Are there any good PDAs out there that have internet access??

What are good ways to learn programming with little Internet access and a slow computer?

• I am mentoring a student from Nairobi without Internet access at home, but who visits an Internet shop (with slow Internet). He has his own laptop (not very fast), so he is able to download materials, e-books, and videos to his laptop and work at home. What would be a lightweight programming environment he could use and which websites and resources can be downloaded and used offline?

• Answer:

  When I learned, we had BBC basic and then GW BASIC, TurboBasic and TurboC on 1.44 MB floppies. Actually since every system has a browser, one can write large programs in javascript itself. Modern browsers support canvas and firefox supports even SQLite, so you can create games and many complex apps quite easily. Back in the day when I was on anyone's computer except mine, if there was no development tool, I would simply use DOS Edit and write assembly programs as a DEBUG script. Usually very simple graphics, nothing fancy. Get him a head start on simple 2d graphics techniques and let him practice with javascript. There is nothing like the instant gratification of graphical code to get kids to code. Learning that its all pixels that one can control with math is one of the major breakthroughs any young programmer has. Also teaches geometry and trigonometry.