Re: [boost] [OT] Re: Boost gripes on slashdot

From: Jake Voytko (jakevoytko_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-07-17 07:43:37

YMMV, but I think you should simplify things as much as you possibly can for
your 6 year old, if you insist on teaching him now. Getting any kind of
programming done requires abstraction of thought into an algorithm, and most
6 year olds I know live in a world of concretes.  Hell, I'm a tutor at my
college, and a lot of 21 year olds have trouble with the concepts of
programming.

You might want to consider Logo, and challenging your kid to draw certain
shapes. Take it incrementally.. challenge him to a square, to a pentagon,
etc. Then, tell him to do a wave that has 10 humps. After he does it the
long way, show him how to use a procedure to do it simpler.

At this stage in development, all you really want to do is get him to think
step-by-step about algorithms, as well as learn basic troubleshooting skills
when he is wrong on his first attempt. As further enticement, show him a
quick and dirty interactive demo in Flash and say that when he's good enough
at Logo, you'll "let him" use Flash so that he can interact with pictures.

Jake

On 7/17/07, Steve Trutane <trutane_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> On 7/15/07, Felipe Magno de Almeida <felipe.m.almeida_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> > On 7/15/07, David Bergman <David.Bergman_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> > > On Jul 15, 2007, at 4:41 PM, Felipe Magno de Almeida wrote:
> > >
> > > Have you seen Ogre 3D? Anyway, we should setup a Boost Game Engine
> > > project, and promote it as an intrinsic part of TR 3 :-)
> >
> > I've seen it, but I didn't liked much to be honest. The implementation
> > seemed to reinvent the wheel all the time and it wanted to do more
> > than I think it should.
> > But the boost game engine seem like a nice idea. ;)
> > We probably should take the discussion private.
>
> Scorched 3D is another cross-platform C/C++ game project worth
> checking out: http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/
>
> My video game crazy 6-year old has asked about writing his own game
> and I was thinking about using this as an opportunity to dive into
> this world with him. I've been wondering what would be the best
> language/platform to use for this, in terms of ease of use, library
> depth, performance, future proofness, and programming pedagogy. At
> this stage, I'm wavering between Java and Flash, but have kept my
> radar out for a C++ game engine too. A boost-based project along these
> lines would be welcome.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> Unsubscribe & other changes:
> http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost
>