The first PC videogame I ever saw was a gorilla throwing a barrel at buildings. It was written in BASIC and came with our 286 back in 1989. I was really excited to learn how the monkey was drawn - out of the same ASCII blocks as everything else, obviously, but how? - and excitedly opened the file in a text editor.

It was a little overwhelming to my 7-year-old self to see just how many little subroutines and subprocesses were needed make the whole program work. It was a very complicated set of math processes, not unlike how a car engine is a very complicated set of physical processes. (I'd been helping with car repairs for a few years at this point, and rigged-up a pair of copper wires between the cable box and TV once when we only had 1 coax cable.)

Several years later, I was overjoyed to find the TI-82 calculators we were loaned in school could interpret the same BASIC commands, and happily started writing tiny utilities, competing with classmates for the coolest function, and joining debates about whether pre-programming the Quadratic Equation into a calculator counts as cheating on tests.

Despite setbacks like a lack of programming education in rural WA State in the early 1990s, that monkey throwing barrels planted the seed that made me want to write and understand software.

I don't think it's about being able to read text written in rows, although if you can't see that kids aren't particularly good at that initially, then you mustn't have spent much time with kids. (Hint, they learn to "read" with picture books and then books with like 5 words on a page.)

The same reason they learn to ride a bike on one with 12 inch wheels instead of 700c. Or cook using recipes with 3 ingredients.

Simplified versions for learning are a good thing.

First they grasp the basics using something simple, then they push the boundaries of that simplified version, and then they extend to the next step up.

The same way I learn at 33 years old, by the way.

Because they aren't very good at reading yet, because they're kids. And for some reason, kids often prioritize having fun over using the most efficient representation possible.

Exactly. I "learned" QBasic when I was 5-6 and it was really exciting because it was the actual language that implemented some of the games I liked playing. Kids like to learn about the real world. They can tell when you give them something simplified and they often don't like it.

Younger kids can't read yet.