

Please teach kids programming, Mr. President (2009) - nathanh
http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/02/teach-kids-programming-mr-president.html

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jfornear
Decisions like this should be made at the local level... The author should
talk to his local school district before pushing his untested ideas on the
entire country.

The future strength of our economy depends on our ability to foster the
experimentation and competition of ideas.

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mynameishere
_Inequity of access. Too many kids today don't have access to computers, cell
phones, video games or other programmable devices._

"today" kids have greater access to technology than any time in history,
including yesterday. Including 5 minutes ago.

~~~
samdk
Most of today's kids, yes. Not all of them. Lots and lots of low-income
families _don't_ have access to these things, and it's naive to think
otherwise.

~~~
cma
There are few people without access to the libraries with computers. (edit: in
the U.S.)

~~~
samdk
Access to a computer in a library is very often time limited and you're almost
always limited in what you can do on the computer.

It's good that people _can_ use library computers, but it's absolutely not the
same thing as having your own computer.

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jpwagner

      1.  The future strength of our economy depends on its 
      ability to create, support, and sustain entrepreneurs.
    

Dead on.

    
    
      2.  ...They are in school, right now...
    

Very True.

    
    
      3.  They are nerds.
    

Wait what?

This piece is about catering to a niche subset of the _potential_ future
entrepreneurs not a superset of the future entrepreneurs as claimed.

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rythie
I can't believe that anyone in the U.S. who has a roof over their head
couldn't get a computer if they really wanted one.

There are plenty of computers similar to the one I use every day on eBay for
under $50 [http://computers.shop.ebay.com/PC-
Desktops-/179/i.html?LH_BI...](http://computers.shop.ebay.com/PC-
Desktops-/179/i.html?LH_BIN=1&LH_Price=..50%40c&Processor%2520Type=Intel%2520Pentium%25204&Memory%2520%2528RAM%2529=512%2520MB%2520or%2520more&_catref=1&_dmpt=Desktop_PCs&_fln=1&_mPrRngCbx=1&_ssov=1&_trksid=p3286.c0.m282)
Old CRT monitors, keyboards, mice can usually be picked up for next to
nothing. And if that is still too expensive there is always
<http://www.freecycle.org/> . If someone wants a free up to date OS, then
Ubuntu will ship CDs for free: <https://shipit.ubuntu.com/>

You can pick up a Xbox with games for $35 [http://cgi.ebay.com/Microsoft-
Xbox-8-GB-Black-14-games_W0QQi...](http://cgi.ebay.com/Microsoft-Xbox-8-GB-
Black-14-games_W0QQitemZ150403884334QQcmdZViewItemQQptZVideo_Games?hash=item2304c5252e)
and they are hackable with Linux

You can pick up cell phones for next to nothing and many of them run Java
apps.

I learnt to program on a BBC B (8bit, 32kb memory) computer I shared with my
family and books from the local library. I'm not sure how "kids today don't
have access to computers" compared to then. Back then computers and phones
were expensive and now they are cheap. Also the internet is full of
communities to help people learn programming.

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albahk
Offtopic: everytime I land on startuplessonslearned.com I get an IE Operation
Aborted dialog and an error page. This has occured every time for at least 6
months. Shame, I really want to read the articles. Browser: IE 7.0.5730.13 on
XP Pro. (Work PC so no control over the setup)

~~~
ivank
Hit ESC at the right time and it should work for you.

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klocksib
Kodu Game Lab from Microsoft Research
([http://community.research.microsoft.com/blogs/kodu/default.a...](http://community.research.microsoft.com/blogs/kodu/default.aspx))
is a really good way to get kids into programming. Disclosure: I worked on it.

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dimitar
An entrepreneur is not always a computer geek who starts a software company :)

And I think some of the more outgoing and sociable kids might be great
entrepreneur too - you have to sell and selling requires energy to deal with
people.

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yes_its_giles
hey, for what it's worth, I commented on this blog post, when it originally
went up, saying that it's better to be the change you wish to see, HINT HINT,
which means (in other words) I think it would be cool to actually DO SOMETHING
ABOUT THIS as opposed to chin-stroking about it all day long. (Or indeed, as
it turned out, chin-stroking about it for years to come.)

If anybody feels the same way, e-mail me (gilesb@gmail.com), because I'm
totally not kidding. Actions speak louder than words. Less yammering, less
yanking our weiners about how futuristic and enlightened we are, and
absolutely NO MORE of the boring nitpicky dickwads saying why it won't work
for some blah blah blah bullshit "I'll say anything to avoid getting off my
ass and helping people" reason.

Fuck all that. Let's teach some kids tech literacy who wouldn't otherwise
learn it and change the world already, even if it's just some tiny little
piece of the world. Still better than nothing.

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nato1138
what a horrible idea... top-down initiatives to turn young kids onto being
over-smart and underpaid.

