Digital Cud

I was eight years old when I started programming. My folks bought an Atari 600XL console computer and never really seemed to use it. I got ahold of the thing and realized that there was this language called BASIC that was preinstalled. I poured over the manuals and found a magazine at the grocery store that had listings of BASIC programs in the back. I typed in the listings, spending hours to create hangman games and “snow simulators” that moved asterisks from the top of the screen to the bottom.

I was hooked.

Now I write code for a living, and after 24 years it is still fun. Well, mostly…but that’s another post. A new chapter opened up the other day when my oldest, Nate, started asking me (and asking, and asking) to teach him how to program a computer. Part of me was elated with the father-like-sonishness of it all, and part of me hesitated. I wasn’t sure I would be able to discern between teaching him and pushing him. I don’t want to be like that Dad in the front row of the bleachers at a basketball game screaming at kids and coaches and making a general jerk out of himself because he sees an opportunity in his son for greater accomplishments than he was able to achieve…except with computer code.

Finally, I relented and decided to let Nate have a go at coding. I fired up my faithful Mac Ruby interpreter, and pretty soon Nate was cranking out “Hello World!” and 3+2 = ? and “NateNateNateNateNate.” It’s a lot of fun seeing him follow in my footsteps, and if he does wind up being a code monkey like his ol’ pop…well, we’ll see. If that is the vocational path that the Lord has for him, what a blessing to be his mentor! If not, there is always Lela, Justin, C.J., and Brianna, right?

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 18th, 2007 at 2:13 pm and is filed under Family, Homeschooling, Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.