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Stephen Wolfram's Free Book Teaches the Wolfram Language To Kids
theodp writes: Stephen Wolfram received a PhD in particle physics at age 20 (his thesis committee included Richard Feynman). So it's probably not too surprising that Wolfram's new book, An Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language (free on the web), aspires to teach those new to programming how to do much more than just move Minecraft and Star Wars characters around. "The goal of the book," explains Wolfram in a blog post, "is to take people from zero to the point where they know enough about the Wolfram Language that they can routinely use it to create programs for things they want to do. And when I say 'zero', I really mean 'zero'. This is a book for everyone. It doesn't assume any knowledge of programming, or math (beyond basic arithmetic), or anything else. It just starts from scratch and explains things. I've tried to make it appropriate for both adults and kids. I think it'll work for typical kids aged about 12 and up."
You can get it for the Raspberry Pi at no cost, so I assume there's (nonfree) linux packages.
http://www.wolfram.com/raspberry-pi/?source=nav
It's free (no cost) for non commercial use and there are packages for noobs and raspbian.
I myself was curious, so I looked it up on Wikipedia.
Seems like he educated himself in particle physics when he was very young (started publishing papers at age 15), got accepted early by St. John's College when he applied at age 17, switched to CalTech at age 19, and got his Ph.D. a year later.
Now, obviously he was allowed to fast forward through the years of grinding that are normally required before you can enter college or work on a Ph.D. thesis. Given that he was already publishing widely cited physics papers at the age of 18, that was probably a good call on the part of his instructors.
Procrastination Man strikes again!
Cole Miller, one of my friends in grad school at Caltech, started the Ph.D. program in physics at age 16, and was 21 or 22 when he got his degree. That's not far from Wolfram's age when he got his Ph.D. I entered Caltech in 1984, talked to two people who knew Wolfram personally, and I never heard any hint of "corruption, money, and connections" -- just some quibbling over intellectual property rights to SMP, the predecessor of Mathematica. (No question about who wrote it, mind you, just who owned it.)