Simone Gianni wrote: > Sylvain Wallez wrote: > >> A question: what language where these books written in: English or >> Italian? I'm always amazed to see kids learning to program right after >> learning to read. Computers weren't widespread when I was 7 (that was in >> 1974) and I "only" started at 13, having already some english >> background. > > Surprisingly it was in Italian. Then when i started Logo (a suggestion > from a friend of my father when i told him i was doing weird stuff > with basic on C64), I asked my father to buy a book on logo, but he > took me a book in english, since it was hard to understand it, I asked > my father to go back to the bookshop and take a "The same book on > logo, but the italian version", and he took me a book about Logo in > italian, but unfortunately for the "Italian version of Logo", where > all commands were translated ... "FW" was translated in "AV", "RT" in > "DS" etc .. :)
Oh, I remember something similar on my Apple II: some people provided a translated version of the Basic keywords, and were calling this dialect "Basicois". Totally ununderstandable if you already knew the original Basic, even without knowing english ;-) > My personal suggestion is to try to go for english, since it would > improve both english and technical skills at once, but since a foreign > language is often hard to approach, maybe starting with something > simple and "child-friendly" (like Logo was, today what?) in native > language can give the child the right interest and movivation to try > an english book later. I found some nice material in french for my kids for PHP and Python. But the oldest one (14) has switched for quite some time now to the english docs: the Python reference manual is currently on his night table! Sylvain -- Sylvain Wallez http://bluxte.net Apache Software Foundation Member
