Ask HN: How can I make a “kid's computer” today as good as an Apple II?

I go back and forth trying to decide whether to try and introduce my 5 year old to programming. To him, every screen is a little entertainment portal of some kind. I recently got him an Odroid Go Advance kit - a Linux-based handheld gaming device that you can put together in an hour. Putting the thing together with him felt constructive - but then it was quickly off to running old video games under emulation. He loves it, and I curate the games he can play on it, but he's not making anything with it.

Here we go with the "when I was a kid" bit... but I felt that computers were something that were just barely within reach when I was in grade school. I really wanted to learn how programs worked. I checked out every book on programming I could find at my elementary school's library. I had my dad take me to the university library where I had a proverbial field day. But neither he nor any other adult was trying - at all - to expose me to programming. It just happened.

I sometimes wonder if this new norm of actively encouraging and exposing kids to every possible creative outlet in life is really just stifling their progress. When everything is presented to you as a buffet of choices, with hopeful parents anxiously awaiting some kind of interest or progress, how does it not all become kind of ... boring? Where is the space to develop longing and desire?

I remember being a kid and longing for access to the university's Ultrix machines. They seemed to be just for adults - and difficult to access - and all of that just made me want it more. I became obsessed about the concept of multitasking and machines serving multiple users at once. I really had no encouragement, and was even reprimanded for gaining unauthorized access to some university machines. This, along with the tied up phone lines, annoyed my parents to no end. They were patient and understanding, but not actively encouraging.

I hope my kids can some day feel a similar passion and longing to learn something. If they can have that, they won't need it to be spoon-fed to them. They'll break down doors to get at it.

> Restricting kids from the mobile games is like restricting kids from drinking vodka you have in your bar. Everyone should do it. Those things are not games they are whale seeking mind fucking drugs that no child should have to try and deal with.

Absolutely. I work in the industry so I know exactly the monetization culture there. It is so deeply rooted that there is way to avoid that, at least on Android. I think Apple is slightly better but maybe not really. I'm sad that the whole industry got trained in that mindset :(

> Couple days ago 8year olds class had a bring your parent to school day so I did a presentation mentioning a game I hacked with a debugger as an ice breaker. Forget what I actually do for next 20 minutes all I was asked is how to hack Minecraft, how to hack some online game I don't know :o and not get caught. Blew my mind, teacher was looking sideways at me :)

This is really very good experience :) I guess it's also very proud of your children to have a cool parent.

Most any Craptop will do, but one with a styless is better for drawing.

Install

1. GCompris

2. Gimp, Inkscape

3. Rosegarden

4. https://github.com/commanderx16/x16-emulator/

Don't install a bunch of games.

Agreed with modding. In the early aughts my dad encouraged me to learn basic but I was more into playing games and I didn’t see the connection to basic which seemed to me to be mostly about printing text.

But at some point, my favorite game involved a scriptable server engine, and nothing brought me joy like updating the game that I had poured hundreds of hours into, with a simple line of text.

After that I went back to mainstream games like WoW and didn’t do anything like programming again until college (minus an attempt at AP computer science which I dropped because it was boring)

It looks like there's an Apple II core for Mister if you want to recreate the experience. I've never used Mister before, but setting it up could be fun, too, or it might be over most people's heads. https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Apple-II_MiSTer

I also think a slightly different way to go here is an arduino kit. Even as an adult, I got some kind of ardunio kit with a bunch of parts that got me more interested in wiring & coding. I like it because it gives you the code and parts to get things working, but then, you have a bunch of stuff left over to expand on it. If you don't like coding, you can reuse the same code and build out the hardware, and vice versa. That is definitely more work and less play than Number Munchers though. You'll probably have to do some of the stuff with your kids, depending on how curious they are about this stuff. I've seen things that look like simpler arduino kits meant for teaching younger kids similar concepts, but I don't know how good they are.

I think a synthesizer is good, too. A cheap FM synth with a bunch of dials lets you play real songs, exercise your creativity and maybe learn some science skills by mistake like an old computer with a BASIC interpreter. There's probably software solutions geared towards infotainment as well.