIES.

Teachers definitely need to act like there are no dumb questions.

Not because dumb questions don't exist — I've asked plenty of dumb questions (are my closed physics stack exchange questions visible anywhere?) — but because they're a necessary step to getting good.

My dad did the same for me. Starting at about age 10 he'd bring me to Chibots meetings - a robotics club near where we were living at the time.

Ageism never died on the internet I guess. I think people underestimate how many young people are online these days.

Well, sure, if you're an eldritch horror, everyone seems young...

I remember the first time I got "flamed": describing TinyCC as "terrible" for its limitations, on the FidoNet C programming board. I was maybe .. 14? Certainly the 2400 baud modem era.

(Fidonet was an early federated message board system)

(TinyCC was not Fabrice's project of the same name but an earlier freeware compiler that only supported the "tiny" memory model, and was therefore limited to 64kb code and 64kb data.)

As a grownup i would like to say sorry to younger you on behalf of other grownups. And to the younger you: go be whatever you want! Infact: if there is a teenager reading this right now that have been asshatted by a grownup about coding, don't take in a single word of the asshat: go be brilliant in you if-ststements and create new wonderful stuff. Please do.

I wouldn’t be too surprised if the other people wasn’t even an adult themselves. I’ve seen plenty of young programmers that have been doing it for a few years treat other newer younger programmers with contempt.

Meanwhile teenage-me (~13) had a ton of absurd questions and a habit of starting and 'announcing' projects I could obviously never finish (I was just teaching myself BASIC at the time and asking about making things like antiviruses). I didn't even really have an understanding of licenses etc so I eventually pissed off a bunch of people on the forum for the specific dialect I was learning. I imagine dealing with enough people like young me (curious but too much effort to babysit) might cause people to have negative associations of young teens in programming.

My parents didn't really care for my interest in computers, thinking that I was wasting time and sacrificing school on 'games'. Although they at least humored me on getting books on more modern languages like C# so I managed to improve. For a bit I even held an immature grudge on the guy who got mad at me which motivated me to get better. Nowadays it's all just a funny memory though.

Do people really forget that they once did not have an ability they currently have. It is strange to be unable to associate your past ignorance with other peoples current ones.

A lot of online communities have pretty inclusive rulesets also, even posting on some reddit forums you will quickly get treated like a pariah for violating some obscure syntax rule.

Your parents sound pretty cool.

Ah yes. I remember a long time ago I had corrected some out-of-tree Linux driver to support a newer Linux release and sent the changes to the ML, only to be chastised for not posting properly formatted patches... Mmh... OK?