I'm really confused by these comments about pre-school aged children and I would suggest that the author if the article is in the extreme minority if he is able

I'm really confused by these comments about pre-school aged children and I would suggest that the author if the article is in the extreme minority if he is able to spend any time at all at a command prompt with a two year old. I'll assume good faith and an extremely unusually gifted child, but if you've spent time with two year olds the anecdote stretches credibility. Don't get me wrong, I remember the magic feeling of cd and ls ing around a drive to find and run programs on DOS after being taught by my dad, but I certainly wasn't 3 and there was a tangible benefit - I was becoming self-sufficient. (Even then, the closest it offered to entertainment was a selection of carefully curated educational "games".) Putting snobbery about modern technology like touchscreens to one side - what's the point of a text based interface if you can't even read comfortably? I suspect that the HN demographic will tend towards children with higher educational achievement than average, but this is where most kids are: > From ages 3-4, most preschoolers become able to: > > - Understand that print carries a message > - Make attempts to read and write > - Identify some letters and make some letter-sound matches > - Use known letters (or their best attempt to write the letters) to represent written language especially for meaningful words like their names or phrases such as "I love you" Helping Your Child Become A Reader. U.S. Department of Education (2000)