Hey #linux people and #developers, I need your advice.
My 8 year old son has fallen in love with this old laptop that honestly isn't useful for that much as the speed and wifi is so slow.
But he says he wants to learn how to code on it.
This brought me back to the days of GW-basic when I was a kid.
Is there something like gw or q basic for Linux. Something that would run on a 32 bit computer?
What are the specs of the laptop? Python is perfectly capable of running on a 32-bit machine with not much memory - the resources required will be mostly due to the graphical desktop, if you're using one.
Even a 10-year-old laptop at this point probably has multiple CPU cores and a couple of GB of RAM, and will be plenty fast enough for console-mode Python applications. There are lightweight Linux desktop environments that will also happily run on such a system.
No, I don't think Python's too tricky in that sense. For one thing, kids are a lot better at figuring stuff out than adults usually give them credit for. But more specifically, there are editors that straddle the line between "just a text editor" and real IDE and have minimal IDE functionality, giving you a Python console in the same window and a button to re-run the code, etc.
So in that sense, it won't be much different. Arguably better, since it will have proper GUI elements, scrollback in the console and code, etc.
Python-the-language is bigger and more complex than it was 20 years ago, but you don't have to use all the complicated stuff! You can still learn Python writing code that resembles code from that era, and then start adding the fancier stuff as you find a need, want a challenge, or simply want to expand your repertoire. "You/your" being your kid in this case...
Many, many years ago I taught programming to kids at the Y, using BASIC. If I was doing it today, I would be teaching Python, and it would be much, much easier for them to understand.
@cazabon that's awesome. And honestly, I would love to learn Python too.
Is there Any kid focused books or courses you'd recommend?
Unfortunately, I've been programming in Python professionally for 25 years, and personally for 30, which makes me spectacularly out of date on how to learn Python from scratch today.
Back in the day, I frequently recommended people start with the basic tutorial included in the Python official documentation. It was well written and not too difficult for a beginner, even someone new to programming in any language. After that, you could go on to various books (I'm old...); the tutorial got you started, but didn't get you all the way to "design and implement my first useful program".
Others here can probably give better and more recent recommendations for online tutorials, YouTube video series, or even (gasp) books. Adding some tags...
#Python #LearnPython #programming #LearnProgramming #learn #tutorial #Python101
@cazabon @codemonkeymike My coding background is I've messed with making bash scripts and a bit of Python, but this year I'm learning to code in a more step-by-step comprehensive manner, and Python is my starting language of choice.
I'm currently using "Python Programming MOOC 2025" offered by the University of Helsinki. Its free, self-paced, and has lots of little programming exercises. I'm about a third of the way through and find it an excellent resource!
Learn the basics of programming with the Python programming language. The focus of the course is on programming, and you will learn how to write programs and understand how they work. For example, the basics of algorithms, control structures, subprograms, object-oriented programming are covered. The course is suitable to anyone who wants to learn programming. No prior programming experience is required.
@codemonkeymike @cazabon Thonny is a Python IDE made specifically for beginners, that could be a tool to remove some of the complexity of getting started? I think it should be pretty lightweight too.
Mike 
C.
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Daniel Wayne Armstrong
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