I work with kids in tech (including “at-risk youth” with limited means), and their abilities these days are downright frightening. When I was 11 I was riding a

I work with kids in tech (including “at-risk youth” with limited means), and their abilities these days are downright frightening. When I was 11 I was riding a skateboard around until I got into coding and by 13 I had Hello World and an OpenGL triangle and felt so empowered. Some of these kids though are pumping out small 3D games about whatever interests them with their own custom shaders and models. Part of that is access to information / better tools, but also I feel part of it is being tuned to absorb, find, and filter information through these mediums. If they are into something they will grasp it at astounding rates. I haven’t come across any education system currently that outright targets exploring the interest space or doing a good job of offering to kids why they should be interested in something that isn’t immediately obviously very cool or fun or feeling attainable. And for a lot of them this is exactly what they need, if not all they need if there’s a lot of easy to absorb information online.