How can I make a “kid's computer” today as good as an Apple II?

I had a similar problem a few years ago. While I never found the perfect machine here is how I have been introducing my now 10 year old son to the world of computers:

- I bought him a Kano computer kit when he was about 7. The kit retailed for about $250 at the time and a kid could assemble it "like LEGO". It came with educational software that introduced him to programming languages, etc. (Unfortunately I do not think they make this kit anymore.) Verdict: MINOR SUCCESS.

- I tried to introduce him to Python (around 7.5) by following an online book about game programming. He did not show much interest. Verdict: FAILURE.

- I introduced him to MakeCode (arcade.makecode.com) around 8. He got absolutely hooked and it is still his favorite platform today. I bought him some cheap hardware (Meowbit) to put his programs on and he loves showing off his games to his friends and everyone else. Verdict: MAJOR SUCCESS.

- I introduced him to Godot when he was 9. He showed strong interest, built a few games in it and even understood enough of the Python like language that Godot has. He used this series of YouTube videos to learn about Godot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvPTSZl2WCc. Verdict: MEDIUM SUCCESS.

- We are currently building Ben Eater's 8-bit computer (eater.net/8bit) and he absolutely loves it. He is able to follow along with the videos and understand the material at a good level. He has named the computer "Terry". This project does require a lot of my own time. Verdict: MAJOR SUCCESS.

We have also tried other projects (e.g. Raspberry-pi with Raspbian, Arduino, Robotics kits, etc.) although nothing that he showed major interest at the time. I think you have to try with different things to see what will capture your child's imagination.

My daughter just built her very own Raspberry Pi 4 based computer[0] last weekend for her 10th birthday. Key points:

- She picked the components herself (with dad's supervision to make sure they would work together), so the case and keyboard and so on are ones she likes the look of and wants on her desk.

- She assembled it all and installed the OS herself (again with dad supervising but trying really hard not to help except when requested), so I'm hoping she'll have a much stronger sense of ownership due to the Ikea effect[1].

Still too early to see how well it has worked, but she's been very excited about it so far and proud of her accomplishment. It's the 8Gb model and (as per dad's recommendation) she installed 64-bit Ubuntu on it, so she can use all the same systems and tools she sees her dad using. They are doing Scratch and Python in school, so the plan is for her to use it for at least those things, but she has shown interest in learning how to develop a mobile app, and I'm hoping it'll be a bit of a gateway for other potential interests like video editing, graphics editing etc.

Also want to add that I wouldn't be doing any of this if she hadn't seemed genuinely interested - I have this theory that trying to push children in a certain direction will end up being counter-productive, i.e. you push and they rebel and end up wanting to go the opposite direction just because.

[0] https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect

>When I was a kid, I had an Apple II with a BASIC interpreter, [...] a computer like that, where there are a lot of open-ended ways to create.

I think your particular childhood memories that understandably left an imprint on you have inadvertently affected your idea of what "open-ended" creation means.

>, and great creative experiences don't seem available on desktop

I also grew up with those 8-bit computers and I don't think the Apple II / Commodore 64 / Texas Instruments TI-99 with burned in ROM BASIC and 64kb RAM are more creative. It was simply a different time and we as children just used the technology that happened to be available for the price point of home computers. If I ignore my childhood, I'd have to objectively weigh those early home computers as less open-ended. Sure, I had fun with BASIC "10 PRINT HELLO 20 GOTO 10" and giggled as the text infinitely scrolled up. But we all had lower standards of novelty because computers were not as powerful.

With today's desktop and a browser, kids can "be creative" with digital art or make music with more powerful tools. Many examples of expressive worlds are just a few clicks away with no software to install or EPROM cartridges to buy:

+ digital art: https://www.google.com/search?q=online+painting

+ digital music: https://www.google.com/search?q=online+beats+maker

+ Javascript is more powerful than ROM BASIC and the tools cost $0

With Commodore or TI computers, I couldn't even save my BASIC programs until my parents saved enough money for a $100 cassette tape interface or $200 for floppy drive. Instead of thinking my childhood time with computers was more creative, I'm actually jealous of what today's kids can do on modern desktop computers and the web.

Take any decent computer and point the browser at scratch.mit.edu. It’s got fun, easy ways for kids to learn programming concepts.

And more importantly (to the kids), it’s got tons of fun content that other kids have made using those tools. This helps spread ideas and inspiration. They can see something cool and then “look inside it” to see how it was built.

Kids want to be doing what other kids today are doing. Hearing “I loved this as a kid” from a parent can doom something right from the start. Kids want their own experiences, especially as they get older. The technologies you have fond memories of were contemporary at the time you enjoyed them. Your kids also want contemporary experiences.

But most importantly, kids are unique, and often different from their parents. They might not like the same things we did as kids, even if we could exactly recreate them.

I think the problem here is that the world has moved on a lot since some of us kids were amazed at what we could make machines like an AppleII do with basic (and assembler and peek and poke).

I remember being amazingly proud of myself for getting an ascii version of Space Invaders working. I could, as a 10 or 12 year old, make something for myself that kinda looked like and was way more fun (for me) to play that _literally_ the most desirable and sophisticated "computer game" there was at the time.

I talk to a friend's 11 year old occasionally about "computer stuff", and he plays Fortnight and Roblox - and he just can't see a connection between simple child oriented computer programming, and Fortnight, which is what he would rather be playing than futzing around in Scratch (or even Minecraft).

I genuinely don't think many kids these days want t6o spend time playing with there LOGO Turtle, when they could be playing multiplayer games on their phone or iPad instead.

(And, to be fair, _most_ of the kids when I was in school just wanted to play Space Invader clones and not write Basic programs, I did most of my Basic programming in junior high on a BBC Micro, because there were not games on pirated floppy disks, which was what the AppleIIs were all in demand for. I suspect today it'll still only be a half dozen or so kids out of a school of 6 or 800 who _want_ to program computers, same as it was in '79 and '80. The rest of them will just want to play games not learn how to do magic...)

