In message ,
RobertL writes
On Wednesday, January 28, 2015 at 9:48:48 PM UTC, Ferretygubbins wrote:
I know this is OT but I rather suspect that some of you will be able to
help.

Boy1 (13) is interested in learning how to write code and so I would like to
set him up with a toolkit for his PC (Windows) unfortunately my programming
days are somewhat in the past and restricted to MUMPS which was archaic even
back then. Has anyone any suggestions for a suitable platform? As ever the
cheaper the better.

Cheers

Mark


You could get him a copy of SCRATCH for his PC http://scratch.mit.edu/
. It's free and it's very good. SCRATCH is visual, you 'plug together'
the statements and they only fit in syntactically correct ways. My
daughter (9) writes little games in SCRATCH.


Or, you could buy him a Raspberry Pi computer (costs £100 with keyboard
mouse etc but needs a TV with HDMI input).

Assuming that you don't have such things around already, it certainly
doesn't need to cost that much though.

Then buy him Minecraft on the Pi (costs very little or maybe free). It
is simpler than the PC version, but you can access the code (Python I
think) that it is written in and modify it. There is whole world of
Minecraft Mods.

Minecraft is written in Java.

It's now included in Raspbian by default it seems.

http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Pi_Edition

It is free, but it is limited. However I don't think the mods will run
on it. It's based on the Pocket Edition, used on Phones and tablets
which doesn't run mods AIUI.

However, that would be another 'what do he want to do route' 10yo
daughter is a minecraft addict and has been muttering about wanting to
learn how to write mods, so learning a bit of Java might be on the
horizon here
--
Chris French