Doing my part to boost the number of women in technical fields… The other night, my daughter picked up a book of assembly programming I had laying on an endtable for later perusal, and started reading it. I don’t think she understood much of it, but I honestly can’t be sure. At age 5-1/2 and in kindergarten, she’s already reading sizeable novels on a Grade 3-5 level. And don’t get me started on her reading standardized test scores.
She said to me, “Daddy, when I grow up, I want to be a Linux just like you.” OK, so she hasn’t quite grasped that concept yet, but you have to admit, her heart’s in the right place. She loves using Fedora, and knows how to log in, use a keyboard and mouse, run Firefox (at a small number of pre-approved sites under watchful supervision), and use TuxPaint. She often starts up OpenOffice.org Writer to type words and simple math statements (she already knows some multiplication too).
Evie has also found her latest infatuation, my new iPod Shuffle:
Pretty soon she should be ready to try some very simple Python. ? Interestingly, here’s a little craft that Evie and her brother made with their babysitter while Eleya and I were out at a parent-teacher conference last week. She had them name things they for which they were thankful, and then they helped make feathers to stick on the turkey tail:
Note especially a few of the attachments: “Red Hat guy,” “Penguins.” Now that warms the cockles of a FOSS daddy’s heart!