Wednesday, August 07, 2013

Python mom

The Boy got a Raspberry Pi (a small very, very inexpensive computer) from his uncle, Geek Guru, for Christmas. He brought it with him to California and yesterday the two of them spent much of the day trying to get an LED to light up on command. They downloaded and updated, The Boy learned some vi (an editor), some more Python (a programming language). The LED lit up, it flashed, a series of LEDs flashed. There was much cheering coming from the dining room.

He wanted to play again tonight, but Geek Guru went out to dinner with his wife No-No Nannette (for their 25th wedding anniversary). So I'm sitting at the kitchen table listening to The Boy gripe about the vagaries of using vi to edit a file on a Mac (the mapping of commands to keys is a bit of an issue). I taught him to keep a backup of a working piece of code, and to edit only the copy. I advised on Python where I could (I'm a pale substitute for my brother on this one; Geek Guru is a nationally recognized Python expert).

I helped him figure out one bug in his Python code, and when the LED lit up, he leaned over to me and said, "You are the best mom ever." You've heard of tiger moms? I'm a python mom.



4 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:02 PM

    That made me smile.

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  2. Python mom is a super mom who provides just enough help to move the kid along... Tiger Moms (in the sense of Amy Chua) are hyper driven for the kid to succeed, no matter what the cost. So I'm not sure if I'd support your analogy on that one...

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  3. My brother-in-law and my father both have a raspberry pi. A bunch of my co-workers do too. I keep thinking about getting one, but know that I'd have zero time for it. It's great that your son is using and enjoying it.

    I too am a Catholic, a writer and a science-oriented-professional (software, in my case). I've been reading through your back-posts in your blog and am quite enjoying it.

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