I do not want to artificially limit my kid to technologies that are no longer really relevant, but I do agree that safeguarding attention is THE skill of the next century, simply because it will be scarce.
Like many here, my thinking is mainly driven by my own experiences: I started quite early and even though it's not my field of study, I now have this innate "talent" to code and figure out technical problems. I struggle much less to learn tech things. I think it's like starting to play Piano early. I want my kid to learn this and have the confidence in their technical ability as I do. I always felt this gave me a leg up, although it may of course be illusory. In any case, it came through coding early.
However, even back then, I wanted to use the computer for fun. I didn't "try" to be productive. There was no internet, I had barely any books and only a lot of dev software, and no games. So I had to learn to make games myself. And lacking any tutorials or information, I needed to trial and error everything. Would I have done the same today? Or would I have just consumed if Steam or GOG is freely available. Or, even when coding, stackexchange is just a click away. Would I be similarly positive about early computing if I had those things? Who knows?
Obviously, hacking into a bare shell or IDE without any outside info is not how people use computers nowadays. Furthermore, the above reads like a parent trying to recreate his own life in the life of a child. The world is different, surely.
Gah, I don't know.
I suppose the consume vs. create dichtonomy mentioned elsewhere in this thread might be a useful rule.