<story><title>How the kids stole the show: Young Coders tutorial at PyCon</title><url>http://pycon.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-kids-stole-show-young-coders.html</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>sophacles</author><text>&lt;i&gt;“I don&apos;t think you&apos;d ever see that kind of experimentation in a classroom full of adults, who would more likely do everything in their power not to break their computers,”...&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I really think, more than anything, this is why we should be teaching kids to code and so on in school. Most of the good coders I know have been doing it from a young age, and I think a lot of it comes from the fearlessness of youth.&lt;p&gt;Personally, I know I owe a lot to this. I &quot;broke&quot; the computer more times than I can count, by just experimenting, playing and otherwise doing stuff that I now know to be &quot;reckless&quot;. There was a guy in the IT department and my dad&apos;s work who gave me an absurd number of hours of free tech support and teaching, because I couldn&apos;t figure out how to undo some of those mistakes, and would patiently walk me through getting things put right before my folks came home from work. (In retrospect, I don&apos;t think they would have minded, but I didn&apos;t want to get in trouble for breaking the expensive toy!)</text></comment>
<story><title>How the kids stole the show: Young Coders tutorial at PyCon</title><url>http://pycon.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-kids-stole-show-young-coders.html</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>cwbrandsma</author><text>Just talking on the interest you can get from having kids give talks at conferences...&lt;p&gt;We just had Boise Code Camp 2 weeks ago.  We had one talk on Kid Programming, which was given by two 11 year olds (using Scratch) and a 6 year old (using LOGO) -- and two of them were girls.  We put the talk in one of our larger rooms and we packed it.  People standing in the back and sitting on the floor.&lt;p&gt;As an aside, just about every year we have had a large number of parents attending who would bring one or two kids with them. Out of 400 people I could usually 15-20 people younger than 18.  We have not had any trouble because of it.&lt;p&gt;I think there is a lot of interest, both from kids and parents, to learn about programming.  A our code camp, I&apos;m hoping to open up multiple sessions for kids (I&apos;d like to have a multiple hour block).  Some of those kids already have good resumes going.  One I saw in particular was able to talk on Java and C without any difficulty (and he preferred vi as his editor) -- he was maybe 12.&lt;p&gt;For other conference organizers, (if you have room) please consider having talks aimed at kids.  But also just encourage parents to bring their tech interested kids with them.</text></comment>