If you wanna give your kids the opportunity, I s3econd cons's suggestion of a RaspberryPi400. Add a spare HDMI monitor and you're got "the spiritual equivalent" of an AppleII. Don't get your hopes up _too_ high about your kids being the maybe 1% of people who choose to program for fun.

I think this is a lost cause. Other have already mentioned this, but I'll state it again. The computers themselves are the trivial part, both the hardware and the software. You can buy a budget 11- or 13-inch laptop, new for $300 or used for $100, load them with emulators of all the 1980s and 1990s machines, and have literally the same software and much better hardware than we did back then.

If you give that to them, odds are overwhelmingly (I'm guesstimating at least 99:1) that your kids might show some interest for less than 5 minutes, and them move on to their current preferred form of entertainment. You might stretch it a bit if there is a knowledgable and enthusiastic adult sitting with them all the time, but most will only continu when the adult is present. How many hours can you spare?

Back in the 1980s, we had 3 tv channels (with mostly boring adult programming), a library that we visited a few times per month, to take out 6 books per visit, a video store where we rented movies a few times per year. Even in that restrictive setting with far less competition for attention, most of the (few) children who hade home computers only used them (personal schoolyard experience) to consume (cracked) games. Nowadays, with the endless streams of highly optimised attentions sinks (all-you-can-eat video channels, adware/IAP touch screen "games"), just giving them open-ended ways to create or great creative experiences does not stand any chance.

Now maybe your children are among the very few that do have an aptitude for open-world creativity. You can probably tell with something like Lego, or paid games with some creation tools (Minecraft, Super Mario Maker). But don't be too disappointed if they show little interest or enthusiasm. It's not you, nor the hardware/software. It's the children themselves.

Yeah, I have this question myself a lot.

I thought I could just buy my kid an old C64 or ZXSpectrum, but those computers are just sooo slow and cumbersome now. They have the right spirit, but too nonstandard and weird in some ways. If you just want an environment to go over basic programming and doing sprite stuff, they can work.

One possibility is to get a raspberry pi kit that comes with a display and keyboard to where it is kinda like the old C64 experience. Depending on their age, make it a family activity. I doubt my kid would just go read on their own (at least now), but when I say it's reading time and sit down with them, it is usually an enjoyable activity. Start with Scratch and then later move to a Basic interpreter or Python. Programming is hard, but if they have little example text games to program and tweak, they'll pick it up little by little. To really learn, they'll have to keep at it (a few hours a week). It probably won't be super enjoyable at first, but eventually I bet they'll be happy once they can actually do stuff.

As far as Basic goes...Once you've taught them some basics (print statements, if-then, for loops, while loops, arrays), you can help them with creating easy games like tic-tac-toe, guess the number, a 3 room text adventure...etc. This will never be the dopamine hit that watching TV, social media, or playing Fortnite will be though unless they're really just into it.

Recommend you look at something like the Raspberry Pi 400:

https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-400-unit/

These are about USD100 a pop and need a HDMI screen and you're all set.

And then configure it to run a Basic or Python REPL on boot, to give that 1970s home PC feel.

The thing about your childhood memories is that the actual output was not possible any other way. Paint Shop Pro banners made at home was awesome! Writing a program that took your age in years and returned the number of months was, in the 80s, mind-blowing. Remember, we thought that digital watches were cool! Now, you can ask Alexa how many days there are until your birthday. So writing software on a PC is a bit .

Any attempt to revive that sense of wonder has to be something that seems like an achievement, which is why Lego Mindstorms keeps getting a mention. Along that vein..

- If going down the Raspberry Pi route, look at doing stuff with sensors, servo drivers, that kind of thing. The CrowPi seems to be good for that.

- An Arduino educational kit with a bunch of electronics is really good - particularly if you can get it with a proper accompanying educational programme and all of the bits. Arduino is probably better than a Pi to get some introduction to embedded and electronics, because you don’t have to have an argument with your parents about whether or not systemd is a good thing.

- Good projects are buying LED lighting strips for their bedrooms and finding ways to turn them on and wire them up. It has to be something that you can’t get from Amazon Prime, so LED strips that you have to cut and solder make it much cooler.

- 3D printing is still amazing. Kids feel that they have produced something from nothing. The sense of wonder is definitely there.

- Radio controlled electric planes or drones are good. There is a fair amount of ‘programming’ involved (of radios, ESCs, etc), and it is surprisingly more complex than you would think. Start off simple though with a kit that has some self-assembly and upgradability.

Just get an old computer. Old computers don't die - their users do.

You can get a nicely specc'ed ZX Next (https://www.specnext.com/) or Amstrad CPC6128 for the budget, or find an old C64 and deck it out with some solid-state storage (actually do this for all the machines, they all have it now).

My kids learned hacking on an Oric Atmos with a Cumulus drive (SD-card storage), which was just mind-blowing to see and also very, very inspiring for me personally, as a 40-year veteran of the art of programming.

These systems are still out there, and still work. AND, they are amazing - just look at the beauty of the 10liner Basic competition, which this year was won by an Oric Atmos program that implemented a fully working Lunar Lander game in 10 lines of Basic, custom graphics, sound and all!

https://gkanold.wixsite.com/homeputerium/games-list-2022

(Winning entry here: https://bunsen.itch.io/moon-landing-by-rax)

Failing that, check out the Clockwork Pi options: https://www.clockworkpi.com/

From other replies on here, it seems that you are more interested in the Software side than the hardware. Scratch was the gateway drug for my kids. It immediately let them create games they could share with friends, it immediately let them grab other resources and tweak and change those for their own game.

