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Comment by dshankar | Hacker News Reader

I quite like the work you've done here! Most computers in a school are ill-equipped for programming needs.

I'm a bit concerned that this laptop is designed with an experienced programmer in mind. I don't think the *nix Terminal is friendly to noobs, considering it comes with no safety nets. Additionally, a teacher who is unfamiliar with Ubuntu is likely to have a hard time helping students. I tweeted a few more thoughts here: https://twitter.com/dshankar/timelines/497091774792228864

In it's current state, perhaps this laptop would be better suited at college students who are already familiar with the basics? At middle school/high school, students & teachers need a more friendly introduction into the programming world, not the real & scary one that is modern day Linux. However at the college level, students need tools that will prepare them for the industry and Codestarter packages all the tools one will likely use.

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Thanks! We're targeting an age range of 7-17 years old, and distributing these laptops to kids that are attending learn-to-code programs like CoderDojo. For the very young, most will choose to boot ChromeOS and use online programming tools like Scratch, which is totally great. Installing Ubuntu gives more advanced kids a place to go further, with no limitations, and that's why we do it.

That makes sense. Considering how popular Chromebooks are becoming, this could be quite valuable for schools.

Another thing to consider is if kids did something bad from the command line to catastrophically mess things up, it's easy to wipe the drive and do a fresh install.

That itself is an invaluable learning experience. Knowing that breaking the software does not break the computer only helps pique a child's curiosity. (I first installed Slackware Linux when I was 12.)

Exposure to the command line at an early age never hurts, as long as it doesn't get in the way.

I disagree.

I've had some experience with middle schoolers and scratch, as well as my 10yr old. FWIW, my school district has access to iPads, Windows desktops, and chromebooks in varying quantities and frequencies through the grade levels.

Once the middle schoolers were in the scratch shell, it's all about scratch. (Well, that and browsing the scratch repos for interesting projects). Would work just as well on linux as windows. Progressing to python with this group didn't work as well on windows as it would have on linux, because the terminals were infuriating for both the teacher and the students. (Also, there would have been a ton less issues getting stuff installed).

My 10 yr old started seriously using a shared ubuntu desktop @ 8 did some scratch, then at 9.5 started on python, and now arduino. He's just fine with the terminal, for what little he needs to actually do with it.

You must be young. 20+ years ago all of us were using shells / terminals just fine. Have people already forgot that everyone used text based operating systems before GUI OSes came around? If I could learn basic CPM commands on my dad's VT180 when I was 6 I think people learning to code can figure out Ubuntu.

When I was a kid exploring my brand new desktop, I broke it several times by deleting system files or wiping out my partition. It was a great learning experience to reinstall my OS, that also boosted my courage in trying things out.

So I really don't understand this drive for safety features. If you want to teach kids to program it kind of defeats the purpose.

Why do you think that modern Linux is "real & scary"?

They're installing Scratch, isn't that the opposite of scary?

firstly, the posix SHELL is not at all unfriendly (terminal != shell), and introducing it earlier can only be beneficial. If you get scared by a shell, you probably shouldn't be in programming.

If a 7 year old gets scared of a shell that does not mean they should not be learning programming. It seams reasonable to introduce shells early, but we should be aware of the risk of scaring off children with unintuitive interfaces.

Is that a real risk? I mean, we aren't talking about breaking a leg. In my experience, as a father, the husband of a wife that works at a kindergarten and as an ex-child ... the best thing about being a kid is the courage you have in exploring new things. Take the opportunity of exploration away, in the name of safety and the effect may be the opposite of what you want.

And actually, for better or worse, many of us as kids learned programming in "unsafe" environments. So the onus is on you to prove that the alternative is better. Surely a study could be made.

If we managed to load games from cassette tape on a c64 (or a vic20), a modern posix shell should be a walk in the park. In my experience, a kid will learn any number of rote actions required to launch a game. And then later work out what those actions meant.

1) This shell is not required to play games, so that motivation is not relevant to this discussion. 2) survivorship bias.

I think starting with something approachable like Scratch then advancing on to a posix shell in Ubuntu is a great idea, but I take issue with the attitude that if a child is scared by a shell they should not learn to program.

Sure, I agree with both 1) and 2) -- I just don't see how "being scared of a shell" is a valid point. If the kid is given the thing and told to go wild, I doubt most kids would be "scared". Adults, maybe. But not kids.

Anyway, the kid doesn't have to know that the shell isn't prerequisite to play games -- until they figure it out on their own. My point was more that children are adept at overcoming obstacles that stand in the way of play.

> My point was more that children are adept at overcoming obstacles that stand in the way of play.

I agree with that point entirely, but that does not mean that all children will overcome all challenges. My point is that we should not give up on a child just because they struggle with a shell. The reason I think shells are not the best introduction is that they cannot be figured out by exploration. They require specific knowledge that cannot be deduced because it is fundamentally arbitrary. That information can still be found online, so it is not impossible to discover, but I think it is ridiculous to give up on a 7 year old because they did not like exploring a shell.

Completely agree. I got a commodore 64 and a 286 when I was 6. My dad taught me how to start my games in DOS so I could start those up by myself when I woke up early in the morning and they slept in. I started working through the BASIC manual that came with my C64 when I was 7 and if/then/else were some of my first English words that I learned. No need to dumb it down too much, kids will figure it out.

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