survey

[gusl]

1) Did you write computer programs as a child?

2) What language?

3) How did you learn? Did you have someone teach you?

4) Did you ever meet other kids who programmed?

I think most kids today no longer have this opportunity.


MY ANSWERS:

1) Yes. I started when I was 7.
2) Basic, on my MSX. Later, DOS QBasic (which no longer required line numbers).
3) I learned from examples: whenever you loaded a game on the cassette, the code listing was right there. I still don't remember what my first program was (probably something with PRINT and INPUT), or why I decided to write it. I started out by myself, but occasionally learned things from my uncle who was a programmer, or read something in magazines.
4) Nope. Not that I know.

Comments

[easwaran.livejournal.com]

I think when we were younger most kids didn't have the opportunity either. It's just that the ones that did ended up in social circles where we all know each other now.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

True. In fact, obvious our sample is very biased. And I believe that programming as a kid makes you significantly more intelligent, so partly we all know each other as a consequence of the fact that we programmed as kids (i.e. not merely a correlation).

Of course, I still haven't taken into account how my LJ circle differs from the average "intelligent" person.

I would like to meet present-day kids who are learning to program. These days, if anything, most kids are learning HTML (and then call it "programming"). I would like to meet the few who do real programming... I just can't imagine how they would get into it, though... (enthusiastic programmer parents seems unlikely)

[kinejoshua.livejournal.com]

With the growth of the Internet and the increasing social acceptance of computers and computer mastery, I think programming is more popular than ever before.

Some evidence: A very large portion of the people I know from Mathcamp program (in degrees varying from web design to fiddling with QBasic to setting up a Linux box to coding inequality solvers and winning various awards at the USACO (http://oldweb.uwp.edu/academic/mathematics/usaco/) programming contest). Much more surprisingly, a sizable number of people from my high school program (mostly on TI-83 graphic calculators, but we also have an AP Computer Science course and such).

Analysis: With computers and the Internet becoming more and more a part of kids' lives (mp3s, instant messaging, blogs), being able to control and interact with computers in a deeper and more creative way is becoming increasingly desirable and, well, cool. And even if that's complete crap, the Internet's made it impossibly easy for geeks to be drawn into and to learn programming. Ten or twenty years ago, a poor isolated nerd who was interested in learning programming might have few places to turn for guidance. The chances of him or her finding like-minded people to be encouraged by and learn from is even smaller. Things are clearly different now with the Internet.