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I can only judge on what I've seen personally and what I've heard from industry leaders and both line up. Wherever I'm living I go around to schools and groups

I can only judge on what I've seen personally and what I've heard from industry leaders and both line up. Wherever I'm living I go around to schools and groups looking for kids to teach programming to. They all have computers of some sort (mostly iPhones and some tablets), but don't know how in the world they can develop on them. The only way to write native apps for iOS is to buy an apple laptop, get a developer license and learn an advanced programming language. That's beyond the reach of most kids. Now suppose that new websites popped up using my library and all the kid needed was a device with a modern browser and optionally a bluetooth keyboard? They could learn JavaScript and write webapps. There is huge demand for new programmers in our economy and most kids only see electronics as consumption devices. Speaking of, my Chromebook just arrived via UPS, now for some fun!

BHSPitMonkey 14y ago
> They all have computers of some sort (mostly iPhones and some tablets), but don't know how in the world they can develop on them. The only way to write native apps for iOS is to buy an apple laptop, get a developer license and learn an advanced programming language. That's beyond the reach of most kids. It is pretty burdensome that you do need to have an Apple computer (or hackintosh, or complicated unofficial toolchain) in order to developer for iOS, you actually don't need a developer license to start developing apps. You just open the Mac App Store and grab Xcode these days. You do need the $99 subscription in order to test on a device (very unfortunately), and to publish in the App Store. But in spite of these things, if you're a new developer with access to OSX, iOS development is quite accessible and easy to get started with.
- creationix 14y ago
  But that's exactly my point. Where I live in the poor south, most kids have iPhones because they are "free" and their parents can't do the math to realize that the monthly fees make it incredibly expensive. But I have yet to see a single local kid who owns or even has access to a mac laptop. (not to mention the $100 for the developer license is a month's rent for some of them.) So as far as they are concerned, it's impossible to develop on their phone.

BHSPitMonkey 14y ago

> They all have computers of some sort (mostly iPhones and some tablets), but don't know how in the world they can develop on them. The only way to write native apps for iOS is to buy an apple laptop, get a developer license and learn an advanced programming language. That's beyond the reach of most kids. It is pretty burdensome that you do need to have an Apple computer (or hackintosh, or complicated unofficial toolchain) in order to developer for iOS, you actually don't need a developer license to start developing apps. You just open the Mac App Store and grab Xcode these days. You do need the $99 subscription in order to test on a device (very unfortunately), and to publish in the App Store. But in spite of these things, if you're a new developer with access to OSX, iOS development is quite accessible and easy to get started with.

creationix 14y ago
But that's exactly my point. Where I live in the poor south, most kids have iPhones because they are "free" and their parents can't do the math to realize that the monthly fees make it incredibly expensive. But I have yet to see a single local kid who owns or even has access to a mac laptop. (not to mention the $100 for the developer license is a month's rent for some of them.) So as far as they are concerned, it's impossible to develop on their phone.