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Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 14:08:44 +1000
Subject: Re: My son wants me to teach him Python
From: Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com>
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On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Rick Johnson
<rantingrickjohnson@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, June 12, 2013 2:46:13 PM UTC-5, John Ladasky wrote:
>> [...]
>> He's a smart kid, but prefers to be shown, to be tutored,
>> rather than having the patience to sit down and RTFM.
>> Have any of you been down this road before?  I would
>> appreciate it if you would share your experiences, or
>> provide resource material.
>
> Hello John.
>
> I'm going to suggest a completely different path to enlightenment for the lad. A path that has the potential for semi-instant gratification whilst also humbling the boy to the grim realities of computer graphics and application development. *evil grin*
>
> Since your son has zero experience with both graphical and application based programming i would suggest starting at (near) the very bottom of the GUI spectrum, which, in the Python world would be the Tkinter Canvas.


No. Definitely not. Programming does NOT begin with a GUI. It begins
with something *simple*, so you're not stuck fiddling around with the
unnecessary. On today's computers, that usually means console I/O
(actually console output, with console input coming along much later).

ChrisA