Set 500 years in the future, the story follows two kids – one a robot, the other a human – as they explore the workings of what to them is ancient technology: our present-day computers. I’ve aimed to keep each story short and engaging, sprinkling in humor and illustrations to captivate young readers.
As an open-source project, you’re also welcome to check out the source here: https://github.com/yong/lostlanguageofthemachines
Starting with binary (wonderfully pointless), exponentials and walls of text just show how this is not actually for kids.
Kids are smarter than you think. A 7 year old could certainly follow anything, given the right instruction. If I can teach a 7 year old long division, I can teach them how a JK flip flop works.
The chapters themselves are oddly twee, as if written in the 1950s. I think it's the parts where you talk to the reader in the present tense, to directly describe the characters, that give that impression. It's kind of babying for something generally written at a YA level.
In fact you mix present and past tense from the first paragraph, that's not good, choose one and stick to it.
I'm not at all sure about that cat flipping the switch, either. How does it generate more than one 0 or 1 in a row?
Also: when we mix red paint with green paint, it becomes gray-brown paint, not yellow paint. When we mix red light with green light it becomes (perceptually) yellow light, because that's additive mixing, which does not apply to paint. OTOH perhaps this future art studio uses digital paint, which might work how you want it to, but that's not made clear.
assert 2+3 == 5
assert 2*3 == 6 == 2 + 2 + 2
assert 2**3 == 8 == ((2+2) + (2+2))
assert 2.5*2 == 5 == (2*2) + (0.5*2)
assert 2.5*10 == 25
assert 2.5*100 == 250
assert 2.5*104 == 260 == (2.5*100)+(2.5*4)
# f(x) = x+1
def f(x):
return x+1
assert f(0) == 1
assert f(1) == 2
assert f(999) == 1000
# N-th derivatives of displacement; velocity, acceleration, jerk, jounce
# (time t seconds, meters)
xyvals = [(0,0), (1, 10), (2, 120)]
# velocity:
10-0 / 1-0 = 10m/s
100-10 / 2-1 = 110m/shttps://archive.org/details/beginnerscompute0000unse/page/26...
Or page 10 of Inside the Chip, illustrated with Tron cycles
https://archive.org/details/insidechip00hele/page/10/mode/2u...
It's on the cover of Machine code for beginners, but nobody read that one first. (It's available in full though, BTW.)
It's weird that someone would approach a book for kids the same way they do for adults. Instead of painting a top-down, inspiring picture, they start with some boring building block that's arguably not even on the critical path.
In chapter 1, change reminder to remainder.
To give you a concrete example of where I think you’ll miss children would be using the phrase Number System. I get what that means but to children that is just Counting.
Also “carbon-titanium” is there to sound futuristic I assume? It doesn’t paint a picture in a kids head (it barely does in my adult brain) instead use colour and adjectives “hard shiny”, “shimmery black”, “echoey iridescent” etc. the aim is to paint a fleeting picture with words, not describe an accurate representation.
Check out Code by Charles Petzold for what I personally consider the best example! The analogies build on each other in steps that never feel too complex in order.
The characters you have invented would suit a picture book. Yet the math and concepts you offer suit an older teen or adult.
Think again about your audience, and either offer a very simple and well explained text for upper teens, or a really dumbed down picture book for primary school.
Keep with it, go iteratively to seek regular feedback. Put it on Tik-Tok or some place you can reach out to the target audience.
Just like most of the text came from ChatGPT.
Blown away by how many people here are complimenting this awful project as if any real thought or effort went into it. It's just AI blogspam.
Side note: I get a very Usborne vibe from your story. If you are not familiar, Usborne published a series of introductory computer books for young readers in the late 1980s that were well loved by a lot of us here on HN. You can probably find threads and links to copies of the material here.
Is that a common stereotype? Felt unnecessary to me, especially for a narrative that bills itself as modern.
I think your language might be a little too sophisticated for your audience. Try to use shorter sentences and more common words.
Good luck!
I have not written down but have bits and pieces of a long-ish story that I have been narrating to my 7-year old. And follows a similar cyberpunk post-human-collapse dystopian kinda scene -- a young brave 7-year old girl and her droid companion. This is to blend in and cross-over with her own story that she had been making up since a year or so - a mini-world of her own where every living thing is a clone of her -- a cat - yes, cloned from her; dinosaurs - yes, her clone.
Edit/Suggestion: I've an idea. Just don't specify this as for kids but for a generally smart young-adult.
Too many introductions to computing and programming leave this fundamental part out and concentrate mostly on the imperative part, i.e. instructing the computer to perform actions in an already existing world.
Well I'm not in the target audience, but I like the style and I feel it's a lot less intimidating (and more interesting) than a typical book on programming computers. Pretty neat!
Best start with like UX basics of a computer or a phone.
This is how you turn on a desktop, this is how you turn on a laptop and this is how you turn on a phone.
On phone you touch the screen or use buttons. On laptop and desktop there is a keyboard. On a laptop it is attached to the rest of the computer.
Desktops have monitors and everything is connected by cables.
Stuff like that.
It's obviously very dated today, but I really appreciated it as a kid when I saw it on TV.
And I will probably ask for feedback again soon.