If you want to promote good practices and critical thinking, maybe sprinkle some Haskell learning in there. That's advanced though, so maybe wait until he reaches kindergarten. If he gets disheartened, just emphasize we all learn at our own pace, and being a little slower here is nothing to be ashamed of, and 1st grade is not too late.

At a young age, perhaps start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Commentary_on_the_UNIX_Opera....

I bought my first son a VAX. Other than lying on it as a baby he's never touched it. Currently studying Economics..

Was he anti- or just generally skeptical?

Rare sighting of humor on HN.

Honestly, I kind of appreciate that HN tries to keep things serious. I'd hate for this site to turn into reddit where the top 5 comments in most threads are just people reciting the same played out jokes over and over.

I wouldn't mind a little more humor here, but it's hard to moderate something subjective like that.

I agree and I am saddened by the number of low effort comments on HN in recent months. It feels like they have become much more prevalent.

I've only been on Hacker News for a year, and I couldn't tell any change in comment effort

I find it funnier that I didn’t read it as a joke.

The real humour of HN is in the sincere comments.

My parents did this for me, and it worked like a charm.

My parents put login time restrictions on our home Windows computer. That's how I learned to live boot Linux.

Then they started changing the wireless network password. That's how I learned to set a wireless card into monitor mode, capture a bunch of packets, and crack WEP keys.

Then they started locking the router in a closet, and plugging it into a "timer" outlet (that itself plugged into a regular outlet) and just stopped letting electricity pass through at certain times. That's how I learned to pick locks.

Now I work on a red team. Thanks for the free training, mom and dad!

Given the thread context, I can't tell if you're serious, but I'm totally stealing this as a training strategy. They'll never be in trouble for circumventing my restrictions. I'll just have to up my game!

I've gotten in big arguments about a similar idea with my brother. I've told him I intend to monitor all internet traffic and phone activity in my house because I want my kids to grow up understanding that anything they aren't extremely careful to encrypt and protect can and will be read by the people they least want to see it.

He thinks I'm evil and children deserve privacy. I think he's neglecting a duty to teach his the hard truth that you are responsible for your own privacy.

100% serious.

It was really just the electrical socket in the closet that threw me. I don't think I've ever seen that, and I can't think why else anyone would want one there, but clever of them to take advantage of the situation--and you too!

That was one that came a little later on, after my dad was getting stumped trying to beat me on the technical measures.

I don't remember the specific product he used, but it was something very similar to this: https://www.amazon.com/Techbee-Countdown-Programmalbe-Electr...

The lockpicking was addressed with a more sophisticated lock, which was in turn met with a crowbar, which was in turn met with an increasing number of locks on the closet door, which was in turn met with me noticing the hinges were on the outside of this door and simply taking the door off the hinges without ever touching the locks.

I'm sure whoever buys my parents' house when they sell it in a few years will be a little curious about the one reinforced basement closet door with three pick-resistant 7-pin deadbolt locks, upgraded strike plates, and which is also the only closet door in the house with hinges on the inside, lol.

Did he have an outlet installed in the closet (or a closet built around an outlet) just to use that device, though?

At least the hinges should make it clear they were trying to keep someone out, not keep someone in...

The closet already had an outlet.

My parents did something similar, limiting my computer usage to 1hr/day and they'd sometimes enforce it by confiscating the laptop from me etc..., I remember one day my dad went to do a call so I ran mimikatz on his PC and dumped the windows password. so I can use it whenever he's asleep/away.

Not my proudest moment but I used to do anything to get extra time on the computer, I work full time as a security engineer now.

They say he's never going to finish. I say he's got 17 years to finish it before he's an adult and can make his own decisions.

Honestly it’s a good idea. When many of us were kids we had something like a internetless terminal that you could program or draw or write basically. Maybe a few simple games. It certainly teaches you a lot more about computers than a shiny little addiction slab

I trained my little ones to decode fiber optic signals with the naked eye.