Comments on: Jacob has a new computer — and a favorite shell

By: Bryce

Bryce — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 08:50:07 +0000

Inspired by these blog posts, I introduced my 3.25 yr old to the commandline yesterday.

He’s had a toy laptop computer since he was an infant, but lately his 1.4 yr old baby sister has taken a fondness to it. I told him he could have a real computer if he gave his toy one to his sister. He thought that was an excellent trade.

Following your approach, I used a desktop machine. We “built” it (ahead of time I opened it up and removed the HD, RAM, video card, and unplugged various wires). This gave ample opportunity to explain all the pieces, and he enjoyed helping me seat the RAM and plug in various cords.

I tried worm, but he didn’t find it interesting. He did love pounding on the keyboard writing pretend emails to grandpa. He enjoyed plugging in the ethernet cable in order to install worm though, and loved plugging in anything via USB. Perhaps he’s more of the telcom geek?

When I was a young ‘un I remember my dad taking me to work and playing with the mainframes. Where he worked they had dumb terminal client consoles, which only displayed green on black ASCII text. He set me up with an ASCII drawing program which I’d poke at.

On Linux, the closest thing I’ve found to that old drawing program is aewan. Unfortunately it doesn’t appear to come with much example ascii art, but maybe I can cobble something together.

By: Teknoloji

Teknoloji — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 06:54:36 +0000

That’s a beautiful story.

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

Jacob: 4 Years Old, and Troubleshooting PCs | The Changelog — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:11:36 +0000

[...] Back 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 loves it. [...]

By: Shell Scripts For Preschoolers | The Changelog

Shell Scripts For Preschoolers | The Changelog — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:07:36 +0000

[...] as something of a surprise that it has no graphical interface, and Jacob uses the command line and loves it — and did even before he could really [...]

By: A 4-year-old, Linux command line, and microphone | The Changelog

A 4-year-old, Linux command line, and microphone | The Changelog — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 02:38:24 +0000

[...] Linux on the house for our boys to play with. I’ve already written how our 4-year-old Jacob has fun with bash and can chain together commands to draw ASCII animated steam locomotives. Today I thought it might [...]

By: Jacob and the Amazing Technicolor Adding Machine | The Changelog

Jacob and the Amazing Technicolor Adding Machine | The Changelog — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 04:06:09 +0000

[...] full of switches and light bulbs that the boys love to play with, we built him a command-line-only PC out of spare parts, the boys have some radios they can use, and one day I salvaged a decades-old adding machine that [...]

By: Andrew Ruthven

Andrew Ruthven — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 01:03:34 +0000

Hey John,

Interesting read. It seems that an old defunct Apple PowerBook 100 is no longer acceptable with my 3.5 daughter. She has just declared that she wants a working computer. And we’ve been told that having a login on my workstation isn’t acceptable.

Good to hear that Jacob has been able to handle the command line okay. I’ll try Brooke out on it, currently her favourite game is making ice in Frozen Bubble.

Cheers!

By: Once, We Were Makers | The Changelog

Once, We Were Makers | The Changelog — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 02:35:37 +0000

[...] and see what he can come up with (when he’s a bit older, of course). And, in fact, he and I built his first computer together. We installed the ultimate in operating systems for tinkering: [...]

By: Perfect use for broken technology: Give it to a 3-year-old | The Changelog

Perfect use for broken technology: Give it to a 3-year-old | The Changelog — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 19:51:03 +0000

[...] last wrote about Jacob’s new computer back in April. He has had fun with it, but is still a little young to appreciate it a whole lot. [...]

By: vvill

vvill — Mon, 03 May 2010 07:42:29 +0000

fix typos
http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/numptyphysics
http://packages.debian.org/sid/numptyphysics
Terah and Oliver might even find this game intriguing….

By: vvill

vvill — Mon, 03 May 2010 07:33:30 +0000

I think Jacob may like the game numptyphyics
http://debian.org/squeeze/numptyphyics
in sid as well…
Terah and Oliver might even get find this intriguing….
warning: the physic engine is not intuitive… but it’s fun anyway…. :-)

By: Andy Baio

Andy Baio — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 04:37:32 +0000

He’ll be posting on 4chan in no time!

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 16:20:50 +0000

I’m afraid this was my idea, but Jacob has taken to calling our kitchen the “dining car” in the last couple of days. You may be on to something…

By: Kirklin

Kirklin — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 11:54:03 +0000

Okay. It is clear to us that Jacob will be raised with a “techy” advantage over most of his peers. I will not speak for the real Grandma Marla here, however, we plan to offer some “balancers” to this little guy. He is very interested in food-as are we…am thinking Amtrak Chef!! ; )

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 05:49:15 +0000

As a public high school teacher, let me say that it’s wonderful to see people still instilling a love of learning in their children! Keep it up, and please continue to post these stories so that other parents can learn from them!

By: Jerry McBride

Jerry McBride — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 17:51:30 +0000

What a GREAT way to teach… I had similar good times with my son. I never thought I would hear him ask… dad, what are you doing… And he hasn’t stopped learning since.

