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Posted Wed Nov 15 07:35PM

Now that I have kids I reflect on my own childhood from time to time. Yesterday I was thinking about how and when I learned to program. When I was 11 years old, I started programming on a Commodore 64. Initially I started doing BASIC programming and then jumped to assembly programming which was the natural progression at that time for many of us. The beauty of the C64 was that you could completely understand all the components of the computer. Whether it was memory mapped video or programming the SID chip to generate sounds the basic functionality was easy to understand. Now a days the underlying hardware software-relationship is almost completely abstracted from the programmer unless you are in the business of writing drivers. In a way I think this is really unfortunate since there is so much to learn from solving problems at interrupt time. The beauty of the old systems is that a single person could do all the work. Since deep down I am an entrepreneur, I quickly jumped to the idea of creating a virtual environment for young kids to begin programming. It could be delivered in such a way that children could be introduced to new concepts when they are ready for them. Maybe it would start with a simple language like logo giving them a procedural way to draw on the screen. Then graduate them to something like BASIC or C and then to an object oriented language such as Ruby or Scheme. Projects could be conceived around programming the hardware to generate simple games. Maybe the solution is to just buy your kid a C64 or install an interpreter for them. There probably isn't a large enough market for such a product, but I think it would be useful to young kids that want to get into programming.
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Reader Comments

I agree, I think it would be great if someone created a toolkit for kids.

Posted Mon Aug 13 06:56AM by London Bear

The OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) may have an interesting effect on the future world of programming, from many aspects.

Posted Wed Mar 05 05:06PM by George

Wow that is a really young age to start out programing. I got my first start in middle school on the old computer that we had at my school. I loved doing it but really got sick of it in high school. angie's list real estate agents

Posted Mon Mar 07 08:05PM by m north

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