I also kept them on linux (ubuntu) machines until they started high School - the reasons for this were 2-fold:

1) let them get comfortable with other OS's - they saw windows machines at school and ipads, this showed them that they were all 'just computers' and feel comfortable jumping between os's

2) security - oh man if you could see the amount of dodgy looking .exe and .bat files that are in the download folders.

My kids have now moved on to Godot and pygame, but an old laptop with Scratch was the key.

Have you tried PICO-8? https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

Not a computer but I think embodies a lot of the open-ended creativity of the Apple II.

I built a small raspberry pi zero "laptop"[1] with 4" screen and usb battery that does not have X and inits directly into openvt that starts vim (takes like 2 seconds to boot) and it has python and you can directly write pixels into /dev/fb0, there are also console games that are quite fun.

The best part was "no distraction environment" no internet, no messages, nothing, you have to be bored a bit to get creative.

Though my daughter doesnt use it much (she did in the beginning), it is super hard to compete with modern entertainment which is so reachable and so instant. All kids get what they want immediately after they want it. I want a football, order online, it arrives same day. I want to watch this movie, they start watching.

I am trying to create some time per day, in a safe space where she can be creative and bored.

[1]: https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/blob/master/...

Just don't do what my father did: buy a bunch of assembly / machine code reference manuals, sit me (aged 11) in front of a ZX Spectrum, and said "off you go!" and didn't help me understand anything in the books at all.

If you want your kid to learn, I think you should sit down with them, and learn alongside them. Start super simple, get something like a STEMMA/QT connection Trinkey and a gas sensor from Adafruit, plug them together and write a python loop to display the gas levels. You can call it a fart detector to get the kid interested.

That's a simple example that someone might say is too complex. Thing is, a kid generally has zero interest in loops, IO, libraries, etc etc. They may need to see and hold something for it to take priority over Fortnite or whatever. Other projects might be a do not disturb LED for their bedroom door. Or get a strip of LEDs and have them light up based on what they do in Fortnite or Minecraft (if that's possible)

Good luck, so many children have serious attention problems due to their saturation in social media.

iPads have a lot of good stuff, I think. I've 2x 7 year old girls, which have iPads. Generally they're limited to 1h/day, but screentime is off for:

- Codea - https://codea.io - it took a while, but eventually they found out that there's a few sample games, so they thought they'd found a loophole to "no more screentime for games". Then it took a bit longer until they realized they can tweak the source code. "Look at this, no gravity" or "Look at my high score!" (after tweaking the scores to increase in increments of 1000 instead of 1), or "Look, I changed the text messages" etc.

- Swift Playgrounds - they're not super fascinated with this, but I see them occasionally open it and noodle around.

- Procreate - they have an Apple Pencil, and any YouTube video about using Procreate is exempt from Screentime limits. This has led to a lot of amazing digital illustrations.

- Pages - just this simple built-in app is already pretty fun if kids are bored, and something is exempt from screentime. Last weekend one of them asked to go to Starbucks, because she's "writing a novel". She wrote a short story over ~5 pages, and was super proud of it.

- YouTube - in general, this is my least favorite app of theirs, and I try to police this the most. But any requests for videos where you learn things are exempt from screentime limits (case by case). E.g. Lego builds, origami, drawing instructions, "how to make slime at home" videos, etc.

This is a great question, and I'm eager to see what other creativity-fostering approaches are there. But to sum up my approach - limit screentime for mindless games, and let boredom take care of the rest.

Well, you could just get an Apple. New plus boards are being made, the cards you need are available.

Mine is equipped with:

80 Col / mem expansion to 128K

Fast Chip for some speed, up to 16Mhz (which is crazy fast on most software designed for 1Mhz)

HDMI output device, VidHD card. This thing is GREAT.

CFFA / USB Flash disk solution for loading programs, disk images, etc...

My younger granddaughter enjoys the machine. I've got a joystick on it, and am seeking a mouse card. Those are a PITA right now, and I may just build one.

I need a printing solution and that's true for my home overall right now. Gotta break down and get a good printer. I just hate doing that. Need to talk to some people and get one I won't get pissed off at.

Right now, we play games, education and action, create with the various programs, painting, etc... She enjoys time on the machine and soon will write some little programs.

LOGO is just too much fun for little kids. I can't wait to see her try it. And with a little speed boost, the machine should really perform!

That all said, my mind goes right to the Raspi 400. It's a pretty cool little computer, built into a keyboard, has the right ports, etc...

If you do some setup on that thing, a younger person could have a good time, and could by the way run an emulated Apple and have a good experience.

I see billziss talking about building the Ben Eater 6502. This is something I would enjoy with them. And if successful, that is a powerful experience on par with anything we had back then.

Former kid here, one of the toys my parents provided me with early on was Snap Circuits: https://www.elenco.com/brand/snap-circuits/

Not strictly programming-related per se, but they were a very educational toy. Messing around with these from a young age probably helped to cultivate an interest in electronics, how things worked, and later computing/programming.

I think the best learning experience is seeing you can still build and repair a computer yourself, so I had my 8yr old kid build his own gaming PC from scratch (with me standing by for guidance). We were about $1200 in with parts: motherboard, cpu, ram, nvme, chassis, dvd-rom, etc.

Then he got to help as we installed dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows, with Ubuntu being default :)

In windows I installed some games I felt ok about. Microsoft Flight Simulator, Kerbal Space Program, Pokemon TCG, his school office apps. But I only let him run Minecraft on the Linux side, so he will have to boot there and sort it out from time to time, with the bonus of a Minecraft server environment we've hacked a bit.

We're no longer in the 80s, that's for sure! But I think focusing on learning the components of hardware/software in computing are better done on a desktop than a laptop or tablet. There's really nothing to be learned in today's repair-hostile walled gardens.

Even though both my kids are in their early teens and graduated to using regular computers, I am building a dedicated PICO-8 machine: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/01/29/1830

They went through Scratch in a browser and iPads to Unity and Xcode (through Thonny on a Pi and Pythonista on iOS), but we all like PICO-8’s constraints and integrated graphics/music/code editing. It is a gem and feels better than the ZX Spectrum and C64 ever did, really.

