I'm not sure I agree with that. We were introduced to Logo briefly in second grade (admittedly, I don't think the programming concepts really stuck at that poi

I'm not sure I agree with that. We were introduced to Logo briefly in second grade (admittedly, I don't think the programming concepts really stuck at that point). Then we were introduced to BASIC briefly in fifth grade. For some of us at least, concepts like conditionals and loops did stick. I remember going home and insisting my dad install a BASIC interpreter on his computer so I could write more programs. BASIC doesn't really have the concept of a function, but we were already being taught about abstractions like "f(x) = x + 1" in seventh grade algebra, so I don't see why programming would be too abstract for an eighth grader. You might not want to try to teach them Java or Erlang, but procedural or imperative Python like the article describes should be well within the abilities of a significant subset of kids that age.