God bless and enjoy!

By: nlr

nlr — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 16:26:51 +0000

as other suggested (and if you have some speakers attached): a speech synthesizer.

i once hacked something together for someone new to the comandline, so that you can run:
$ say my computer can talk!

http://pastebin.com/4iHBPf0N

By: Emil

Emil — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 13:36:40 +0000

Typo: Seems to me* ;)

By: Emil

Emil — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 13:36:22 +0000

Congratulations, I just named you the father of the year!

Really, so awesome of you, wish I would grow up with a father like you.

When are you teaching him programming a.s.o?

Seems to be you have a little collage guy to raise my friend!

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 12:04:51 +0000

Jacob’s computer has no network connection. So I’m not worried.

By: Midnite Kommando

Midnite Kommando — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 11:38:21 +0000

I’ll never let my kid have a computer in the room. With the cyber bullying that’s happening in schools — no way. It has to be in the common area.
But good on you for starting him young.

By: Carmen Tourney

Carmen Tourney — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 00:24:32 +0000

Teaching a 3-1/2 year old how to use a computer AND operating system. OMG. Sounds silly to me. But then again, at least he won’t turn out like me – a 41 year old who doesn’t even copy and paste or bookmark! LOL. I guess I’m just jealous. Maybe in a 1/2 year he could teach me how to better use my computer. :)

By: Allison

Allison — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 22:40:14 +0000

This is awesome! A totally different kind of baby book. Daddy, what happens when I type “rm -rf /”?

By: vvill

vvill — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 17:37:28 +0000

I think sometimes it’s just better not to know.
In response to the second command..

By: Anonimo

Anonimo — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 17:11:51 +0000

A beatiful history, Good for jacob!

By: ubuntard

ubuntard — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 16:24:46 +0000

Thank you for introducing me to bsdgames!

By: grouch

grouch — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 16:02:32 +0000

I suggest you save that history file. It’s almost as good as a patchwork quilt for sparking nostalgic conversations. Jacob will be graduating in a few blinks and you can replay that history to surprise him. You will remember this as if yesterday; he will discover it through your memory.

I have the first words my son hesitantly pecked out on a CP/M computer as well as the first off-line HTML page created by my daughter. These files take up less space than bronzed baby shoes.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:11:39 +0000

I also vote for installing cowsay and posting some of his .bash_history. :) I shared this with my dad, a fellow Linux/FLOSS enthusiast.

By: brian herman

brian herman — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 14:54:33 +0000

You should post the history of his prompt.

By: rchase

rchase — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 14:53:13 +0000

You should install cowsay!

By: Bo

Bo — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 14:39:21 +0000

This is excellent. Now you should teach him to say “sudo” instead of “please” in real life :)

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 12:45:22 +0000

I forgot to add: Jacob’s second Unix command was w. He started to type worm, then — you could really see this thought process — lifted his hand up and decided to bash on the keyboard again instead, and happened to hit the spacebar first. I don’t think he noticed what had happened; only that he needed to try again to get it to say “bash”. Terah, on the other hand, asked “what did he just do?”

By: morgan

morgan — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 12:19:34 +0000

That story reminds me of myself.

I was 4 years old when I got my first computer – a rare one too, A British designed Dragon32 which had a basic language : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_32/64

The genius was that most games you could actually see the code and edit it…(only machine code games you couldn’t)

I went from that to a spectrum to an Amiga (the best machine I have ever owned) then the horror of windows… Then I found Linux!

If you teach him at an early age (or rather let him teach himself) to use a system you can completely control it is likely he won’t settle for a closed OS when he is older.

By: sirjoebob

sirjoebob — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 11:52:16 +0000

Great story. I have a 3 year old and she loves to tinker with a busted computer. She takes all the screws out and holds up a piece and says “Daddy? What’s this?” and I get to try to explain a CMOS battery to a 3 year old. Being a geek/parent is the coolest thing I have ever done. Your kid will be better off because of the interest you show in him- and he may write some awesome bash scripts.

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 09:14:34 +0000

Wonderful! Maybe the command line is difficult to people because of their preconceptions about computers?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 06:40:09 +0000

As Branden said, a beautiful story.

One thought: does the system have sound? If so, you could install flite or espeak, and let Jacob make the computer talk to him. :)

By: Christian Perrier

Christian Perrier — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 05:54:55 +0000

Great story, as Branden wrote (hey, Branden, nice to see you around). John, keep on with such stories: you have many readers as it seems, who enjoys stories from the Goerzen’s

By: Branden Robinson

Branden Robinson — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 04:00:26 +0000

That’s a beautiful story.

By: Eric Bostrom

Eric Bostrom — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 03:24:34 +0000

That’s hilarious! Need any other hardware?

By: Clint

Clint — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 03:02:51 +0000

A shell with spelling correction can make typos or random gibberish into a way of learning about other commands available on the system.