So maybe just get a Pi or and old laptop and buy PICO-8 to run on it as an experiment.

I'm old enough to have used an Apple II in my early teens, and then the BBC models A and B. My parents bought me a Vic 20, and later I bought myself an Acorn Electron from money I made helping out teaching people basic computer skills. I hacked the hell out of those things. I also typed-in a lot of code from magazines. I remember the feeling (really almost ecstatic sometimes, to my teenage self) of possibility and exploration. I wrote Mandelbrot set programs and blew my mind a bit. I typed-in a planetary orbit simulator and then played with the constants to see what would happen. I learned 6502 assembler and wrote a simple (what I now know to be) cooperative multi-tasking scheduler. Information moved at the speed of monthly magazine publishing schedules, so you mostly had to figure stuff out yourself. It was fun. This was all pre-PC.

Now I'm older and I have teenagers and I did try to recreate this experience for them: Logo, RasPi, MicroBit, electronics kits, etc. But the truth is that simple stuff just wasn't that interesting to them. They played a lot of minecraft and built huge automatons with redstone and chickens, and they explored worlds like Mario Galaxy (impressively huge to me). I guess they got out of that something similar to what I did with my Vic 20. I can regret that their experience is built on a deep stack of tech that they know little about, but I don't think they really cared about that - if they thought abut it at all.

New technology attracts enthusiasts - but then it fades into the background or fades away. When cars became things that normal people could own, there were car clubs for people who enjoyed messing with cars. Some of these clubs still exist. When sound recording became a consumer tech, there were clubs were people met to listen to and share recordings. Domestic CB radio was a thing for a while. Astronomy clubs still exist - from their origins in a time when it became possible to buy a telescope and actually do new stuff with it.

My advice is to look for ways for them to actively explore the world in a positive, non-passive, fun way. Equip them with the means to explore - don't try to teach them web development. Don't ask them to stick with one thing. There's a lot more stuff now - so its ok to try things and abandon them and move one. They'll do that anyway.

The creators of the Raspberry Pi had a good take on this:

If you make something that doesn't have a website browser and can't play a youtube video young people won't see it as a computer.

It's easy to forget that BBC micros etc were popular for games, and being fully fledged computers, as well as educational devices.

Separate cartridges or disks for the OS, the various programs, the user files. When we switched over to internal storage and started putting everything together, the end user lost something. Children (people) need freedom to experiment but also need a way to put things back to square one, like they CAN'T mess the os up when it's on a write protected disk that's already been ejected.

Scratch works pretty well on the iPad for programming, and there's Scratch Jnr for younger learners.

Repl.it also works well on the iPad, as long as you sign in for them, so they can play with any language they like.

If you want an actual computer that they can play around with that's cheap then a Raspberry Pi is a good choice. The Pi 400 with it's integrated keyboard is excellent.

If you want some programming projects then have a look at https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en

They're not just projects for using the Raspberry Pi. There's a tonne of Scratch, Python and HTML stuff for them to work through as well.

I'd suggest https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/pathways/scratch-intro if they've never used Scratch before. All the projects are tablet friendly as well.

MS Word can be lots of fun and is easy to get started with. For sure let them design their own birthday invitations and so on.

I had a lot of fun as a kid playing Minecraft and building Redstone contraptions. Minecraft does invite tinkering with texture packs, mods etc.

So I'd say just go with a basic windows install on a normal PC.

I set my kid up with a Raspberry Pi 4, large key color lit keyboard, and monitor with HDMI loudspeakers.

Then I wrote her own "OS" - it's a bunch of python and bash scripts that run things she wants. As she asks for more things it should do I add a command and show her. So far she can:

1) Log in with name and five letter password* 2) whoami (she loves this) 3) music - it plays a random track from her music collection 4) photo - a random picture from our vacation last summer with her in it 5) sound - a random sfx plays in the speaker 6) say - text2speech the next word

The main objective is to get her typing and word recognition happening. She is 5, so definitely NO INTERNET. This summer I am going to add

7) talk - unix talk to daddy's computer on the LAN *

* we haven't talked cybersecurity yet, remembering 5 character password is still advanced

* I will regret this I know

Maybe you can consider to buy a Nintendo 3DS?

There's this prominent French artist who makes his creations on that device: https://twitter.com/Kekeflipnote/status/1487872156629413888

The device itself is not meant for professional work, therefore should be suitable for beginners and kids but obviously it is powerful enough to be used as a primary tool by a recognised artist.

The software he is using is Flipnote Studio 3D:

https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-3DS-download-softw...

Minecraft is the most popular computer game in history, it lets kids create and experiment, and I'm genuinely floored by the stuff mine get up to. They play Roblox and want to make Roblox games so are learning Lua in a simple REPL. My son makes custom Yu-Gi-Oh cards, writes his own comics, and composes music. This is all on the iPad, where, believe it or not, you can get Carmen Sandiago, Number Munchers (how is this not too directly educational?), Oregon Trail, and various LOGO implementations. I'm sorry if your kids aren't interested in the same stuff you are, but with all the love in the world, that's your baggage, not theirs.

Apple IIs are still out there. Just takes $s to get the equipment.

My son's almost 4, on his birthday him an old tower(hooked up to the lounge tv) with a MES emulator. My plan is to approximately every 6 months upgrade his emulators to next gen.

Between SNES and N64 I'll introduce him to dos games. Then basic to show him how to control basic output and PC speaker(that's going to be a hunt).

I'll see how he likes all that stuff and if he is interested, steer him through how I had access.

I know once he hits 8ish he and his friends will be into whatever is popular at the time online wise, but it's the only way I can figure to see if he is interested enough to try programming.

