Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmduke | Hacker News Reader

To me, this reads less like a Minecraft-is-great piece and more like a tablets-are-great piece. Julie's daughter isn't just choosing Minecraft over Disney -- she's choosing activity over passivity, creation instead of consumption.

For the first time ever, toddlers (as in, people too young to understand how a Gameboy works) are interacting and playing in increasingly complex ways. It's not a niche often covered in HN, but the childrens' app market is booming at an unparalleled level: it's why everyone from Amazon to Valve is trying to get involved, because suddenly we have this ubiquitous magical technology that lets our five year olds learn fractions while being on an adventure -- and the price is $.99, instead of an overpriced $15.99 pop-up book or a $49.99 DVD.

There's a lot of FUD in this overwhelmingly technological age, but I think it speaks volumes when I think that I'd rather be a kid now than any other time. The future is bright.

View on HN

It's more than that. I have an 8 year old and an 11 year old who are into minecraft. Minecraft is 100x better than other video games. My son is using redstone and logic gates to build things. My daughter designs these expansive cities with, yes, pools full of wool. It's better than shooting zombies with peas or wiping out the world with an engineered parasite.

Agreed re: minecraft, which is fantastic, but Plants vs. Zombies is actually a really good game too. I like to think of the planting sunflowers mechanic as the kids' first introduction to compound interest.

If the kids are really excited about logic gates, hunt down "Rocky's Boots"[1] or one of its descendants.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockys_Boots

Link correction:

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky%27s_Boots

Thanks! I just cut-and-pasted it, didn't think to check whether the quote had made it through unmolested.

I can't tell you how excited my 11 year old was this morning to show me his latest world right after he'd installed a new texture pack that worked with the old red-blue 3D glasses. I tried to explore around a really felt like an old geezer when I accidentally busted a hole in his wall when I was trying to climb a ladder. "I don't understand these new-fangled games."

You're right. I shouldn't have busted on plants vs zombies. My point was that Minecraft is a particularly good game.

That's good to read, Minecraft is good, but I'll admit I do not regret this time I had alone or with my friends in my bedroom playing Streets of Rage, Tekken, Gran Turismo, and other less intellectual games. I also spent time playing with music instruments, legos, wood, and electronics, but I consider other games to be part of the adventure too.

I totally get your point and I just want to add I'm glad my mother didn't want to push me away from junk and towards science and creativity, because that's where I was going anyways, but making the choice myself felt great. Playing zombie games did not make my math grades any lower than other kids (or so I think), what matters is balance I guess.

Personally, creating/building things always made me happier than anything else, so I had to do it more anyways.

Maybe I'll have another point of view when I have kids though!

This seems like as good a place as any to ask for some parenting advice - I've got a 5 year old. Everybody in his school has iPads. I've noticed a few kids have minecraft, but I've resisted installing it on his iPad because from the sounds of it, mincraft is a diabolically addictive game :-)

However the story and this thread is having me re-think my opinions.

So what age should I set him up with mincraft? Is it suitable for 5 year olds?

> ...mincraft is a diabolically addictive game

Yes, Minecraft is really addictive.

> So what age should I set him up with mincraft? Is it suitable for 5 year olds?

Content-wise, it's definitely suitable for a 5 year old, the addiction aspect is something you'll have to manage. It may be a good idea to start with the creative mode.

The survival mode contains no graphic violence and the enemies are zombies and skeletons that are already dead, although you might have to kill some cute animals to eat (you can play vegan if you like the challenge). There's no sex except animal reproduction, which is represented by tiny hearts and small animals appearing.

Yep, brilliant for 5 year olds and the "Pocket Edition" tablet interface is a lot easier for young kids to handle than the mouse-keyboard version on the PC. Plus the world is smaller, which makes it a lot harder to get hopelessly lost.

PS: People who live in brightly-coloured woolen houses shouldn't play with buckets of lava.

I think you're underestimating the ability of toddlers. At 2-3 years old I could select the paint shop pro disk out of the box (it was a different color), put it into the apple Mac plus. Run the app. Do my digital drawings. Save.

"Leon learned how to use Skype really well. He finds the app in iPhone, opens it, finds the grandma he wants to talk to, opens chat, presses videocall button. And there comes the problem - Leon can't talk yet."

