akamike (2007-2010)

Young Tech Warriors

I first started programming when I was 11, Visual Basic in school, playing with BYOND DM code at home and a little bit of HTML here and there. Matt, my eldest, younger brother is 12 and has not long been messing with BYOND himself. While I am happy to help him out and get him on the right track, I have already looked into getting him a decent PC so he can start "proper" programming, I've been told his school work has dropped in progress.

My school work had a dip back then as well, but not just due to my thoughts drifting to making myself a game or when the next visual basic class would be, and it got me wondering if it was right for me to help him with programming or if I should get him to focus on his school work instead. I understand that programming isn't the most important thing in the world, but I do want him to get ahead to give him a head start on his planned career (games developer).

In an interesting turn of events, his teacher asked him to do a presentation about his BYOND game making in front of the class, tying the two worlds together. I've been helping him with this presentation and it struck me how he can't be too technical in it (not that he is in person). It got me thinking, is he too young to be learning this stuff? In this day and age, where most kids have a computer, internet connection, mobile phone, mp3 player, games console and own TV, do they know much about the technology they are using? There has been kids in the news who show a good grasp of technology, but how is this affecting their basic education?

Anyhoo, my questions to you are:

  1. How old were you when you started getting heavily involved in technology?

  2. How do you think it affected your life (education/social/???)?

  3. What do you think is a good age for a child to get into technology (not just programming)?

1 Comment

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