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"Are they teaching kids about programming or computer skills?" I had a friend tell me recently how her young child "loved computers and was really good with th

"Are they teaching kids about programming or computer skills?" I had a friend tell me recently how her young child "loved computers and was really good with them," but clarified by saying he was "always playing with his iPad." I'm not a professional programmer, but I did develop my strong interest in computers while playing around with (and often breaking) my parents' PC as a kid, and I've heard the same from many engineers. I wonder how a kid is supposed to develop that kind of curiosity if their only exposure to computers is the sandboxed, sterile environment of a iPhone/tablet?

sentenza 11y ago
Amen. I'm currently walking around telling fellow parents that "The kids are better with computers than we are" was a transient phase and is not the case any more at all. Many of us learned the basics of our IT education because we had to fix our first computers to even be able to use them. This is not the case any more, and we should adjust our perception of how kids learn about computers accordingly.
pfranz 11y ago
I think that all peaked in the mid-to-late 90's when software and hardware was progressing so fast you had to eek as much as possible out of your older hardware. My girlfriend will say she got comfortable with computer hardware when she spilled soda on her's in college and could only afford to replace it with an older model. She opened it up to upgrade the RAM because it was so terrible. This led her to build her next few computers. Prior to ubiquitous tablets and smartphones I had heard similar things you mention except the classifier was, "always spending time on Facebook." As an interesting aside, I've heard people assert the computer industry is male-dominated because radio shack and others marketed computers as toys for males back in the 80's-90's. This carried over to first year comp sci where males had a leg-up and discouraged otherwise just as qualified females. They had a few anecdotes where young girls were more interested in the home computer than their brothers, but the computer was kept in their brother's room because of this stigma.

sentenza 11y ago

Amen. I'm currently walking around telling fellow parents that "The kids are better with computers than we are" was a transient phase and is not the case any more at all. Many of us learned the basics of our IT education because we had to fix our first computers to even be able to use them. This is not the case any more, and we should adjust our perception of how kids learn about computers accordingly.

pfranz 11y ago

I think that all peaked in the mid-to-late 90's when software and hardware was progressing so fast you had to eek as much as possible out of your older hardware. My girlfriend will say she got comfortable with computer hardware when she spilled soda on her's in college and could only afford to replace it with an older model. She opened it up to upgrade the RAM because it was so terrible. This led her to build her next few computers. Prior to ubiquitous tablets and smartphones I had heard similar things you mention except the classifier was, "always spending time on Facebook." As an interesting aside, I've heard people assert the computer industry is male-dominated because radio shack and others marketed computers as toys for males back in the 80's-90's. This carried over to first year comp sci where males had a leg-up and discouraged otherwise just as qualified females. They had a few anecdotes where young girls were more interested in the home computer than their brothers, but the computer was kept in their brother's room because of this stigma.