(translated from Russian)

http://bash.im/quote/422509

My 4yo daughter can set the foreground and background colors in emacs on her own (the commands are written out in her notebook, but not in any particular order). We were both really proud the first time she pulled it off.

a text editor with bright colors and large fonts is thousands of times better than magnetic letters.

> My 4yo daughter can set the foreground and background colors in emacs

You, sir, win!

More seriously, has she learnt how to read and type? Or does she like playing with letters on the screen?

She types by hunt and peck. The was a while where I'd have to help her find the "f" key, etc., but that's pretty rare now. She has a notebook with some words spelled out in it (names mostly: "Cinderella," "Ariel," "Mommy,"...) and she'll type them in and read them, and I'll usually write her some sort of message on the screen when we set it up.

We started doing this last fall IIRC and she'd either play with letters or we'd use commands and type words in together. There was a lot of filling the screen with "*" to make a snowstorm. She's somewhat more independent now but there's still a lot of running back and forth and consultation.

She likes Webdings a lot too.

Forgot to mention the most important part: I let her pick the font and we set the point size to 72 (the max). Large letters help.

awesome. :) Thanks for sharing!

The child in question is nine. I distinctly recall a friend of mine having a gameboy in primary school, and I got my first computer (well, ‘us kids’ got it) at that age, too. With an actual keyboard and letting me explore that thing rather than merely being an interface to Youtube and Minecraft.

I got my first computer when I was 7 (2nd grade). I had to built it—my dad gave me the circuit board, a bunch of parts and the schematic. He showed me how to match the schematic parts to thier number on the board and the number on the chip. He gave me a cheat sheet for the resistor's colors (I didn't end up memorizing them--to this day I have to look them up). He showed me how to bend the pins so the parts didn't fall out when you turned the board over to solder them.

I'd spend an hour putting parts in, then I'd get to my favorite part where I got to use the soldering iron. I'd flip the board over and solder all the holes I'd just filled with parts. My dad would monitor me for a few minutes before he got bored and then it was all me.

I don't remember how long it took because it was so long ago, but I remember finally soldering the last part in and looking in awe at my bootleg Apple ][+. The first time I used it it didn't even have a case. And no disks either--we used the tape to load some games and play around. I learned basic that way and that computer is probably why I'm a programmer today.

I loved that computer—I still have that computer. And it still works.

Yep. It's funny, but a 5 year old can easily manage an oscilloscope and basic analog circuits. And a 6-7 year old - an oscilloscope, a logic probe and digital circuits. The kid doesn't have to be a wunderkind too. It is just a matter of being exposed to these tools and having dad working at home with the equipment.

My dad picked me up and chucked me behind his first computer when I was 3 (24 years ago) to play Paratrooper with a joystick. Supposedly it didn't take too long before I could start the thing up, switch floppy disks, a: and start up the game(s). Not too long later my parents put me behind the PC whenever there was a new game so I could figure it out.

This! I don't know if the fact that an iPad can't be programmed but kids are getting tons of them is a net positive (exposure to stuff in general) or a net negative (no programming allowed). Wishing Apple would relax their restrictions.

You can program games on the iPad:

http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/

It all depends on what you compare it to. To me, iPad and iPhone are the new SNES and Game Boy (which I grew up with), and they are much more open. The biggest loss to me is the experience of playing socially on a split-screen.

I wouldn't say I was programming at the age of 9 on the Pentium I with Windows 95, but I was happily clicking away in Windows Explorer, quite literally ‘exploring’. Programming started a few years later with QBASIC and such :)

I got my first computer around that age as well. However, that was far from the norm.

I probably have a terrible bias there, but most other kids I knew had access to computers, too, at this age and possibly before. That was in 1999/2000, I guess you’re slightly older.

Indeed, my first computer at home was around 1988.

I agree that tablets/phones/etc are a great way for children to learn and interact.

However, I'm always weary that they become accustomed to getting everything "on demand". Anecdotally, I have young family members who have a hard time focusing when it comes to things like homework. I guess it's possible that I could have imagined this connection though.

I'd love to see a study take a look at how these devices affect children's attention spans as they get older.

As a relatively new parent, I'm wary about this "epidemic" of ADHD. Ken Robinson did a fascinating talk on this: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_par...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com