I think it needs a change of perspective. It's very hard to get a child interested in things like programming by introducing him to it. I picked up programming by watching my brother do programming and I asked him to teach me some basics. I think this is a better approach. Instead of introducing a kid to Python, work on a simple game in Python and let him watch. He will see that you find it cool (despite it being "boring" compared to alternatives like Roblox), and he will see what it looks like, and if all goes well, he will ask you to teach him to do the same.

Kids nowadays have too much distractions.

Back in the day most of the entertainment kids got were TV and occasionally film but both are also family/friend activities. Then the personal computer showed up, and many kids wanted to make games because 1) That's so cool and 2) There was not many games anyway. They naturally learned BASIC because that was the only high level language pre-installed and then naturally learned Assembly because that was the only language left and is of high performance -- exactly what games need. Once they bag that as a skill there is not too much to stop them.

Nowadays there are way to many instant-gratification floating around. Kids get in touch with phones and pads so early that a whole generation from my country actually don't know much about computers, just phones and pads. Can't blame them though, because phones and pads were the first thing they got hooked up and addicted.

Honestly I don't even know what I can do as a parent. The only way is to see if a kid has a thirsty for creativity, and go for it if he/she does. I'm not sure if a Pi is equivalent to Apple II back in the day, but perhaps that's the best we can get. I still believe that people should start from some bare metal and grow gradually from there, because that dispels a lot of black magic. But maybe that's too much nowadays because of the instant-gratification culture we are grooming worldwide. Life is too short use Python.

There are $100 Chromebooks now that can run Linux and Android. And Windows. And Apple II emulators.

In comparison, my parents paid $2,000 for an Apple IIc. Back then. Like, I'm not adjusting for inflation.

It looks like there's an Apple II core for Mister if you want to recreate the experience. I've never used Mister before, but setting it up could be fun, too, or it might be over most people's heads. https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Apple-II_MiSTer

I also think a slightly different way to go here is an arduino kit. Even as an adult, I got some kind of ardunio kit with a bunch of parts that got me more interested in wiring & coding. I like it because it gives you the code and parts to get things working, but then, you have a bunch of stuff left over to expand on it. If you don't like coding, you can reuse the same code and build out the hardware, and vice versa. That is definitely more work and less play than Number Munchers though. You'll probably have to do some of the stuff with your kids, depending on how curious they are about this stuff. I've seen things that look like simpler arduino kits meant for teaching younger kids similar concepts, but I don't know how good they are.

I think a synthesizer is good, too. A cheap FM synth with a bunch of dials lets you play real songs, exercise your creativity and maybe learn some science skills by mistake like an old computer with a BASIC interpreter. There's probably software solutions geared towards infotainment as well.

The Apple ][ wasn't a kid's computer, it was a computer that kids could understand because the technology was relatively primitive.

Same with the C-64. I had a C-64 (one of my stepdads had a ][ but it wasn't "mine") and I had a book that told me what every memory location was used for in a C-64. It wasn't a kid's computer, it was a computer that a kid could still comprehend fully.

I don't know what to tell you. That world is gone. You can give your kids toys but that's not what that was.

what about Processing?

It runs on a lot of computers, its fun to make graphics and games. The online version is "javascript" and lets you code online and share off. And if you have a machine with a browser you can run it.

https://p5js.org

"The coding train" series has some tutorials, from very basic to pretty complex.

https://thecodingtrain.com/beginners/p5js/

I love all these "back in my day.." and "how do I replicate my [very limited, and - no doubt - wildly incorrect memory of] childhood for my kids" type posts

Because they all-too-often display a vicarious hubris that some how some way my [limited] memory of childhood is the Only True Way™ to experience childhood, and must be replicated for every successive generation

Nostalgia is great - but I do not want to force my kids to go through the stages I had to to get to where I am now

I want them "standing on the shoulders of giants" to be able to do the next Great Thing™

Or for them to decide to do something totally different - because I don't want them following in my career and hobby footsteps because I do it, but because they actually want to do it

Socrates bemoaned this self-same behavior in children ~2400 years ago: "The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."

Don't mistake your biased nostalgia as some kind of Thou Shalt Do Thus™ for the next generation

Surely there are positives of how you learned something, but that doesn't mean it is the One True Way™ to learn

The Apple II was not what I got at the time, and its graphics and sound were really sub-par compared to cheaper competition, but it was a really nice combination of things that are hard to match:

1) It had very fast storage for the time

2) It had excellent documentation in the box

3) The BASIC interpreters were better than what shipped with the Atari and Commodore machines

4) Apple LOGO was particularly well executed for something on an 8-bit machine

5) I had the impression it was easier at the time to get pirated copies of more sophisticated software like macro assemblers, Apple Pascal, etc for the Apple; Commodore and Atari circles were about the games

6) It had a built-in debugger ("monitor") with mini assembler

7) It had card slots that were straightforward to interface to - building real hardware for it was possible for a hobbyist. Also, it was affordable and practical to have an 80-column display

8) As you've noted the educational software for younger kids was exceptional

I just don't see anything remotely like that today but a used Apple II, and even then you're not going to have the ferment of early-mid-eighties home computer culture.

The counterargument is that today we have an embarassment of riches - the paradox of choice - and if you carefully select hardware and software and books for your kids (Scratch or Snap, paint programs, robotics kits, whatever takes with their interests) there's a much bigger world for them to explore.

For modern stuff, others have suggested the Raspberry Pi 400. Which is just... talk about the modern implementation of the "keyboard thing you plug into a TV" home computer! It runs Linux and other modern stuff -- can't be beat if your kid wants to do Scratch or Python.

But if you really wanna go oldschool, there's THEC64 from Retro Games Ltd. Sure, it's an ARM SBC that boots straight into VICE. But the effort, polish, and craftsmanship they put in to making a modern replica C64 experience is second to none. The keyboard looks and feels like the real thing, and you can boot into BASIC or (with a USB stick) any other C64 programming environment. (I got Forth running with no issue at all.)

