Be still my beating heart

One of the kids mentioned that he wanted to purchase this game building software from his school book order service. I took a look at the software he wanted to buy, asked him what he wanted to do with it and then read the reviews. As with all non-coding game builders, it's awfully limited in what it could do, nowhere near what the fertile imagination of a child could come up with. It could probably handle the spaceships and helicopters that he wanted but I suspect the giant sandworms and other more unique design elements of this game he wants to build would be a little more challenging (as in "impossible to do with that piece of software").

In short, he's going to be very disappointed and frustrated with it. I would really like him not to be disappointed given that this would be his first attempt to create anything dynamic on the computer.

Now, please understand that I didn't come from a rich family. We were comfortable for most of the time and touch-and-go for others. Still, I was fortunate enough that my Dad bought me a computer when I was in my early teens and as you could imagine, I took to it like a duck to water. I still have that original ZX Spectrum 48K somewhere in my basement. In fact, I can recall very vividly the day when we bought it from a computer fair. Even now, I can smell the metallic scent of the packaging material and its orange coiled manual that would become very dogeared over the coming years.

Mmm...good nostalgic memories. *ahem* Well, fast forwarding to the present, I have a child who wants to build games and I believe he'd do rather well at it despite his fixation on sandworms, which is really my fault (it's a long story, don't worry about it). Given what I've seen of him, he would probably be quite interested in putting his logical mind to better use. I would rather that he's at the computer trying to code rather than spending an hour playing with his Game Boy.

Now...what am I going to do about this situation? I had hoped to start him off with Logo but I think he's ready for something better. BASIC would fit the bill quite well so I'm evaluating the different flavours for fit. Of course, there's always Sinclair BASIC, a flavour that is near and dear to my heart as it was the very first implementation of BASIC that I ever used extensively. I think I'll install a ZX Spectrum emulator and take him through it slowly. It's colourful and easy to use - just the thing for an inquisitive child.

*sigh* Was I ever that young? It looks like the proverbial apple hasn't fallen far from the tree. Yes, I'm extremely proud of him and hope he will learn something good and fun. However, I think I'll save that lesson on recursion and multithreading for when he's a little older. I will skip teaching him COBOL unless if he gets too bratty. *blinks and recalls the latest bratty episode just tonight* Okay, I guess I'd better order that COBOL primer today...