Human languages like Chinese or Hungarian or English have a greater volume of grammatical constructions, irregular forms, vocabulary, and semantics than any com

Human languages like Chinese or Hungarian or English have a greater volume of grammatical constructions, irregular forms, vocabulary, and semantics than any computer language, and yet toddlers learn them all the time. Now, I wouldn't claim that humans are wired to learn Python the way they're wired to learn a human language. Nor would I claim that every child under ten should necessarily be able to navigate Python -- the majority of adults I know cannot navigate Python, or even BASIC. But: I’d be very careful not to underestimate kids. If you don’t tell them something is supposed to be hard, they will astound you. I'm only about four chapters in to Coders at Work, and yet I've already encountered Brad Fitzpatrick, who claims to have learned to program before he was five. When I was a high school senior I met one or two nine-year-olds who could kick my ass in mathematics competition. I myself will never know how much Python I could have learned before age ten -- I encountered my first computer, a C64, when I was about eleven -- but I do know that by age 14 I had gotten bored reading about BASIC and had taught myself assembly and Pascal (though I had to learn Pascal entirely from books, writing programs on paper, because I didn't encounter my first Pascal compiler until I was 15, several years later).