The kid's probably gonna find it quaintly retro at best. But if they're curious about programming they may wish to find out just what they can accomplish with such a limited, retro machine. And a modern computer is a useful adjunct to help program a retro computer... thanks to powerful programming tools and decades of deep knowledge, the C64 scene has much better and more vibrant games, demos, and software than it did in the 80s!

Oh, and THEC64 doesn't have internet. Cocomelon does not play on it!

What about having the kids learn to assemble their own game console, then how to run Linux on it and use the expansion (gpio, i2c, USB ports) while they have fun?

https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-go-advance-black-edit...

I purchased the older ESP32 based model years ago and it was really a good product.

Try out Circuits in Rec Room: https://blog.recroom.com/posts/2021/5/03/the-circuits-handbo...

It appeals to the age group and general audience currently playing Roblox. Full functionality can be used for free. Rec Room is essentially a game for building games.

Disclaimer: I’m the lead Circuits dev

It's not a computer (although there's a computer in it) but I thought I'd mention "Robot in a Can" ( https://robotinacan.com/ ). They have a kit and online classes, and partner with some educational orgs like Centre d’art de Préville in Montréal. The kit is Open Source ( https://github.com/Robot-In-A-Can ) and the robot can be programmed via wifi using a Scratch-based UI.

> Turn the kit on and you can start programming in less than a minute without any difficult driver installation or software setup. The main component of the kit is our custom WiFi microcontroller board. It can be programmed and controlled by a phone, tablet or laptop. Using our easy-to-use, open-source, browser-based, drag-and-drop coding system.

https://robotinacan.com/products/robot-in-a-can

Color Maximite II boots into BASIC, good graphics library, fast interpreter.

https://geoffg.net/maximite.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQA8lowEKOo

I go back and forth trying to decide whether to try and introduce my 5 year old to programming. To him, every screen is a little entertainment portal of some kind. I recently got him an Odroid Go Advance kit - a Linux-based handheld gaming device that you can put together in an hour. Putting the thing together with him felt constructive - but then it was quickly off to running old video games under emulation. He loves it, and I curate the games he can play on it, but he's not making anything with it.

Here we go with the "when I was a kid" bit... but I felt that computers were something that were just barely within reach when I was in grade school. I really wanted to learn how programs worked. I checked out every book on programming I could find at my elementary school's library. I had my dad take me to the university library where I had a proverbial field day. But neither he nor any other adult was trying - at all - to expose me to programming. It just happened.

I sometimes wonder if this new norm of actively encouraging and exposing kids to every possible creative outlet in life is really just stifling their progress. When everything is presented to you as a buffet of choices, with hopeful parents anxiously awaiting some kind of interest or progress, how does it not all become kind of ... boring? Where is the space to develop longing and desire?

I remember being a kid and longing for access to the university's Ultrix machines. They seemed to be just for adults - and difficult to access - and all of that just made me want it more. I became obsessed about the concept of multitasking and machines serving multiple users at once. I really had no encouragement, and was even reprimanded for gaining unauthorized access to some university machines. This, along with the tied up phone lines, annoyed my parents to no end. They were patient and understanding, but not actively encouraging.

I hope my kids can some day feel a similar passion and longing to learn something. If they can have that, they won't need it to be spoon-fed to them. They'll break down doors to get at it.

We're working on a modernized version of Apple Logo II that does 3D and is more engaging for modern children https://turtlespaces.org -- there's no Raspberry Pi build yet but it's in the pipeline!

There are some web implementations of Logo, e.g.

* jslogo - https://calormen.com/jslogo/

* Turtle Academy - https://turtleacademy.com/

Definitely get a few generations old machine. Something that runs modern software but is noticeably slow, your kids will want to google tips and tricks on optimizing it. Like a westmere optiplex, older think stations/thinkpads etc.

That's how a lot of us got into computers, I think.

I was just thinking about how to give my 4 year Old my experience growing up. I had a Mac, and I remember with great joy wandering around “Cosmic Osmo”, and drawing my own imaginations in MacPaint.

There are games, and paint programs, but many of them seem too directed. Too much intention.

Raspberry Pi with a free Mathematica license. You can do a lot with a little code. Geography, graphics, natural language parsing, everything is built in w/o having to learn about package management etc. I mostly enjoy generating crystal lattices and searching for convex polyhedra, casting shadows of 4D objects... its great for making art out of math equations. Docs are second to none and the online getting started book is a great intro to programming IMO.

Edit: +1 for LEGO mindstorms, thats how I learned code as a 10 year old. If you haven't read Seymour Papert's book "Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas", check it out. You can put a marker on a LEGO bot and have your LOGO turtle in real life.

I don't think kids today would be as interested in an Apple II today as we were as kids. The games and things they can do on a computer now are far beyond that and it just doesn't hold their interest.

My kids have done some basic programming in scratch, which I think is a good place to start. I also once set up godot with a simple open source game that they could edit (change sprites and adjust parameters like speed/size etc). They enjoyed that. I think once they want to start doing something more advanced, something like roblox or minecraft modding might be a good place to get their interest. Shadertoy/GLSL might be another fun thing to start with at more a high school level.

TI-89 Graphing Calculator. This is the perfect answer for you. It's portable. It's kid-sized. It's useful. It's what I learned to program on 20 years ago. The hardware and software architecture are positively ancient, in a good way, yet it's still sold and used today. Has its own BASIC. Can be programmed in C to the bare metal. There's an active hacking community and a good library of software and tools, but no commercial app store so all it's all hobbyist quality and it's feasible for your kid to contribute something meaningful that will actually get users, like a version of their favorite board game or something.

