Learning different languages

[Frithiof Andreas Jensen]

"Terry Hancock" <hancock at anansispaceworks.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.2864.1141775204.27775.python-list at python.org...
> On Tuesday 07 March 2006 04:44 pm, Rich wrote:

> I've been trying to get my kids to learn a little Python for some
> time, but it hasn't been too easy for them yet.  Then, out of the
> blue, they want to learn Lua.
>
> Why?
>
> Simple -- Lua is the extension language for Enigma. So they want to
> make new game levels ergo, they must use Lua.  Motivation matters
> more than ease, IMHO. :-)
>
> We realized recently that while teaching kids to program is hard,
> teaching them to *hack* is easy. Once they learn to hack game
> levels, they will learn, from the level designers, basics about
> scripting and then programming, and they'll start to ask "how
> can I make this easier?"
>

Hacking is "The Way" - I learned Z80 assembly language to cheat in Space
Invaders on a Microbee conputer ;-). You can teach them some methods that
make their hacking easier, like debuggers, script tools and all that.

Maybe a Pyhton tool to simplify/generate skeleton code could be a devious
way of getting Python involved?

My son is quite proficient in using a collection of quite hairy build tools
because he likes to build levels for Counter Strike Source. He has no
interest in computers what so ever.