As a college student, I think the best way to get people my age motivated to become geeks and get into computer programming is to show them how cool it can be a

As a college student, I think the best way to get people my age motivated to become geeks and get into computer programming is to show them how cool it can be as well as how it can result in being successful. Students need to see how cool it is to be involved in the tech startup community. The Social Network movie did a great job of showcasing this, but I think it needs to be taken further. Essentially we need to work on turning tech companies and their founders into celebrities in the same way that sports teams and their players are. Also I think we need to change how people are exposed to programming. For many people, the phrase "I'll explain how this works later" is highly discouraging. As such when the first language they are exposed to is a C variant, they tend to be immediately turned off. Languages like Python should be the base of programming education as they provide the ease of use that can excite new users, while still providing the foundations necessary to learn more complex languages. Also, when learning a language students should really be shown what they can do with the tools they are learning. For example I was in an introductory class and the teacher taught what a class was, but not how we could use it for anything.