There's lots of great stuff out there if you know where to look and that's cross-platform to boot. As other posters had said, don't focus on looking for hardware as any Windows/Mac/Linux machine will work fine. Also, my unpopular opinion is it doesn't really matter if kids are on a locked-down machine like ChromeOS when it's now easy to start up a Linux container, either locally or via one of the web-based IDEs. replit.com now has pygame which is pretty nice. The coding train channel on YouTube has a lot of nice videos on P5.js, physics simulation and generative art. Xojo (paid) is an easy way to make desktop apps.

This is a good question and something I've been thinking about lately. I can't see my kid getting anywhere near of an explorative and self-learning experience that I had in the 80s with the tech available today.

I've setup a misterfpga with the atari ST core and put it in a keyboard case. I think that a lot of the old software from back then are perfect for a 3-6 years old and my hope is that he'll be used to it by the time he's 6 and will be more likely to be open to retro games/environment.

Of course, this is all speculation, my son is only 2 years old so let's see how it turns out, but I did start using such a computer at 3 and it was great for me so I'm highly hopeful :)

I will also not allow any mobile gaming, mobile gaming is a wasteland of predatory practices.

I earned my stripes continuously installing various Linux distributions and breaking MBR on the shared family computer. There is an infinite amount of things to explore, from the different distro’s and window managers, to all the various open source apps. Lots of open source graphics tools and games.

Old hardware is fun too. You can build a “top of the line” rig from hardware that’s a few years old and continue to iterate and play with it. Then again, I find things like setting up a ZFS pool to be fun and therapeutic, most kids might not share this sentiment :)

I'm not sure about finding a computer that would both meet your idea of a fun machine and meet the aesthetics that they might be used to of modern computer systems.

Have you thought about introducing them to something where they could code/create online and could share their work? You might want to take a look at the online free Logo system at:

http://www.logointerpreter.com/

They would be able to click on the works others have published there and they could tweak the code to do other things.

It's too bad there's no open source version of something like Print Shop Pro.

I find LibreOffice to be very buggy when trying to design signs and banners (at least on the Raspberry Pi, some features don't work properly with huge fonts, and the option to print a large banner spread across multiple pages doesn't seem to work properly). Inkscape is okay but is a little too advanced for kids and doesn't come with clip art. There's currently no build of Krita for the Raspberry Pi so I haven't been able to try that.

Maybe think of building an RC2014 with CP/M. If it's completely self built there is another sense of specialty no prebuilt system can reach. And it's a good project to do together, too. There is also a variant with an 6502 instead of Z80 (RC6502), which can be built Apple I compatible.

https://rc2014.co.uk

https://github.com/tebl/RC6502-Apple-1-Replica

Multiple things are making things seem this way, one is that the income model has significantly changed, from "we make good software, people pay us for it" to.. whatever sentence sums up the current state of exploitation.

Another reason are the proverbial rose-colored glasses.

Yet another reason is just curation and sampling issues, since we now have a whole category of shovelware and shovelware-hybrids, the chance you'll actually stumble upon the really good stuff, is just way lower..

Are we ready to pay for curation yet?

Why not emulator of Apple II? Bonus: all the software is "acquireable".

I've been mulling how I get my kiddo acclimated to modern computers. I think I will sort of "roll back time" and give him access to old, simple machines and software via emulation, and then roll him forward as he gets older.

The bonus is that he can wreck the software/emulated machine as much as he wants with bad commands. I can rebuild it easily.

Modern kids games on tablets are horrible with the ads. This needs regulation so badly.

Love this prompt!

In theory Raspberry Pi could be a perfect kid's computer, but the software side still needs help to make it a useable experience for younger ones.

Here's an example of a super simple app that I made trying to solve that problem for a very tiny use case: https://medium.com/@kfarr/part-1-babypi-a-simple-raspberry-p...

I have an idea. You could give them a reason to slave away at programming when there are 10000 other things that are easier and more entertaining: pay them.

Make their allowance have a bonus based on some objective function of their work product or effort in programming or whatever field. At the same time, try to encourage them to use it to explore things that interest them. Such as, creating and releasing games or programs for their friends.

I grew up the same - just replace the AppleII with a C64. A box just just switch on and another world is instantly waiting for your your input. Tried to figure out something similar in our days, using it to teach our kids. The closest I could find - and I am perfectly happy with it - is a Rasperry Pi with Pythons Idle programming environment. Just start it up, type anything and get instant gratification. Cheers from Germany

The Raspberry Pi 400 would be a modern day equivalent. It can run PICO-8, which is a fictional emulator that can make very constrained games, Sonic PI which is a live coding musical environment, and I think the Arduino building block software. Plus it can run Node and Python if they get deeper into programming. The computer is built into the keyboard, Commodore style!

Kids, we're gonna build a MAME machine. I'll build the cab, you figure out how to install RetroPie on a Raspberry Pi.

I built AnimationCPU for kids. See https://add1hp.herokuapp.com/ join to https://old.reddit.com/r/acpu for updates

Ask me anything

Grab one of these: The C64 https://www.amazon.com/C64-not-machine-specific/dp/B08GMTJYX...

Games pre-installed (and you can add your own) plus you can boot into BASIC.

When I was younger I loved making batch file scripts and would look up how to do things like this. It seems to me that something like this would require its own private "internet" that allowed the user to make searches that the search engine would funnel into a desired result.

I was thinking of making my kid's login auto-run a fullscreen VICE C=64

Here's another approach https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids

Part of what made the Apple II great was the Apple II Reference Manual, which started out gently with an introduction to the hardware, how to turn it on, how to type on the keyboard, and ends with an assembly listing of the autostart and monitor ROM.

Apple 2 was more like a prototype for the C64 that has graphics and sound unmatched without cheating on 8-bit with 16-bit memory.

But honestly today I would give a Raspberry Pico instead, it uses less energy and has more performance but it's still low level!

And on the Apple IIGS, and other platforms, Electronic Arts had a program called Cartooners that let you create animated cartoons with pre-defined characters, animations, scenes, and music. What are some modern counterparts to that?

