In my middle school years I started dabbling with web design and learned HTML and CSS. However, I soon wanted to be able to create dynamic sites, so I picked up PHP. This was the first real (albeit a bad) programming language that I learned. I don't think it caused me brain damage or whatever, but it prevented me from transitioning to other languages for a bit.
When I got into high school I picked up a few books on Lisp, decided it was much better than PHP, and did some stuff with it. However, I hadn't learned much actual programming yet.
What really got me into programming was the USA Computing Olypmiad (http://usaco.org). This is a programming contest for high school students that forces you to write efficient programs to solve some very difficult problems (just about all programs have to run in under one second). The contest makers have also created an excellent training site that has plenty of problems and lectures to learn from. When I started the training pages, I could barely program in C, but after about 40 problems or so I can program almost anything in it or in C++. Since then I've also learned Ruby and Python, the two being a breath of fresh air after C/C++ and PHP.
Because of this, I was able to take the AP Computer Science AB (which should be called AP Java:/) exam and got a 5 in freshman year, without ever having taken a computer science course in my life.
You just need to challenge your son with problems like those in the USACO, and if he's ever be interested in programming, he'll learn on his own in order to solve them.
Contents of email from the download day site: "Are you ready to make history? Are you ready to set a World Record? Today is Download Day. To become part of the official Guinness World Record you must download Firefox 3 by 17:00 UTC on June 18, 2008, or roughly 24 hours from now."
17:00 UTC? That's 1:00 PM *tomorrow*.
--and they do--it is common sense that a person who licenses their code under the GPL should not be able to revoke that license. If it were allowed, then what would happen to any forks of the software, or people that merely had a copy of the source code? It would be an irresolvable legal situation.
Don't give us the right to modify and view your code, and then try to take it away.
Slashdot Mirror
...it's too close to zero.
In my middle school years I started dabbling with web design and learned HTML and CSS. However, I soon wanted to be able to create dynamic sites, so I picked up PHP. This was the first real (albeit a bad) programming language that I learned. I don't think it caused me brain damage or whatever, but it prevented me from transitioning to other languages for a bit. When I got into high school I picked up a few books on Lisp, decided it was much better than PHP, and did some stuff with it. However, I hadn't learned much actual programming yet. What really got me into programming was the USA Computing Olypmiad (http://usaco.org). This is a programming contest for high school students that forces you to write efficient programs to solve some very difficult problems (just about all programs have to run in under one second). The contest makers have also created an excellent training site that has plenty of problems and lectures to learn from. When I started the training pages, I could barely program in C, but after about 40 problems or so I can program almost anything in it or in C++. Since then I've also learned Ruby and Python, the two being a breath of fresh air after C/C++ and PHP. Because of this, I was able to take the AP Computer Science AB (which should be called AP Java :/) exam and got a 5 in freshman year, without ever having taken a computer science course in my life.
You just need to challenge your son with problems like those in the USACO, and if he's ever be interested in programming, he'll learn on his own in order to solve them.
Contents of email from the download day site: "Are you ready to make history? Are you ready to set a World Record? Today is Download Day. To become part of the official Guinness World Record you must download Firefox 3 by 17:00 UTC on June 18, 2008, or roughly 24 hours from now." 17:00 UTC? That's 1:00 PM *tomorrow*.
I wonder what would happen if someone figured out how to torrent a car.
--and they do--it is common sense that a person who licenses their code under the GPL should not be able to revoke that license. If it were allowed, then what would happen to any forks of the software, or people that merely had a copy of the source code? It would be an irresolvable legal situation. Don't give us the right to modify and view your code, and then try to take it away.
...he doesn't need lawyers. He's his own lawyer, defendant, and prosecutor.