My experience has been that the earlier in life that someone is introduced to a technology, the easier it is for them to learn it. Kids these days pick up compu

My experience has been that the earlier in life that someone is introduced to a technology, the easier it is for them to learn it. Kids these days pick up computers and the Internet very quickly, while many older people (esp. 60+) struggle to understand it. I think this is largely just a property of the human brain - our capacity to learn new things decreases with age. I was fortunate enough to have a father who did pretty much the same thing as this guy. Growing up in the 80s, I was introduced to the DOS command-line, BASIC, Turbo pascal, building and upgrading my own computers, etc. I distinctly remember the day when I was 8 years old and asked my father, with no prompting, "Dad, how do you make programs?". This was 24 years ago and pretty much every day since then I've been working with computers in some form or another, completing three CS degrees, teaching the subject at university, and starting my own software company. I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if it wasn't for my father. As a CS lecturer I've seen some students who come into the first year courses having never written a line of code before in their lives, and others who were writing their own games all through high school. While there are some exceptions, the latter group tend to do far better at their studies and also often just naturally do their own projects outside of formal study, which IMHO is critical for learning the subject properly. I think getting kids into the technical aspects of computers at an early age gives them a tremendous head start over their peers who are playing Xbox and angry birds on their iPad. This guy is giving his kids two of the most important gifts of all - education and inspiration, of the sort they'll never get in school.