My learning was all for play/toys. I just wanted to tell people about anime and make weird things like site counters that used letters instead of numbers or gu

My learning was all for play/toys. I just wanted to tell people about anime and make weird things like site counters that used letters instead of numbers or guest books so that people who couldn't code/afford the internet time for chat rooms could still talk about cool stuff. It turned out I had a knack for it and later I liked to help with things like emulation and make game mods or web stuff for fandom communities. I wouldn't have read a computer science book as a kid (and I was a VERY nerdy child who was a hyperlexic mental calculator). I agree that learning by doing is good, especially since when you run into a programming problem, you usually don't solve it by finding a book on the problem. So starting with projects also lets them practice problem-solving, which is a HUGE part of programming.