If only kids could be programmed differently

WIRED:The Silicon Valley cocktail-party cliche is that children aren't interested in understanding computers, writes Danny O'Brien.

THERE COMES a point in every Silicon Valley parents' life when a certain awkward little conversation needs to be had with their progeny. But when? Is seven too early? Is nine too late? And if you leave it any later, will they care about high-level computer language programming at all?

Proud union workers on the docks, miners in the valleys, car engineers in Detroit: everyone in a one-industry town teaches their children a little about the life around them, and how they can choose to take part in it - or move somewhere else to escape it.

And so it is in Silicon Valley: adults attempting to coach their kids into taking over the family occupation, or trying to give them the tools to take them away from the dead end of their own lives.

Geek mums and dads teach their children programming. It has been fascinating to watch computer-nerd parents attempt to pass on their digital genes to their offspring - with, of course, the mixed success of every generational transmission. Kids today, it seems, just aren't as into coding as their parents.

The Silicon Valley cocktail-party cliche is that children aren't interested in understanding computers because they just want to play games and buy dumb stuff off the interweb, not take the computers apart.

The truth is that dedicated hackers in Silicon Valley generally started early. Very early. Many of the brightest minds here describe being snatched away by the computer fairies at age seven or even younger.

Now, if you want to warp your own children's minds in the same way, there are plenty of ways to do so.

The drug of choice for the older generation was probably Logo - a programming language simple enough for primary-school kids to understand, based around the challenge of moving a "turtle" around on a screen.

These days, young children are doing amazing things with a piece of software called Scratch from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Scratch is a visual programming language. To program it, you drag jigsaw-like pieces that represent actions and concepts, connecting them as a traditional programmer connects lines of code.

Watching what kids do with Scratch (and you can see a vast gallery of their creations online at http://scratch.mit.edu/) gives you an idea of what kids can get computers to do for them. Often, the early steps are making movies or games.

But it remains true that kids that young aren't quite as enamoured with the mighty programmable PC as their parents.

I remember when I first started coding, and I'll never forget the huge, rewarding rush of adrenalin I had when I first put my name on a television screen.

These days, getting your name on the television is the first thing a games console lets you do. It's nothing special.

Kids today want to learn how to code the game that comes after they log in - and that's far away from any seven-year-old's abilities. The initial endorphin rush just isn't there for today's kid coders.

But there are some other cheap thrills to be had.

The main growth area for kids (of all ages) seems to be using computers to control real objects.

Kids will spend hours at a screen getting a robot to move around.

The big parent-child bonding hobby around here is unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) - little self-powered blimps that you train to move and react to their surroundings like smart balloons.

These days, kids get that burst of power from seeing their first programmed helicopter ride out into the open spaces around the Valley.

Of course, the number of kids who will really tread in their parents' footsteps will be minimal. Programming skill isn't genetic, as far as we know.

And the hackers who made it to Silicon Valley (and stayed here through boom and bust) aren't just good coders. Many of them came here not for the job, but for the dream - and how the dream fitted in with their own curious childhood obsessions.

Almost everyone in the Valley aged 35 and over has a story of being told that their crazy, consuming passion for computers would lead to nothing.

Now that they have kids of their own, they have the vindication to be able to tell them that learning to program is a skill that brings security and a good job.

But, really, what better way to drain the interest of any child?

At the same party where I heard geek parents commiserating with each other on their next generation's apparent disinterest in the programming values of their elders, I also heard them worrying about what dangers smart young kids could really get up to.

The number-one concern? The dropping price of DNA analysers and assemblers. "I just don't want to know what happens when a teenager with some initiative and an eBay account picks up cheap biotech kit to experiment," said one parent.

Perhaps it's going to be some Silicon Valley parent's curse to find out exactly that.