Hey All,

So here’s the deal, I have an old HP laptop I am in the process of resetting and setting up wiping and setting up as my ~8yo nephew’s first computer. He played his first PC game sitting on my lap and I am determined to fuel his budding interest in computers as much as possible. He has an iPad from his parents and has been attending a ‘code ninjas’ camp for kids his age and has been loving it. So for Christmas this year I asked his parents and they’re comfortable with him having his own, supervised, system.

I was planning to start with just a blank slate on the machine with a parent account and then a child account for him. Obviously the parental controls will be in place with his parents getting a crash course in anything they don’t already know how to use(they’re tech literate so I’m not worried about that). But they’re not CS people and I’m only barely self taught over the years.

I have this vision of giving him a sandbox with enough toys and tools (as much FOSS as possible) that he can safely play around and build/make things on his own. So here’s where my question for y’all comes in, what are your recommendations for a budding computer scientist/programmer’s first Windows machine? And just to head it off at the pass, no, we can’t go the Linux route yet. I don’t have the experience/expertise to support a system like that remotely and his parents have even less. I’m also wondering if there are any tutorials or resources I could load onto the machine that he can /watch learn from without an internet connection?

And lastly I’m wondering if anyone has any advice for encouraging him to push the boundaries of the parental controls and locks on the system. Obviously not in a way that undermines his parents authority. But I want to encourage that sense of almost devious exploration that encourages even just users to truly analyze and understand the limitations and cracks in systems they’re dropped into. To give a probably horribly outdated example from my past: figuring out how to bypass the proxy service the school network used to access browser game websites.

  • Currently only on mobile and memmy seems to be having some trouble properly displaying comments and posting my replies. I’m seeing things in my inbox but am only able to see my comment on the actual post. Will respond to people once I’m home and can access the actual site. Thanks for all the advice so far, keep it coming!