Interview by a 15 Year Old

Paul Graham:

school freshman writing a book sent me some interview questions. Here are my answers.)

What are your thoughts on young kids learning to code?

I think all kids should learn how to program at some point. I’m not sure what’s the right age. And of course before they write programs they can do various forms of proto-programming, like combining functional blocks. There’s almost no lower age limit for that if you make it simple enough.

What do you feel should be taught in regards to kids learning how to code?

It’s pretty obvious what will be most engaging for most kids: programs that manipulate something you can see. The set of things you can manipulate grows with time. When Seymour Papert started working on Logo, all you could do was draw simple pictures, and even that took expensive hardware. Now you can manipulate 3D models, or control a robot. In the future it will be possible to do even more interesting things.