I've using Raspberry Pi 400 + PyGameZero + emacs for a 8yo. I miss a good book that keeps complexity very low to give him some independence (I need to constantly supervise his steps and what he is understanding at each point).

The 8-bit guy is building this:

https://www.commanderx16.com/forum/index.php?/home/

Which might fit what you are looking for.

Most any Craptop will do, but one with a styless is better for drawing.

Install

1. GCompris

2. Gimp, Inkscape

3. Rosegarden

4. https://github.com/commanderx16/x16-emulator/

Don't install a bunch of games.

Dreams on Playstation is an amazing creation studio

https://www.playstation.com/en-in/games/dreams/

Maybe try the Maximite

https://geoffg.net/maximite.html

Which boots into a fast Basic interpreter and has plenty of programmable graphics and sound capabilities.

Don't rule out a normal laptop loaded with whatever software you want

There is a debian/raspbian based image called Kano OS

It felt similar to the Apple II, but modern at the same time, quite a good little "here's your first computer" approach for a kid under 10.

I recently received the Raspberry Pi 400 as a gift. That machine and the book it comes with is as close a thing as I’ve seen to my original Tandy CoCo 1 from the 80’s. It felt nostalgic.

Yeah, just cause you had wonderment and curiosity about stuff doesn't mean it can be grafted onto kids. Believe me.

Especially when they've been exposed to iPads and Nintendo Switches.

The reason why many of us Boomers, Gen-xers and old Millennials were fascinated with this stuff is simply cause we didn't have much of anything else. And limitations foster creativity.

Kids today (and I know I sound old as fuck) but they grow up with so many cool toys and so many choices.

It will be hard to foster the creativity in them when there are so many things competing for their attention. Sometimes they find it and sometimes they don't and something else calls for their attention (wanderlust, sports, etc.)

And also, not all kids want to program the games or see how they work underneath the hood, some just want to play the games and that's never changed even back then.

You just gotta pay attention to them and help them foster their talents in whatever direction they choose.

> I will be happy to pay $.

Buy rpi400 (or a similar device with dominantly non-consumptive ecosystem around it) to your kid... and all his friends or a class.

There are plenty of open-ended games or programs for iPads or Android tablets.

For example, try searching for BASIC, or LOGO. You obviously did not try.

Just buy them a couple of Raspberries and maybe a few accessories. I don't have kids, but sure I would have loved them as a kid :)

Kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it, how many kids were given horses back in the 1910s 1920s, that they just ignored?

pi or arduino with a bunch of extra parts to make things and see action. They can learn simple code basics without layers of bullshit from modern dev.

but wait... do you want them to go from that to today's dev environments? ;)

Add a real language / console for it, instead of bash and terminal.

FWIW, every one of my kids that I have shown UCB logo to have loved it.

Yea, I'm surprised no one has packaged up something like this.

Not for a kid in elementary school but I think a machine running a BSD variant would be a better learning environment than one running Linux.

It is a lot easier to make a source code change, rebuild and update.

Make them program stuff in Scratch and Roblox?

I literally gave my son an Apple ][e lol

For gaming (and how to identify dark patterns) take a look at https://www.darkpattern.games/

Colour Maximite 2

buy a raspberry pi 400 and see where it goes.

Raspberry Pi

OK. My best friend had the same Apple II. We used to play Carmen Sandiego, and California Games, Oregon Trail; I had a TRS-80 Model 100 laptop that I learned BASIC on, but my first programming language was LOGO. Then Hypercard.

So I figured I'd address this question if or when I had a kid. I don't have kids. But I'm glad someone asked it the way you asked it; it's very important to me that kids should learn this way, by building things rather than having structures shoveled at them.

Quick side note. My dad banned RPGs in the house. My brother was a huge D&D fan but my dad said it encouraged "follower" mentality to follow a dungeon master's idea of the storyline; and he viewed all videogames with plot elements basically the same way.

OK. So how would I approach it? I'd make a language that took all the basic elements of code (vars, control structures, etc) and made them come to life the way LOGO did. The rewards of doing something cool have to be tangible. When I was 10 or 11, my friends and I had our own code competitions in Hypercard to try to make cool screen savers or little games. We judged each other and ourselves; we'd spend 72 hours and see who made the coolest thing and we'd be honest with each other if someone else's thing was cooler. None of this was "cool" at the time but it was like we had magically tapped into some power that other kids didn't have, and that was what kept us addicted to learning. We learned from each other and from our own mistakes. The two friends I'm thinking of from elementary school are both incredible developers and business owners now; one runs a very bizarre entertainment venue, and the other is a great writer who put out a bunch of games after working at Microsoft and Bungie.

So I believe they'd have the same view on it. Here it is:

1. Concrete results need to happen quickly 2. Introducing abstract concepts (arrays, complex data structures) should be challenging but lead to far greater results 3. Results need to be "pretty". But only in the way that encourages stretching your skills further. For example, if you start a kid in a programming environment where everything is a pristine 3D world, and their job is to program the behavior of an animal, then you've done most of the work for them; their work has to actually stand out and shine. The problem with too many platforms is that they reward the kid too soon. So you made an animal but it isn't really that different from every other kid's animal. The competition between kids is critical... and so is the ability to make something unexpected. LOGO could make unexpected artifacts. Hypercard was wide open, it was just a blank page. Kids' imaginations filled the gaps, and we all wanted to make Spaceship Warlock or Myst or the Journeyman Project from that page.

What I would do? I'd probably be a terrible parent. But my advice would be to get your kid a Commodore 64 or a TRS-80 and show them the manual for BASIC. And tell the kid if you want to play a game, make a game. Then get other kids to compete on it. The sense that you can create something from nothing using these tools is a powerful motivator. Then later they can see the world where it's all "been done" and they'll probably think of something like Wordle which wasn't quite done, because they've learned how to think that way.

Just my 2¢.

templeos could be interesting if you make it kid friendly