Re: How to introduce 8 year olds to (Perl) programming?

[johndageek]

Your take on computers being dumb is a good idea!

One tack you could take would be that computers are tools to make our lives easier. For example, say you were caught making fun of the computer and you had to write “I will not make fun of the computer” 100 times. How long would it take you to write that?

Break out a keyboard and make a simple program.

Print “I will not make fun of the computer\n”;

Run the script.
Run the script.
Run the script.

Well, That’s three times, it is easier than writing it by hand, but what if we make it easier.

change the script.

For (1..100){
  Print “I will not make fun of the computer\n”;
}

Run the script.

Prove the stupidity of computers by putting in a misspelling, or 1000 instead of 100.

Looks like there have been several good ideas, Good Luck!