As an 8 year old, I had no interest in playing with children’s toys. I wanted to learn how to what the grown ups around me that I admired did, making profession

As an 8 year old, I had no interest in playing with children’s toys. I wanted to learn how to what the grown ups around me that I admired did, making professional looking things. VB6 and Adobe Flash were perfect for this circa 2002. They were professional grade tools that were easy to get started with but capable of sophisticated professional looking output. The drag/drop/drawable user interfaces or scenes of these programs was also great for a kid to make something interesting without getting too frustrated with detail. I enjoyed doing things like making clickable buttons change text on a label or pop up a message box or open a file. I also thought making menu bars for applications was so cool and fancy. Likewise, I enjoyed making simple animations with flash. I think the key is having a tool the kid thinks is useful/professional grade and cool (I didn’t find kids toys or kids software cool above the age 8 or 9) but also approachable for early gratification with results that can be seen.