[Tutor] Civil discourse from a newbie's perspective

[boB Stepp]

On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 7:25 AM, Francois Dion <francois.dion at gmail.com> wrote:
> Even worse would be the case of a young aficionado.  It is very hard
> to infer the age of a person from a post. As Python is making inroads
> in the K-12 sector and through inexpensive computing platforms such as
> OLPC, the Raspberry Pi and the like, there is a potential to be
> interacting with some very young programmers. I think right now the
> bulk of them are sticking to forums (definitely the case with the
> Raspberry Pi), but it is inevitable that the makeup of the readership
> of this list will change. What will happen when a 9 year old kid who
> loves computers is turned away by a cutting remark or heavy criticism?
> Similarly, one should be considerate as to the language used.
>

I am glad that you brought this point up. As some may recall from my
first post, I mentioned that I was trying to encourage my 9-year old
son (then 8 years old) to explore programming. As part of that effort
I have set him up with his own PC with Internet access. We try to keep
him well-supervised, but he is gaining in confidence in conducting
searches for answers to his own questions. If he does ever "click" in
his interest in Python, I could easily see him exploring this forum
for answers. However, I would hate for him to be exposed to some of
the "rhetoric" that has arisen here recently. On the other hand, I
cannot perfectly protect him from everything and the information
accessible from the Internet is of too much utility to forbid him its
access. I will just prepare myself for some interesting questions in
the near future! ~(:>))
-- 
Cheers!
boB