I fell in love with computer at 12, when a friend of mine show me typing a program to get a skying game. Don't ask me why, it blowed my mind, and that's it. Some months after, I had my ZX 48k, and started my trip to hell using basic, but as soon as I could (not that easy in Italy in 1984) I switch to Assembly. So, today, Assembler. I love Assembler. Assembler. Bye.

I've loved, and yet I love, the Motorola 680x0 Assembler. I've spent so many hours on my Amigas furiously bashing the hardware.... pure pleasure! Sic.

With few words, you get straight to the core. I fully agree.

I have a child 6 years old, and he's fond of games so much, too. Being my wife a primary teacher involved in [try to] teaching coding, too, we approached some tools, Scratch in primis, and we took some experiment with our son; but I found that these tools are somehow too... funny: just like the platform overloads young children, creating more distractions than focus. My very personal experience is that less may be more at these ages, in terms of the challenge the child is asked to solve, even if you carefully follow them side by side. However, we are in Italy, so we have nothing professionally helping in teaching coding, just the good will and deep personal motivation.

Well, I think the author wants his child to simply learn the basic imperative programming, at first. And I agree, maybe because I ancient enough to start programming in 1984 :(( on a ZX Spectrum in basic and then fallen in love with Assembler up to today; I still remember very well how satisfying it was to literally conquer & dominate a routine, to move an 8x8 pixels little shape in a rudimentary maze, respecting walls and obstacles! Back to the book, it could be a good solution to start the hard way, especially if it contributes to create a special father-son link.