SiFive Helping To Teach Kids Programming With RISC-V HiFive Inventor Coding Kit

[Mike Frett]

I'll be honest...the writing for NewWho isn't that spectacular. I like the Tom Baker era, writing was top notch.

[microcode]

I agree with you...but I will say that this better than giving a 7 year old a cell phone and showing them how to use social media. At least with this device, it looks like "some" thought is required.

Yes, hope when I'm raising kids I won't be cowed from limiting their computer exposure to devices which demand some understanding of users. In the context of a household with smartphones and the fisher price style PC operating systems of today, I fear the real thing will not cut through all of that stimulation.

[wizard69]

Absolutely agree. I didn't have a PC until I was 12, or a games console until I went off to university (which I actually used more as a DVD player than a games console...) but I was tinkering around building wireless kits and disassembling broken bits of kit (a few of which I was successful in fixing after many, many screw ups!)

The interest has to come from the individual; an interest in science, engineering, music, whatever... if it's forced, it doesn't grow.

if it's forced, it doesn't grow.

I think you hit it on the head here. For a parent the real trick is setting up an environment where the child can explore what interests him.

[wizard69]

Some interesting comments here. My first computer was Vic 20 and did some of my first programming there. However I can't say that the programming bug really bit me. It was a few years out of high school that I got a Mac Plus, just before massive inertia hit Apple, and learned a bit of Pascal on that machine. I actually used it to work my way through college and would program solutions to some of my problems in the machine design courses I was taking. Back then I had as many issues with compiler bugs as I did with the mathematics of the problems, we have come a very long way with respect to compiler reliability to say the very least. Interestingly back then the college taught computer science with Modula2, you hear nothing about that language these days.

In any event I really couldn't see my self taking much interest in computers at age 7. Even in the middle of winter I would be outside or if inside building something. I just can't see myself at 7 sitting in one place for any length of time to program a computer that ""did nothing"". This is why I'm a big proponent of Robotics and other computer driven mechanical devices. The idea of programming something physical that does something might be more interesting to the average 7 year old.