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Comment by rvikmanis | Hacker News Reader

Not yet. But I think I will when they are old enough.

Genuinely curious what you would consider "old enough" and how you would determine that.

You know, first get the basics done. Like being able to use a toilet or operate a fork. Leave programming for the early school years.

There are some (very private, very exclusive) preschools that start teaching kids C++ at 3 years old.

I'm not sure how much success they have, or if it's just a vanity thing, but there you go.

C++ makes no sense to me. Considering how much underpinning you need to have to write bad C++ (C, ASM, x86 memory model, basic programming concept, OO concepts, the libraries, etc).

A language like BASIC seems much more rational, or some specific educational language (inc. visual programming language).

To be frank I'm a little skeptical any pre-school does this (C++) no matter how private or exclusive. Seems like the kids wouldn't even understand what it is they're doing in C++ without years of pre-knowledge.

Heck most adult programmers cannot really write C++...

Ok, I looked it up and apparently it was an April Fool's Day joke:

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/01/149804404/n-y-preschool-starts...

I've assumed this was true for the last 3+ years. I'm not sure if I'm gullible, or if they should care more about journalistic standards?

It seemed plausible to me because that's about the age I'd start teaching a kid to program. C++ is obviously the wrong choice, but I think a 3-year-old could start learning Python.

3 year olds haven't even started pre-school yet. And some 3 year olds barely talk. Some are not even potty trained yet.

I'm starting my kids when they are 12. I don't want them glued to the computer screen just yet.

How on earth can 3 year old kids do this? You need to know how object oriented concepts work. Heck, you need to know how opening and closing braces work.

IMO C++ is the worst first language to learn by quite some distance. It's super complex, with a lot of the complexity being non-obvious (like slicing an object, default allocators, and other things that don't have a big text footprint.) Getting thing to compile can be hard, too. Library issues occur all the time.

I would have thought something like Python would make more sense. It more or less just works out of the box, you get a REPL so you can examine things as you code, libraries are easy to import.

Please name one of these schools! I would love to see their "value proposition".

Programming on young kids should be fan and with e a minimum friction that can frustrate or stop them from learning. I found ScratchJR and Alice 3D as good ways to start programming together with a parent.

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