Python for kids?

[bearophileHUGS at lycos.com]

On Dec 7, 9:13 pm, "Russ P." <Russ.Paie... at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a 12-year-old son who spends too much time playing Xbox live
> and watching silly YouTube videos. I would like to try to get him
> interested in programming.

Lot of people learn to program even before age of 12.
But I think it's better for you to help him get interest in problem-
solving and some of the other bases of the mathematic, scientific and
computational mindset. Once those interests are in place, he will
probably go looking by himself for things like programming languages,
math and science (of course at that point a gentle guide toward good
ideas, good problems to solve, good books to read and good programming
languages, helps).

Otherwise you risk pushing a person to learn using a tool (programming
is interesting by itself, but it's mostly a tool still) before having
any use for such tool or desire to learn it. And this may lead to
someone with no passion to solve problems and learn.

Bye,
bearophile