Teach children to program - they will change the world

Posted by : John Westenberg
If I die, let my tweets turn into a book.



I learned to program as a boy.
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I learned C ++ because Wolfenstein 3d was written in this language.

I was obsessed with that game with all its beauty of large pixel formations. Modification of the game was my hobby and all my free time I was engaged in its new versions under the nickname Raistlin.

In fact, I learned to program because it was a continuation of who I was: a boy who simply could not leave anything in peace, which had to constantly rework, rebuild, invent and make everything new and new.

I was the same in the world of things - my hands were always busy and it was natural that my aspirations were directed to the computer.

I had no idea what I was doing when I first downloaded the source code of the game and started changing something in it, waiting for what happens after recompiling. But I remember the moment of clicking the mouse.

I made it so that you could slow down the whole game by pressing a single button, and called it "the simplest version of the slow motion effect of each dynamic scene."

... and in my thoughts I was truly God. I felt as if a great mystery was revealed to me and I gained a tremendous new power over the world. I could not even sleep that night - I longed to continue to create. I wanted to quickly put together parts of (disgustingly done) code.

I learned how to program because it was a new way to create something. And the creation of a new one was the only thing in my life that interested me.

Later I talked with many people about how to get children interested in programming. I know that a lot has been gained here and that many people continue to work in this direction. I think that it is one of the best ways to influence the future right now.

In my opinion, programming is for children the same natural process as playing, sculpting, building. Because when they do this, they explore, experiment, make. This is a completely natural behavior. You give your child a set of Lego blocks, and the child knows what to do with them.

That is why I have already started buying game sets and various little things for my niece, who can introduce her into the world of programming. I am not going to press it with this material and, honestly, I do not think that I will ever have to do so.

Because there is enough that the children already love, enough to play, explore, break, correct and find solutions.

I think that software and oxygen have a lot in common here. They are both vital, they are omnipresent, and we take them for granted. If you stop and look around, you can see that the way in which this whole programming process affects our lives is becoming more and more deep and complex.

But for some universal skill, for something that has a rather low entry barrier and gives a huge gain - I am still shocked at how few people have such a skill or are encouraged to master it.

I would call the ability to program a “great leveler” (comment of the translator: by analogy with this expression, which appeared in the USA in the middle of the 19th century for the Colt revolver), if the distribution of this qualification was not so uneven.

I really want the children around me in my life: my niece, the children of my friends - to play programming. Because I want to see a world in which more and more people are able to change and redo what does not work as it should.

There is an old saying: “Time is a game that children play beautifully”. I always liked it. Children look at the world differently - without the tension, anxiety and despair that we receive as adults.

Children do not waste time thinking about limitations.

Their way of seeing the world is the only thing that can change it.

Children who grow up learning without restrictions on how to create and change will be able to create and change everything.