Purple Computer

Details

External ID

47029882

Source

HN

Company

—

Product

Purple Computer

Website domain

purplecomputer.org

Launched

Feb. 16, 2026

Cohort

—

Upvotes

7

Upvotes percentile

0.38207547169811323

Tags

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Fetched at

Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.

Updated at

Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.

Description

Hey HN, I'm Tavi. I built this for my 4-year-old.He and I used to "computer code" together in IPython: typing words to see emojis, mixing colors, making sounds. Eventually he wanted his own computer. So I took an old laptop and made him one.That IPython session evolved into Explore mode, a REPL where kids type things and something always happens: "cat * 5" shows five cats, "red + blue" mixes colors like real paint, math gets dot visualizations. Then came Play mode (every key makes a sound and paints a color) and Doodle mode (write and paint). The whole machine boots straight into Purple. No desktop, no browser, no internet.It felt different from "screen time." He'd use it for a while, then walk away on his own. No tantrum, no negotiation.Some technical bits: it's a Python TUI (Textual in Alacritty) running on Ubuntu, so even very old laptops run it well. Keyboard input bypasses the terminal entirely via evdev for true key-down/key-up events, which lets me do sticky shift and double-tap capitals so kids don't have to hold two keys. Color mixing uses spectral reflectance curves so colors actually mix like paint (yellow + blue = green, not gray).Source is on GitHub: https://github.com/purplecomputerorg/purplecomputer

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