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I'd actually wonder (and somewhat worry) what effect that has from a social perspective on future generations of programmers. Certainly not all programmers sta

I'd actually wonder (and somewhat worry) what effect that has from a social perspective on future generations of programmers. Certainly not all programmers start as kids, but it seems like a huge number of them do, and it seems like almost all of the really, really excellent ones I've met and worked with started programming before the second half of high school (I can think of one notable exception who started in his second year of college). However: many, perhaps most, of them did not start on their own general purpose computer: they all seem to have been exposed to a general purpose computer through their parents and picked it up from there. If many, or most, people do not actually /need/ a general purpose computer (as you argue, and as I kind of agree), then that kind of access would be greatly hampered. I worry about the potential educational effect that would have for people who come into programming the way I and multiple people I know did, without any outside prodding and long before anyone sane starts thinking about their child's future career in some industry. I know that the main advance that computers gave my parents, professionally, over typewriters was the ability to google and the backspace key, followed shortly by .mp3s and the ability to burn CDs (one is a professor of music). If those things were divorced from general purpose computing, I wouldn't have had access to a general purpose computer until easily 5 years after I made my first website, 4 years after I started to learn a Turing complete language, and two years after I started programming in earnest/doing more than snippets of javascript as part of web design (Java, followed shortly after by scheme). I'm not sure I would have actually gone into computer science/programming as a field if I hadn't fallen into it early on: there are a lot of other fields that people were genuinely telling me I should pay attention to or get good at (math, physics, science in general), and I worry that din would have shut out my own interests if I hadn't stumbled into them as early as I did. This is why devices like the iPad worried me from when they were released (when I was in high school) onward: what would I have done if my parents owned an iPad instead of a Mac? If that walled garden was my only exposure to computing at a young age? (I certainly wouldn't have been given the keys to the Apple store to buy educational games about programming, my parents didn't trust me as a child with their money.) I'm not sure I'd be in this field (which I enjoy very much), as there were almost no examples of 'other programmers' in my life until I was in high school, and that was only because I sought them out.

navait 12y ago
Plenty of great programmers exist that did not have computers as children.(Someone had to invent them, and were very expensive for a long time). I myself never had a computer. The myth that you had to be exposed as a kid is mostly propagated by people who have an interest in shutting people out of the industry, or trying to tout themselves as prodigies. I was actively discouraged in university from taking a CS class because I had no experience. And even if general purpose computers encourage programming by themselves, a Rasberry Pi is $25. You could buy a computer with your allowance if you really wanted it, and I think the people we need are the people who sought computers on their own, not spoiled children whose parents had the foresight to own a PC.

navait 12y ago

Plenty of great programmers exist that did not have computers as children.(Someone had to invent them, and were very expensive for a long time). I myself never had a computer. The myth that you had to be exposed as a kid is mostly propagated by people who have an interest in shutting people out of the industry, or trying to tout themselves as prodigies. I was actively discouraged in university from taking a CS class because I had no experience. And even if general purpose computers encourage programming by themselves, a Rasberry Pi is $25. You could buy a computer with your allowance if you really wanted it, and I think the people we need are the people who sought computers on their own, not spoiled children whose parents had the foresight to own a PC.