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great ideas! Time to go shopping. Confession - terribly interested in these myself.
What could go wrong? My credit, his curiosity? 
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Games with Python from one of the books available here:
www.inventwithpython.com
(Sorry, for some reason, hyperlink doesn't seem to work in the Lounge).
-- modified 25-Sep-15 8:31am.
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I"d grab Unity and teach him c# and build a 3d game as a project.
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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Or go for Unreal Engine. They have a graphical scripting engine.
For understanding how a program works I think its pretty cool.
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charlieg wrote: He's playing with the idea of robotics
Someone else mentioned the Arduino - I'd second that as they do a starter kit[^] with a breadboard, bags of electronic components, wires, a motor, a few sensors, etc.
The manual is pretty good too with quite a few projects to help get things up and running.
How do you know so much about swallows? Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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I wish I had one of those when I started programming
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Cheers, I just fixed it 
I bought one for my kid to get started with. It's a great mix of electronics and programming, I'm hoping to have a play around with it myself when I get time
How do you know so much about swallows? Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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The starter kit it cool, but it can become a bit boring after a while. After owning a few kits this one is my favorite:
Tracked Dev Kit
Originally I bought This one but purchased the additional items separately. I also have a bunch of NetDuiono kits which are a boat load of fun too.
In addition to the programming side, the basic electronics is just as much fun. I even like soldering together components.
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Well it is a starter kit Once you've got past the "starter" phase you should be moving on to bigger and better things.
I like that tracked dev kit - even better that it doesn't come with any code so the user has to work it out! 
How do you know so much about swallows? Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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As long as the clock projects don't make their way to school 
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Well it does come with a digital display, ideal for a countdown I'd say.. 
How do you know so much about swallows? Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Advice I got from my former boss at a medical research facility? Go into robotics and AI. There will be no shortage of jobs that both pay well and challenge you to continue to learn and grow. If he has any interest in it, give him the means to explore, learn, and most importantly enjoy it.
For the love of your deity of choice do not be like my dad. He gave the impression that it doesn't matter if you are happy with your job or not. It is your job and you should do it because that is what defines who you are as a person.
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lol - "diety of choice" - cleaning laptop screen now. Yes, there are jobs that pay $$ which you hate and jobs that don't pay that you love... then there are those jobs that pay $$ and you love (like mine).
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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I would have killed for one of these as a high schooler.
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend; inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx
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charlieg wrote: Ideas for first project?
Whatever gets him fired up enough to stick with climbing the programming learning curve long enough to start to do interesting things. I usually suggest games based on my experience, but whatever works.
When I used to teach Java to HS students, the very first in-class lab was to compile a provided program. The program we provided was "wumpus". It was a very simple text game -- we told the user to enter a number between 1 and 10 to indicate which room they want to look for the wumpus in, we read that number, then compared it to a hardcoded answer. If they picked the right number, we printed out that they found the wumpus, if they didn't, we printed out that they didn't find the wumpus. End of program. We gave them 30 minutes to do the lab, and by the end of it we had them hooked -- we usually had all 20 students asking us how to extend it, each in their own unique way.
We used that program to introduce variables, boolean expressions and if statements, loops, user input, etc. Each lesson had an in-class lab, and most of the students immediately returned to that original wumpus game code to add some new feature, often based on what they'd just learned.
So yeah, whatever fires him up enough to hook him. I'd suggest you start simple like our wumpus game did -- maybe give him a program that asks whether the robot should move forward straight, forward left, or forward right, then moves it. Then start helping him extend it to do more interesting things with the robot.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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I've been teaching programming to my grandkids; 10 and 12 years old.
I decided the first thing a programmer needs is a computer, so I bought them a kano (www.kano.me), which is a Raspberry Pi based kit designed for kids who want to learn about computers.
The kano comes with a variety of things that can be used as a base for programming learning. The two that got the most traction with my grandkids was Sonic Pi and Scratch. You don't actually need the kano for either of these; you can play with them on windows or macs just as well, maybe better. For example, the version of Scratch on the kano is older than the version you can get online (scratch.mit.edu). Also, the online version requires Flash, which doesn't run on the kano, so you're stuck with the older version.
Anyway, Sonic Pi is awesome; it combines programming concepts with music, math and science, and can be used to explore any of those concepts fruitfully.
Scratch is also fantastic. It is a visual programming environment, with an immediate gratification that pulled my grandkids in enthusiastically. Shouts of 'Mom, come look at this', etc. Scratch does have some limitations, but it does get important concepts across, and there are a variety of pathways to more complex applications. For example, there is a similar but more advanced environment called Snap!. Or, the kano version of Scratch is written in squeak smalltalk, and it is possible to break into the smalltalk environment and make your own extensions, for whatever you want to do.
I was originally planning on teaching them using JavaScript, but in retrospect I'm glad I stayed away from traditional text based languages for their first languages.
The arduino sort of path others have suggested is also really cool. Its more of a hardware project path, which can be anything from hooking a camera up to the Pi, to making lights blink, to robots and other amazing things. For a software guy like me, though, its a little intimidating.
Good luck!
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Have you looked at the Arduino? It's good for building robots and it has quite a nice language. You can also hack them and program them in C once you outgrow the native language.
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Is it me or does CANBus[^] sound almost illegal?
New version: WinHeist Version When you have eliminated the JavaScript, whatever remains must be an empty page. Unknown
modified 24-Sep-15 17:05pm.
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You need to check that link - does not appear to go anywhere.
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Thanks for the heads up, when I cut and pasted the URL it put "CANb" instead of "CANBus"???
New version: WinHeist Version When you have eliminated the JavaScript, whatever remains must be an empty page. Unknown
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Not if used for medicinal purposes. 
How do we preserve the wisdom men will need,
when their violent passions are spent?
- The Lost Horizon
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In my younger days I had a lot of medical problems! 
New version: WinHeist Version When you have eliminated the JavaScript, whatever remains must be an empty page. Unknown
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How do we preserve the wisdom men will need,
when their violent passions are spent?
- The Lost Horizon
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lol, I have products that use that... had to think a bit.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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