<div dir="ltr"><div>>> *Everything* these days revolves around graphical interfaces. The console,</div><div>>> which was once the dark and mystical battlefield where knighted geeks would</div><div>>> slay the plagues of exception demons, has been reduced to a mere: "little black</div>
<div>>> box of nostalgia".</div><div><br></div><div>>> 1. Rock is dead...</div><div>>> 2. The console is dead...</div><div><br></div><div>I use a console every day and I'm 28 years old. I write code for everything</div>
<div>from Autodesk Maya to web API's to database backends. (Yes, GUI code too.) The</div><div>console is far, far from dead. It has a steeper learning curve than a GUI but</div><div>even in 2013 it's still invaluable. To date I have not met a good programmer</div>
<div>who doesn't use a console on a regular basis. It's not the only tool in the box</div><div>but, properly configured, it's a heck of a good one. I don't see this changing</div><div>anytime soon.</div><div>
<br></div><div style>Back on topic...</div><div style><br></div><div>If he wants to learn game programming, teach him game programming. Don't push a</div><div>bunch of prerequisites on him that he has to learn first. You'll only kill the</div>
<div>spirit. There's plenty of time to learn the other stuff as needed. You might</div><div>look at the Unity game engine. There's a lot of UI to start with for tweaking</div><div>assets and a *lots* of programming. There's a free version and tons of</div>
<div>documentation. You might consider signing up for <a href="http://www.digitaltutors.com/">www.digitaltutors.com/</a> for</div><div>additional sources of documentation on both Unity as well as digital content</div><div>
creation software you'll be using along the way. This will feed his desire to</div><div>learn due to the instant gratification of making a 3D "game" in an hour.</div><div><br></div><div>Unfortunately, with Unity you don't get to write code in Python, but there's</div>
<div>Boo script which is Python inspired, as well as JavaScript if he's already</div><div>comfortable with that. (Eww... but even it has good parts.) If you decide to</div><div>get seriously invested in digital content creation software (i.e. Maya, etc)</div>
<div>most of those are scripted in Python. Maya used to be all MEL (and the MEL</div><div>interpreter is still supported) but most new code for proprietary tools is done</div><div>in Python. (MEL is kind of perverse in comparison.)</div>
<div><br></div><div style>Most important of all - keep it fun!</div><div style>-Modulok-</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 10:47 PM, Rick Johnson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:rantingrickjohnson@gmail.com" target="_blank">rantingrickjohnson@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="im">On Wednesday, June 12, 2013 11:08:44 PM UTC-5, Chris Angelico wrote:<br>
<br>
> No. Definitely not. Programming does NOT begin with a GUI. It begins<br>
> with something *simple*, so you're not stuck fiddling around with the<br>
> unnecessary. On today's computers, that usually means console I/O<br>
> (actually console output, with console input coming along much later).<br>
<br>
</div>Chris, you're a dinosaur, only thing is, somebody forgot to tell you.<br>
<br>
*Everything* these days revolves around graphical interfaces. The console, which was once the dark and mystical battlefield where knighted geeks would slay the plagues of exception demons, has been reduced to a mere: "little black box of nostalgia".<br>
<br>
1. Rock is dead...<br>
2. The console is dead...<br>
3. Welcome to the 21st century Chris!<br>
<br>
PS: Although i'll bet you think the "rock is dead" mantra is relatively recent, nope! Jim Morrison was singing about it waaay back in 1969!<br>
--<br>
<a href="http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list" target="_blank">http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list</a><br>
</blockquote></div><br></div>