Love this idea. Could you just expand a little on PlayOS? It's this running an underlying OS which then boots into a bash console running your repl?
Just curious, would love to do something similar (or use yours if it was available!)
Just curious, would love to do something similar (or use yours if it was available!)
My first response to "let's do computers daddy" was to install a kids KDE Linux with some things like TuXPaint and whatever. But I noticed she really wanted to be doing what I was doing - typing. Also I had to launch everything. And it seemed inevitable that within minutes alone with the machine she'd accidentally get into desktop configuration and hide the task bar or something.
So then I thought, what about just Bash?
That didn't work so well either, and I ended up aliasing so many commands to simpler things - but it was a step in the right direction.
So now I just launch into a "kiosk mode shell" made in python that dispatches the commands we talk about together. We say... wouldn't it be cool if a computer could do this or that, and then I think about how to make that a single three letter command with a few options. I'd love it if she'd get into bash or programming properly as another commenter's kid did, but I won't push it, this is foundation work. There's every possibility she'll say "I'm bored with computers dad" and I'll just have to try not to be broken-hearted :) Perhaps the main aim is to cultivate a respect and healthy attitude for real computers, so tablets and phones seem like the toys they are.