I agree with the comments being made in this thread. Parents have the responsibility of preparing their children for all areas of life. Parents who rely on a surrogates (human, chemical, or electronic) to educate or entertain their children are shirking their responsibility every bit as much as those parents who abandon their families.
I would like to offer another perspective on your comment:
"When I have kids, I'll give them a computer with a command line interface, and if they are interested in learning to use it, I will teach them. Then, when they get to be teenagers, they can have their GUI."
It is not necessary to start with a command line interface to become skilled with computers. My first exposure to computers was when I was in high school. It was a command line interface. (teletype on a main frame) I don't know what kind of machine it was. I thought it was interesting but after a brief introduction I didn't do anything else with computers until several years later. I bought a Mac Plus for personal use and that use lead to a career in the computer industry. I have been employed as a graphic designer, user interface designer, and programmer. Computers are also one of my hobbies and my children are growing up surrounded by them.
We have Macintoshes, PC's, and PDA's. My children consider the various operating systems and input methods to be equally valid, each with it's own strengths and weaknesses. For example, my forth child, a four year old, is just as comfortable with DOS or LINUX as he is with Windows or the Mac OS. Because his reading skills are still limited he does need some assistance learning new commands or when confronted with new prompts or error messages, especially in the text based systems. He seems to understand that this is a normal part of learning.
I any endeavor curiosity and a willingness to learn are much more important than where you start in determining how proficient you become.
Time for a distinction between "Open" and "Free"
on
OSI APSL Response
·
· Score: 1
This is an excellent selection. Have you forwarded it to OSI?
Slashdot Mirror
3Dtop runs fine for me on windows xp home edition.
I agree with the comments being made in this thread. Parents have the responsibility of preparing their children for all areas of life. Parents who rely on a surrogates (human, chemical, or electronic) to educate or entertain their children are shirking their responsibility every bit as much as those parents who abandon their families.
I would like to offer another perspective on your comment:
"When I have kids, I'll give them a computer with a command line interface, and if they are interested in learning to use it, I will teach them. Then, when they get to be teenagers, they can have their GUI."
It is not necessary to start with a command line interface to become skilled with computers. My first exposure to computers was when I was in high school. It was a command line interface. (teletype on a main frame) I don't know what kind of machine it was. I thought it was interesting but after a brief introduction I didn't do anything else with computers until several years later. I bought a Mac Plus for personal use and that use lead to a career in the computer industry. I have been employed as a graphic designer, user interface designer, and programmer. Computers are also one of my hobbies and my children are growing up surrounded by them.
We have Macintoshes, PC's, and PDA's. My children consider the various operating systems and input methods to be equally valid, each with it's own strengths and weaknesses. For example, my forth child, a four year old, is just as comfortable with DOS or LINUX as he is with Windows or the Mac OS. Because his reading skills are still limited he does need some assistance learning new commands or when confronted with new prompts or error messages, especially in the text based systems. He seems to understand that this is a normal part of learning.
I any endeavor curiosity and a willingness to learn are much more important than where you start in determining how proficient you become.
This is an excellent selection. Have you forwarded it to OSI?