Ask HN: Learning to code, without a computer?

Unfortunately not everywhere.

Suggest him to invent his own language!

The magic is very old: in the earlier generations, from the students of my university, some never had the opportunity to actually run their programs directly on the university computer. They just punched the cards, gave them to the "operator" and received the resulting printouts.

That were the old times: as the "bandwidth" was limited, everybody was motivated to check as much as possible before executing only once. "Processing in your head" was very important and people were really careful. It was nevertheless, or maybe exactly because it was so, "addictive."

Richard Feynman, about one early example:

"“Well, Mr. Frankel, who started this, began to suffer from the computer disease that anybody who works with computers now knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is you play with them. They are so wonderful. You have these switches - if it's an even number you do this, if it's an odd number you do that - and pretty soon you can do more and more elaborate things if you are clever enough, on one machine.

After a while the whole system broke down. Frankel wasn't paying any attention; he wasn't supervising anybody. The system was going very, very slowly - while he was sitting in a room figuring out how to make one tabulator automatically print arc-tangent X, and then it would start and it would print columns and then bitsi, bitsi, bitsi, and calculate the arc-tangent automatically by integrating as it went along and make a whole table in one operation.

Absolutely useless. We had tables of arc-tangents. But if you've ever worked with computers, you understand the disease - the delight in being able to see how much you can do. But he got the disease for the first time, the poor fellow who invented the thing.”"

In addition to all the other answers, doing some procedural thought exercises may help. He can practice breaking down complex actions into more basic instructions. For example, thinking through what steps he takes to walk to a meal. He can start at a high level of just the turns and distances to walk, then think through what he actually does to take a step, or make a turn, or sit down or stand. It may not seem like much, but it will train him to think about how to build out instructions at different levels of abstraction, which will make a significant dent in the learning curve once he does gain access to a computer.

I did 6 years in Texas, but I was already a developer before I went in. That said, I had some books sent to me to try to keep my mind fresh. I also helped someone else who was released a few years after me get going and now they're a junior dev.

Emphasize learning that will serve freelancing, since someone with a criminal record will run into issues with traditional employment. (I've been out since 2009 and done very well) Ruby, PHP, Javascript are some of the best bets.

I'd recommend O'Reilly's Head First books. Even if they're a few years old, really doesn't matter, given the situation. I think Sandi Metz's Practical Objected Oriented Design in Ruby is great - she does an awesome job of explaining OO principles even if you don't end up writing Ruby. The Manga Guide to Databases is another good read that explains concepts well.

I'd also consider a book that shows a quick way to build web apps, like Agile Development in Rails or maybe a book on ColdFusion. Without the ability to write and run code, it can help plant seeds for those "aha!" moments for understanding the code -> web request lifecycle without getting bogged down in ceremony.

In Texas, the books had to come from a bona fide bookseller, so don't go to B&N and try to mail the books yourself.