My little sister (8) has seen a friend trying to learn qbasic (only print and input stuff) and said: "I want to learn such a thing too. I am shure there is something similar for linux, maybie with a better ide" (we have a linux box.)

I said yes but I don't want to have to emulate dos with dosemu & co. I would rather prefer something native with an easy to use editor.

Personally I am experienced with C/C++/ASM but I don't know where to find the IDE she is seeking for.

any ideas?

Python!
With gedit or idle as the editor?

yeah, just remember to explain to her (gently) that it is not qbasic, it is better, and print off a good tutorial for her (python.org) and if she gets frustrated encourage her, but don't be the guy with all of the solutions (she'll never learn if you won't let her) just gently guide her to her solution. It might help if you learnt the basic "hello world" and compiling stuff. It's not that hard, and you can help her very easily.

titanium_geek (python rocks!)

i'd not recommend python at all... it's great and stpuidly simple and clever once you "get" it, but the underlying style is odd, and can look pretty cryptic. A port of basic would be better i think.

http://www.yabasic.de/
http://wxbasic.sourceforge.net/

among others... wxbasic even has OpenGL support! those sites link off to other BASIC clones for unix or cross platform.

hmmm... you might have a point acid.
She's only eight isn't she.

titanium_geek

still not sure what an 8yr old girl is going to get out of learning to program anything at all... maybe in the 16 years i've not been 8 for, thigns have really moved up (or down??) in the world

I seem to remember writing simple programs in the old IBM advanced BASIC when I was 8. I seem to recall using GOTO a lot, not realizing what an incredibly horrible thing that was :-D.

I've actually heard that Smalltalk was a language that was at least partially designed to help teach programming to children. I've never played around with it much, though, and I'm not sure how good the GNU Smalltalk implementation is.

hmmm... I wish I had gotten into the programming thing earlier... html and basic BEFORE highschool, java from maybe grade 9 up... sigh... so many languages, so little time.

titanium_geek

I wish I could have started when I was 8. Alas, my parents are AOLer noobs

Well, for an 8 year old I would suggest html. It gets you into the simple contex such as programs are nothing but code. Next, I would say php, but thats just be, and its not even a programming language really. But it feels like one.

I have a 11 year old sister, whos just learning c++ (knows quite a bit just from watching me .etc). I'd recommend just teaching here algorithmic concepts and advanced mathematics, and easing in c.

what do you mean by advanced mathematics. I thought we were talking about an 8 year old.

boolean algebra. This is really easy, but is called advanced mathematics because you usually don't learn it untill highschool. However the computer teacher is going against the trend and teaching the 3rd graders boolean algebra.

what is it?
and not or xor
and: are they the same?
not: are they different
or: is either true
xor: only one is true (exclusive or)

it is used for binary,
1 and 1 = 1, 1 and 0 = 0, 0 and 0 = 1
1 not 1 = 0, 1not 0 = 1, 0 not 0 = 0
1 or 1 = 1, 1 or 0 = 1, 0 or 0 = 0
1 xor 1 = 0, 1 xor 0 = 1, 0 xor 0 = 0

titanium_geek