Hmmmmm... punchcards... stacks of 'em.
Yes, I guess I
am that old.
LOL.. I'm on the cusp. My brother who was 2 years older than me took his first programming class in Fortran his freshman year of H.S. on a mainframe using punch cards.
Programming has become more convenient and fun, but I wonder if a much higher fraction of entering college freshmen has done any programming today vs. 30 years ago. I don't know of any colleges that require a programming background. Looking at MIT's
What To Do In High School I see the following recommendations:
One year of high school physics
One year of high school chemistry
One year of high school biology
Math, through calculus
Two years of a foreign language
Four years of English
Two years of history and/or social sciences
There is nothing about programming, but having never programmed would likely cause more challenges in passing MIT classses than not having taken a foreign language, as illustrated by a MIT student blog post I linked to earlier
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....st_programming_languages.html#Post220423 .
