jgoerzen

At 3, Jacob knew his alphabet and could find keys on the keyboard. He learned enough to remember, by rote or otherwise, that "worm" launched the worm game and "sl" launched steam locomotives, sometimes using a cheat sheet for help. He could not read or comprehend responses very well. (He derived a LOT of enjoyment from typing nonsense commands, then having me read the error messages that started with BASH)

At 5, he reads well. He is not good at spelling - one reason I give him a short cheat sheet - but he can make out a lot of what's going on. Not everything, of course.

We didn't start them on computers from the cradle. We read books to them a lot, and play games involving numbers and words. Jacob loves Dr. Seuss books and word games.

But lest anyone think we're some sort of tiger parents, we also open the front door and let them go play outside, maybe sending some sidewalk chalk with them if they want it.

I got a TRS-80 at about 5. It had only a CLI (BASIC-based). That was a huge incentive for me to learn to read. Nobody else in the house knew about computers then either, so unless I wanted to wait for my dad to get home from work, it was me and the manual.

I'm saving that for next week. ;-)

(seriously.)

It's really very simple for a child. C-x C-s, C-x C-c, and arrow keys. All they really need to do.

I thought about vim, but I think it would lead to too many confusing situations.

I have a printed "cheat sheet" up there for the boys. It has commands and keyboard shortcuts. They sometimes forget it exists, but at least Jacob can read and follow directions on it without any trouble.

I think it's great that you broke the system so badly. You then got to fix it, and you also learned that you have the ability to fix it even when it's terribly broken.

Ultimately, if you don't have the ability to break things, you don't truly have the ability to experiment and discover.

This is accurate to some degree. They would have been excited without xmonad, or with gdm instead of startx, because it was something new and involved a mouse. They were super-excited about that part.

Part of my point was that we don't have to spoon-feed things to children for them to be excited about. My boys don't yet have any concept of editor wars, or OS wars, or window manager / desktop wars, and are excited about whatever they have - especially when I juice it up a bit for their interests.

I am very intentional about spending time with them every day. And you are right that they are happy to spend time with me, doing whatever. Maybe playing hide and seek (a recent favorite is hide and seek outdoors with radios), simply swinging on the swing set, playing catch. We recently built a fire ring out of some surplus brick. They helped, and enjoy helping gather kindling and cook there.

But what I'm describing here is an utter delight that is beyond the everyday. The were super excited about this. It would probably take going camping or visiting a train museum to get them more excited ;-)

Incidentally, a used manual typewriter is another excellent and cheap way to give children a fun indoor activity that also engages their exploration. Think of all the moving parts in that!