I think you're missing the point. 5 year old me was writing their own computer games and at no point did I need or ask my parents how to do it (though they did buy the computer; thanks mum and dad!), they didn't know.

There were a plethora of books in the library on how to program, and here you are suggesting I, and everyone like me, be banned from doing so. You'd probably also ban me from the library by assuming I couldn't read aged 5. I certainly could, especially computer manuals. The computer was an amazing thing which did exactly what I told it, and I learned quickly how precise I needed to tell it, and when I made a mistake, it repeated my mistakes over and over without noticing. I learned more about digital ethics age 5 trying to write games than the typical CEO learns going on a "Do Not Create The Torment Nexus" course.

You'd insist I not be allowed to even use software, let alone write my own. You'd be actively cutting off my future professional life, and depriving entire nations of bedroom programmers cum professional software engineers, with your ill-thought-out ban.

If your children show an aptitude or a fascination for a topic, I hope you feed that and praise them for it.

I think books are great, provided they're age appropriate.

First, my proposal is a delay, not a ban. This is such a good idea, that a lot of FAANG CEO's are doing this for their kids welfare (more or less) already.

I think the overall welfare of kids should be weighed against the benefits.

I think you should have been learning to tinker with electronics, solve math algorithms and develop all kinds of curiosities. the future of being a programmer involves competing with LLMs, you have to be good at knowing what to program. Humans aren't needed when it comes to simply knowing how to write code.

I acknowledge that there will be exceptions, and perhaps that should be considered. but also lookup terms like "ipad babies" and how gen-alpha is turning out. Most parents don't teach their kids how to code in basic. and content regulation for kids is futile, unless you want the government monitoring your devices "for the children's sake".

> If your children show an aptitude or a fascination for a topic, I hope you feed that and praise them for it.

Same, but I hope you let them learn things in the right order and consider their overall long term wellbeing instead of temporary satisfaction. Children did fine without computers for all of humanity's history. the nature of children hasn't changed in the past 3 decades. What you consider feeding might actually be stagnating. If there is a good and practical way to make sure that children are developed well enough to interact with computers, and we can also make sure that the content they consume is age-appropriate without implementing a dystopian surveillance state, i'm all for it.

But pretending the problem doesn't exist, and letting 99% of children suffer because 1% of kids might learn BASIC doesn't sound like a good plan.

That 1% or 20% is the gifted children you want to learn. That 99% or 1% shouldn't hold back gifted kids

> Teaching kids how to code isn't all that meaningful on its own.

it’s extraordinary meaningful as it helps in brain development.

Problem solving does that, the coding part is just a means to that end. Learning a programming language is similar to learning a human language except much less complex. Solving problems with code helps with brain development, as does solving problems without code.

Coding is just more rewarding, it is important to learn how to solve problems with less rewarding systems. Would you have wanted to solve algebra problems on paper if you knew python? You don't need to solve those problems on paper, but it is good for brain development. Even better than coding for example. Keep in mind that a child's attention window is limited, this is very much a zero sum situation.