Now programming can be addictive.
A friend got a computer when I was 13 and could not get it to work. I read the manual and got it up and running. He lost interest and I bought it from him.
It was summer. I would stay up all night long writing software, falling asleep when I could not keep my eyes open.
I wrote some games and my friends and family became addicted to them, which was fine, because while they played, I would sleep from dawn until after lunch. Then get up, go read or hang out at the pool, then come home and dusk and get started.
I bought a modem and a funky tape drive and some more memory and spent a lot of time doing what later became "war dialing." My uncle found out what I was doing (he'd been a sys admin in the early to mid 60s ) and told me to stop it. LOL. Back then there was no security to speak of. I later got interested in relativity and finite element modelling and wrote quite a few programs on this while in HS.
BBS were starting to become popular and I joined a couple and went to a meet and greet. People could not believe I was me at first. LOL. I did meet adults who took me seriously for the first time in my life, though. That was a wonderful summer.
Today's IDEs are too cumbersome for kids new to programming. It takes more work than I did to tool up.
In my mind's eye, I can see a PG kid who is given access to the 'net and a good linux system at age 12 becoming a very good programmer by age 15 - there is so much material out there. The CUDA/GPU movement is just getting started as well.
