Kid Koding

So my daughter has decided she'd like to start programming (with a little encouragement from me of course). We haven't actually started yet, but she has already made an elaborate plan: she wants to create a game for her brother. "In the corner of the screen will be a clock counting down two minutes, and there'll be hedgehogs, and he has to click on as many as he can before the time is up." Why hedgehogs? Don't ask such silly questions.

Today she elaborated a little further "I know there'll be six animals" (I had already suggested that we use different animals, perhaps ones from an existing game, since doing our own graphics would be hard work on top of writing her first program). "Daddy, how long will it take to write the program? Once I'm done, do I have it forever?"

It's very interesting to study her motivations and thoughts; as a child I came to programming anxious to duplicate the arcade games of the day. For her, it's all about entertaining her three year old brother, which is undoubtedly one of the favourite passtimes of my seven year old. We'll see how programming goes!