What is the ideal age to start teaching your kids the principles of computer programming?
Startups seem to be popping up with that goal in mind. Teach kids to code. Teach them now. My son is 11 years old and already knows HTML, CSS and Javascript. And when he is not playing Minecraft, he can occasionally be seen doing some stuff in Photoshop. He loves computers and he loves to create, so it only makes sense to help him learn how computers work and how computer programming works.
The day that my son saw 12 year-old app developer, Thomas Suarez's, TED talk, he was hooked.
He wants to know how this magical world of app development works. We originally signed my son up for Vitamin Think's web-learning portal "Team Treehouse". This is a fun way to learn because it "gamifies" the learning experience. If you finish this lesson, it gives you points... if you finish a computer langauge, this gives you a badge.
MIT Labs has recently launched Scratch 2.0, which makes programming more playful and colorful. It's entertaining, but at the end of the day, it's still just a screen.
One startup that is doing some interesting things is a company called, Play-i. It's a "stealthy" start-up based in Silicon Valley that recently closed it's first round of seed capital. It's mission is to “ Teach Programming Through Play." They intend to do this for kids age 5 and above with robotics. I’ve seen a live demo of their experiements. It’s damn cool.
Last week, I had the privilege of dropping by their Sunnyvale offices and meet the founders. One of the founders is Vikas Gupta. He sold his company, Jambool, which operated "Social Gold", to Google for many millions in 2010. This product was integrated into Google's ecosytem and evolved into Google Wallet.
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