What could be the best way to introduce the world of computers to a kid, let’s say of 6 years old, so that he learns to handle it like a toy and stops dreading it like some esoteric, arcane and recondite machine from some eldritch, enigmatic, cryptic and phantasmal world ?
For me it was games on a computer. Learned how to use the keyboard, mouse, and later troubleshoot shit that was not working because I really wanted to play a game.
It’s small things like “oh I can take a screenshot, hmm where does the screenshot go?” and that’s how you learn to navigate files and folders etc.
I’m afraid this required much more tinkering back in the day, and will be way less educational now. Maybe building and running a PC from 2005 or earlier will require the same level of getting to know things, but otherwise it will not teach to not treat computer as arcane and enigmatic, imo
For sure it took more back then, however looking at people using their phones/tablets for everything I think you can still learn a lot by simply trying out and using a computer to do similar tasks you would do on a phone too.
The screenshot might have been a bad analogy since e.g. steam actually lets you access your screenshots directly in the application, but if you want to set it as your background image you still have to access the file itself.
What I meant to say is that they can easily use both a phone and a PC, and still think it’s arcane and cryptic. Even if they needed to tinker with it, e.g. a lot of DOS games required me to set IRQ, and I still don’t know precisely what it is
@sukhmel@programming.dev you mean to say that games from the 80s and the 90s can’t be played with a simple dosbox x ??😳😳😳
I’m ancient, but I learned both to use the computer and English when I started gaming on the family Amiga at around age 6. My fondest memories were of adventure games like King’s Quest and Space Quest, which incidentally required decent command of English.
There’s tons of more modern and kid-friendly adventure games out there nowadays, but the principle stands.
@Kyrgizion@lemmy.world are these offline games or online ?
Add a game controller and some games. My kid loves stardew valley and roblox
@ptolemai@lemmy.world the controller wouldn’t be helpful, as the child needs to learn control over the keyboard and the mouse.
I started with a VIC-20 at twice that age. In the 80s computers were viewed as somewhat magical, a bit scary. Took a 2-week summer camp on programming BASIC and two things they told us made me feel way better.
You can’t physically destroy the computer typing at the keyboard. I took that to mean no matter how badly I screwed up, the problem could be unscrewed.
It’s a dumb machine, no brains, period. That means you are in control of it. Some people could use that lesson today. 🫤
@shalafi@lemmy.world the computer made appearance in my place in the 90s.
