So I was clearing out some stuff today when I found a book on programming the BBC Micro. I got this book around 6 years ago, back when I was just starting to learn how to program really basic stuff at the age of 10 (ish). I found it in my grandparent's house - it had previously belong to my Uncle who'd read it as a boy (he now codes Java for the London Stock Exchange I believe).
I didn't have an actual BBC Micro to try anything out on but I found it interesting just reading about how it worked. The next day, my grandfather who was taking some stuff to the dump, found an old Psion Series 3c:
Look at that beast! 2MB Ram! It was possibly the most fun I'd ever inherited second-hand. After wearing out the calendar, contacts and World Clock (they're not much fun at age 10) I soon discovered I could download small applications and transfer them using a serial cable. I seem to remember an awesome Sim-City clone at one point.
You could program the Psion in a language called OPL. So naturally I printed off the 400-page manual much to the dismay of my printer, and that's where... well, that's where the fun began.
The question
So I was lucky enough to start learning programming with a BASIC-like language. And coders in the generations before me have had access to these simple devices whose intents are to be programmed and told what to do.
Today's generation have computers that do everything for them. It requires no 'coding intelligence' to make something work on Windows Vista or whatever. Also, there's so much choice about already where do young people wanting to learn how to code begin today? VB? Java? PHP? etc. etc...
Will the current generation of young programmers be better or worse than those 20 years ago? Previously the ethos with computers was that you programmed them to do what you want. Now, we switch them on... and they just work. Also - and, although I wasn't around back then - the stereotype of the 'geek' I don't believe was applied to people as freely (well it probably was, but not used in the context of a boy in his room making some shapes on a BBC Micro screen necessarily).
Jack