meriksson

A friend of mine, a non-technical type, has a 12 year old son who is interested in computers. Their family has a pretty strict "no screens” policy, so using computers is not really a thing. My friend is willing to make an exception for his son, but he wants the focus to be on “a black screen with white text”. In other words, he wants the focus to be on Linux, the command line and programming, while limiting exposure to games etc. Using the web to learn about Linux and programming is OK, but computer time should mostly be about text rather than graphics and entertainment.

As a programmer myself, I want to encourage my friend to pursue this project. My own impression of the kid is that coding might be a good fit for him. But I’m a bit stumped as to specific recommendations.

Does anyone here have experiences of something similar? Any hints I can pass along to my friend would be greatly appreciated. Everything from types of projects the kid could work on while getting started to ideas about what distro to use, what programming language to start with etc.

In this particular case, the kid is very imaginative and writes stories, creates roleplaying adventures, designs his own boardgames etc, so the first thing that comes to mind is helping him get started making text-based games. Any suggestions on how to do that would be greatly appreciated!