Learn how to use your Treo

Dude as a former Microsoftie you had full access to all that. One of our best kept secrets (why its like a secret baffles me) is the Microsoft Electronic Learning Library and there are "How To" videos in Flash format, complete with interaction to simulate your being in the application to teach you just about anything you want to know from using Office, to administering servers, to ..... yup... programming.

Michael: but I didn't have time when I was a Microsoft employee. :-)

Put them out there for my son to learn. He's the one who actually could make a difference in the world.

Heh heh, I know how you feel about the no time. :-)
I will say this for the kids end. I worked as a volunteer at my kids old school up in PA before I transferred to our southeast office and one of the things that Microsoft has for kids at schools is similar to an Enterprise agrrement but only runs around 1,200 for a whole school and includes the OS, Office, Servers, and full multimedia web based training for all of that plus others just like programming so there is a good chance whatever school he goes to will have it and just not know what to do with it. Check with them and if they need any helpp on how to set it up for use let me know and maybe I could do a remote help session with them. The kids are definately where its at and sure pick it up much easier than us old farts. ;-)

Yeah, have your son learn how to program. I wish I'd known how to when I was in high school. I could have avoided all those crappy summer jobs I did back then and been doing real work for good pay. My suggestion is he should start with C#. Three reasons. It's in demand. It's got a ton of learning material out there for it. Making cool stuff happen is pretty easy for a beginner compared to some other languages.

I've used Java and it's like C# but Java's libraries make no sense to the beginner but C#'s .NET libraries are organized pretty well. Oh, and you get that really easy to use IDE of the express editions.

That's a great site and he's got a really fun style of presenting. I don't even use a Treo anymore, but I think I'll ask him to branch out and do some Windows Mobile device videos!

Correction: the videoblog is actually called "One in The Hand"

Curt, thanks. I don't know how I messed that up. Fixed.

Robert... this post may or may not fit you. But it does fit many of the folks who "want to learn to program".

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/00063...

Some people have it, some don't. Personally, I think anyone can learn to write basic code. But to be a programmer? I don't think it is learned, so much as your born with it.

Think about any art based industry. Most people don't learn it from scratch. They have an intuitive sense of things, and they improve their skills from there.

Robert, you should do one of this on how to blog! There are still lots of wannabe bloggers out there and many of us still novice bloggers that could benefit from your knowledge.