Re: 7 yr old wants to program games.

From: gswork (gswork_at_mailcity.com)
Date: 11/14/03 

Date: 14 Nov 2003 00:27:22 -0800

davep145@yahoo.com (Dave) wrote in message news:<65dd0b01.0311131818.66e8c2b1@posting.google.com>...
> What would be the language of gaming? My son has interest in learning
> to program his own games. Any suggestions about what would be a great
> starting point for him would be greatly appreciated.
> Thanks, Dave

We found an old piece of software called "The games factory" in a
bargain bucket (dated 1995 but a Win32 version) that worked for this -
it's like "visual games" in the sense that you select sprites etc, set
rules out on a grid of ticks boxes and settings and run - and it
doesn't matter if it makes no sense, the 'game' will run anyway, just
do something silly.

Ideal for a youngster to mess about. I sat down and learned the
basics very quickly, passed on some essentials and pretty soon little
quirky games were being developed, same age group as yours.

As long as there's no expectation of producing something equivalent to
what a kid may be experienced with on a playstation or whatever it's
satisfying.

The drawback is that it's not 'proper programming', but it does teach
game logic. Proper programming is more something to approach from the
ground up, where games, especially graphical ones, are a long way off.
 Check the groups.google.com archives for this group, to see several
threads on teaching youngsters how to program.