How old''s your kid?
I''d suggest Visual Basic, I guess, but, it''s never too early to teach your kids about drugs... I mean C...

actually, I hear that VB is the best interface with mindstorms.

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Captured Reality.

You might want to see if you can pick up one of those really old programmable consoles or perhaps an AppleIIe, and a couple of books to go with them. I started programming when I was 8 on a TI99/4A, and the reason it was appealing was the fact that the language was incredibly simple and it really didn''t take much to get basic text, pictures, and music working. Eventually I moved on to harder things, but it''s important not to be overrun with frustrating and complex topics when you''re getting started, especially at that young of an age.
Another thing to consider is LOGO, which was actually developed to give children better access to programming at a young age. You can learn more about this here.

-fel

I once found a a program on download.com called matrix or something similar. Also in the resources section there are programs that allow you make games without any programming. I would recommend the real way. VB would be nice to start or C I have heard of people learing C before the age of 10. so talk to him and see what he wants.

I remember when I was about that age I was trying to program on the Apple ][e with AppleSoft Basic using the book Computer Literacy. My dad started trying to teach me that book for as long as I could remember. The first example program was a scrolling rocket. I remember spending weeks modifying the rocket and making my own. I just ran the example programs and were amazed by them every time. My cousin always brought over text and graphical adventure games and he would play all day long while I watched. That's when I knew I wanted to program my own games. I don't know if kids these days care about cheeezy ASCII-type graphics programs, but thats how I got my start.

After that, I moved on to QBasic, which was almost the same, plus you could add sound & graphics to your programs easily. I read QBasic By Example so many times I probably knew it by heart at the time. The first big thing I did was modifying the games that came with QBasic, Nibbles and Gorilla. I changed teh colors and various other small things and it was fun to invite my friends over and asking them which version they wanted to play. I tried to make my own text adventure game but never got beyond the intro and the first room.

That's about all I did until 6th grade when at school we had Apple ][s and used Computer Literacy as our textbook and I was able to blow away everyone, including my teacher, with what i could do.

Well, that's basically my partial life story. I hope it helps a little.

- TMOLI 42


Edited by - TMOLI 42 on June 3, 2000 2:16:47 PM

VB is the easiest way to code the MindStorm toy cause it has a control to do it, other ways include NotQuiteC and other stuff.

I''ve heard the Game Factory is quite good actually.

And a while back Interplay offered this Learn To Code in Basic program which was quite cool actually.

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-Now Working on Pokemon like Engine!