h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Amy The Ant,
A provocative (if way too serious and cynical) comment.
ZX81, BBC B, Archimedes, Cobol and now VB, programmed them all. Why? Motivation - Fun, qualifications, shelter, money and shelter respectively. Glass boxes will win out unless there's a reason to program. You can lead the children to the computer but you can't make them program. Mind Storm and such gimmicks will help but "Because its there" (and its not since basic disappeared from DOS) doesn't seem to apply any more.
Kadcam (The non-physicist (although the rest of the hive are)).
P.s. Be proud of your Lego I still have my Meccano although I recycled the turtle and lost my (very simple) version of Logo.

Sorry I didn't see your comments until now.

The article is not yet finished. In the conclusion I will draw together the argument that people must program and therefore must develop programming skills. In my research I am trying to find out what the starting point is for the development of those skills.

What makes you a good programmer? What attracted you to programming in the first place? What skills did you draw on went you first learned to program?

Thanks for your comments. I really MUST finish the thing and submit it or whatever it is we do these days.

Amy the Ant.

I'll take the first question as flattery if I may.
Judging by the speed with which they reach for their keyboards when I threaten to code something myself, my staff would seem to disagree.
I'll think about the other questions.
Kadcam

I want to learn how to program... one of these days... sigh.

I really must finish this article to give you some idea where to start! Try JavaScript perhaps.

Amy

ps Why the sad face on being 19?