Christian has a good amount of knowledge about computers. Last year, in seventh grade, he set up a computer that is currently in use at North Carolina State University for a research project in the Agricultural Engineering department. You can see the web page it serves here. The server features not only a web page, but also a blog, a Subversion Version Control System server, and ftp site, and a number of other things. He is currently working on improvements to the backup system and the addition of the Trac Software Project Management System. He will serve as our systems administrator for the duration for the project.
As we move into the new school year, I have decided it is time for him to take on a “real” programming project. Christian has worked to learn C# and C++ over the last couple of years by working through several books such as C++ Primer Plus, but has had now reasonable way to apply what he has learned. Now though, there are several programming tasks of about the right size with which he could be a real help. We have identified one project in particular that we will have him use as his first formal project. I have started using QT Creator, an open source IDE (Integrated Development Environment), so that is what we will set up for him to program. We will keep you posted on his progress.