I was literally contributing to Gentoo Linux at age 13. Before, my dad started me on Slackware.
edit: downvoted. Some of you all simply have no belief in or respect for the intelligence of children.
edit: downvoted. Some of you all simply have no belief in or respect for the intelligence of children.
I didn't start programming until age 28, because my dad couldn't program and I didn't how to get started on my own. But, had he gotten me started on programming too I would have been programming from the command line as a preteen. I knew other preteens who were doing so.
That is why the comments here are so puzzling. Supposedly this a community of mostly software people. I take it most of these people commenting here lack the focus to figure any of this out themselves, much less teach a child to do it. There is even a comment in here from somebody not knowing what to teach a child and then being completely mystified about it once its pointed out.
My wife is a special education teacher. The common reality she sees (the normal parent) just plants a phone their kid's hands and ignores them all day. To most people that is a technology education, the hands off approach. I really get the feeling that is what most people are looking for something to throw at a child and then wash their hands of it, and the comments here further reinforce this assumption.
But we weren't the overwhelmed gen alpha consumers. Average teen-and-under currently is far less technically inclined (including analytic skills) than a teen of the 90's or 90's had to be.