I think that you are right about the fact that kids will not stumble into programming if they are not searching for it. On the other hand, they have lots of re

I think that you are right about the fact that kids will not stumble into programming if they are not searching for it. On the other hand, they have lots of reasons to search about programming (think of the mandatory techie present in most TV shows) and there are really nice tools to learn these days. I am thinking for example of Scratch, an MIT project devoted to learn programming to kids http://scratch.mit.edu/ http://scratch.mit.edu/. So resources are there and there are lots of spark that could ignite kids interest into programming but the real problem, I think, is not availability or interest, but the availability of "funnier" and "easier" things to do on a computer : social networks, downpour of games (when I was a kid, getting 2 games a year was a tremendous boon. Today, my nephew has access to more games than he could ever dream to play). This has been in fact described quite well by PG in his essay : The acceleration of addictiveness http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html