Comments on: Introducing the Command Line at 3 years

By: charles

charles — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 10:48:58 +0000

really like this idea! i’m 27, and started using DOS when i was 7 or 8… didn’t really learn too much directly, but that translated into at least some basic familiarity and comfort with programming languages and the unix CLI. i’m just now really getting into linux CLI, and it all started with that DOS prompt back in ’91… no matter what, i think your kid will thank you. and lol, i curse my parents for not letting me spend more time and effort messing around with the computer, rather than just playing games on it.

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 20:32:49 +0000

Appreciate it! I’ve installed these. So far he has had a good laugh at moon-buggy, interested in cmatrix, and had some more interest in figlet. Thanks!

By: professorfreedom

professorfreedom — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 20:38:14 +0000

asciijump is a fun little text-based ski jump game. cmatrix is a little screensaver you both might enjoy. Figlet will turn little text into big text made out of little text. Moon-buggy and pacman4console are also available.

There is also an incredibly difficult console tetris called bastet. Getting him started on that seems in line with your cli-first philosophy.

By: Jacob: 4 Years Old, and Troubleshooting PCs | The Changelog

Jacob: 4 Years Old, and Troubleshooting PCs | The Changelog — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 03:56:36 +0000

[...] in April, I wrote about Jacob and I building his first computer together and how it’s running just the Linux command-line interface — no graphics at all. And he [...]

By: Mark Dominus

Mark Dominus — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 21:43:27 +0000

At about the same age my kid was bashing on the keyboard, but then she would ask me “how many ‘s’s are there”? I got tired of counting pretty quickly, so instead of bashing at cat I had her bash at perl -nle ‘print tr/sS//’ . That was popular for a long time.

By: j

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 20:03:20 +0000

I remember thinking it was extremely fun when my mom opened up pictures of like apples or something in photoshop and I would draw little faces on them and things like that. Maybe you can try that sometime with your kid.

By: Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer

Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 20:40:16 +0000

Wish *I* had thought my dad to use the CLI… =)

By: Bruno BEAUFILS

Bruno BEAUFILS — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 08:10:00 +0000

My son is 17 month old and, as Colin with his daughter, I give him often cat to play with since he likes the keyboard ^W ^W to hit hardly on the keyboard. He also manages very quickly to find Ctrl-C and F1 (I know that I should have showed him only on a console and not on Gnome ;-).

I think there is a robot game in the bsdgames collection, that should please him (snake sign, aka at sign, is here and one should not be too fast).

By: Colin Watson

Colin Watson — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 07:39:49 +0000

I gave my daughter ‘cat’ to play with a while back. (She’s now 16 months; I think she was something like 6-9 months at the time, so really just mashing the keyboard.) She promptly managed to type Ctrl-Z …

By: John

John — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 09:24:16 +0000

I started out at the BASIC prompt on my father’s Video Genie (TRS-80 clone). I was two years older than Jacob is now.

There was something nice about a computer with its software system safely in ROM. I was trusted not to break it as cycling the power cleared everything. I’m not sure I would have got to play with such a toy if it had contained a hard disc drive.

By: Snark

Snark — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 07:36:25 +0000

Gimp is not very good for young kids : tuxpaint is much, much better.

(but again, that means X11)

By: Dan Farmer

Dan Farmer — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 05:04:07 +0000

Sounds fun John. My son is just coming up on his first birthday but I’m looking forward to this kind of thing too. I hadn’t really thought of starting him on the CLI but you make some good points.

By: Jacob has a new computer — and a favorite shell | The Changelog

Jacob has a new computer — and a favorite shell | The Changelog — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 02:17:35 +0000

[...] today, I wrote about building a computer with Jacob, our 3.5-year-old, and setting him up with a Linux [...]

By: Matt Campbell

Matt Campbell — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 00:19:39 +0000

Then again, espeak is surely better than the Echo speech synthesizer I had access to in grade school. At age 7 or so, I asked my teacher why the computer couldn’t really make the hard g sound. I don’t really remember the explanation, but I was pretty easily satisfied. Just tell him that a computer can’t really talk like we do, I guess.

By: Matt Campbell

Matt Campbell — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 00:14:19 +0000

Assuming this Sempron board has on-board audio, and you can give him some cheap speakers or headphones, set him up with a speech synthesizer and see if he can figure out how to make it say some real words. Too bad the best free software option is the barely passable espeak.

By: Russell Coker

Russell Coker — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 23:06:49 +0000

The GIMP is a fun thing for young kids, it’s quite easy to do basic drawing.

Also as soon as he starts reading get him on Jabber and set as many relatives up on Jabber as possible. He can have lots of fun messaging his relatives!

By: Matthew

Matthew — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 22:44:33 +0000

Have you heard of MikeOS (http://mikeos.berlios.de/)? It’s a simple OS written in assembly that was written as a learning tool, and now includes a simple BASIC interpreter. That might be a good thing for him to try.

By: Saint Aardvark

Saint Aardvark — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 21:05:42 +0000

Dangit, now you’ve inspired me. Time to find some space for a machine.

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 20:37:42 +0000

Neat to know. And yes, I am probably more excited about this than he is (yet). I am, however, expecting cackling from his room in the coming days as he figures out something new that’s funny to him.

By: Branden Robinson

Branden Robinson — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 19:48:49 +0000

Age 3 was not too young for me to get started with a command-line interface. A BASIC interpreter prompt on a TRS-80 Model I with 16kB of RAM.

Sounds like a blast for dad *and* son. I heartily approve.

And robotfindskitten probably isn’t a bad game for a 3 year old who’s learning to read…

By: pdw

pdw — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 19:34:33 +0000

Oh, and robotfindskitten. Text-mode and lots of interesting characters.

By: pdw

pdw — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 19:19:31 +0000

gamine might be interesting, it is sort of a mouse etch-a-sketch.

By: Snark

Snark — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 19:07:55 +0000

Well, just moving a mouse around is already pretty exciting for them, since eye-hand coordination is just happening at that age.

You may try to have a look at gcompris, where one of the activities is just that : moving the mouse to discover an hidden image.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 19:03:51 +0000

Three years is about when my dad bought an XT that he wasn’t sure what to do with. The first command I learned was “games”, which started a BASIC session with some games loaded into it. I think the command line is a great toy for kids — adults might find it scary, but when you’re a kid it’s a magical realm to explore, just like everything else.

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 18:28:41 +0000

Ahhh, nice. He’ll love that.

By: eqa

eqa — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 18:00:14 +0000

Kids don’t fear technology, if we teach them to fear (iPad) they will never master any of it.

By: rdz

rdz — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 17:43:51 +0000

sl is a good option …

http://packages.debian.org/lenny/sl