So - my son has taken an interest in computers/software - he's 14
 

bought him a cheap laptop - he's enrolled in the academy IT program at the local HS starting last year

He's been googling command prompts - playing around with simple programming, that sort of thing - pinging IP addresses, etc

Any recommendations on a program - or assembly language or whatever that I can keep his interest growing?

I'm not sure if ruby on rails or some open source would be too advanced (he's 14)

Thoughts?

I say get him involved with Arduino or Raspberry pie or any of the open source embedded systems


https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/103

Here is a good online course, good introduction into programming. Free unless you want to buy it.

Learn Python

Arduino and Rasperry Pi.

My kid loves them.

I gave my son a Timex Sinclar computer back in the early 80's. Has his own computer business, 8 workes, two buildings, house is paid off and he goes to Europe twice a year.

I would suggest an Assembler Language course if you can find one as it is the only language where you actually manipulate the CPU internals and work with memory, etc. The second suggestion would be to have him take it easy so he doesn't burn out like our youngest daughter did. She did web programming back in 1997, 98 and 99 and was making $20 per hour which is pretty good for a high school junior to start out with. Helped her afford her first car...... a 1974 914 2L that she drove nearly 200K miles!

With all due respect John (and your resume is indeed impressive as I recall), as a former systems programmer...we ARE geeky dinosaurs and I couldn't disagree more with that advice. I thrived on that stuff (including microcode development for sophisticated networking devices) and those daze are LONG gone. Programming will be easy/peasy for those with talent, and at age 14, imo the goal should be to make it "fun" for the kid.

Become his agent just in case... Your wife can sign the contract as a legal gardian :)

Is he into games?

If yes grab the Unity Engine and let him start there.

The biggest motivator is having something to show for your work

It's a serious bit of kit.

Unity - Game Engine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_(game_engine)

I'm teaching 2 sessions of "College for Kids" - a summer day camp for kids 10-14. I'm doing an intro to programming course. Since there is also a web design/HTML class offered, I decided to teach 'em some PHP. Getting some course notes and examples online, will have all of it up by end of week. I'll PM a username and password, and be happy to answer questions via email (I'll include it in the pm)

CFK PHP stuff

If that doesn't quite scratch his itch, I'd recommend seeing if the laptop will have its hardware working with the latest version of Linux Mint. There is TONS of free development stuff in the linux world, and lots of tutorials/forums/sites dedicated to each language. C/C++/C# will quickly prep him to be able to read the source code of a lot of things, I'd recommend looking at Xonotic since it is a cool game and both Free and free. Python would also be something good to learn, and as much as I don't like it Java.

two years, he will discover girls.
hope he circles back around to the computers..:D

Thanks for the links and insights!

All good stuff, but I would say drop the PC and get a Mac and start him looking at Mobile Apps using PhoneGap, Mobile is the new frontier.....

I would vote for Unity. We have game developement contests where I work using unity. The teams can crank out a working mobile game in under a day.

+3 for Unity. Currently one of the go-to game engines and the skills transfer.

The other thing that is getting a lot of traction is Swift - Apple's new language for iOS and OSX.

Get the book "makers" by Chris Anderson

Just for perspective.

Is he into robots, by any chance? He can extend his knowledge and learn more advanced programming with robots, plus robots are a little more fun than just computers ;)

Unity has put a serious dent in Unreal, the defacto king of the hill engine, to the point that what we publishers once paid 7 figures to license is now $20.00 a month plus rev share.:eek: