Up to a certain age, the mental models just aren't there yet to make it worthwhile. It's not that useful trying to teach a child programming when they are only learning to make out different letters or numbers or their concept of time (or any abstract thought for that matter) is very rudimentary.
That leaves you only able to teach them very basic things, which end up looking more like a game than something that you would regard as programming.
By the time a child is say 10, things start to change. At that point though, their personality and the general direction of their interests is going to drive itself.
Better to get them interested in building things, tinkering, abstract thought and games, etc. and help them develop mental models which make it easy to pick up programming later.
I think you are missing what Papers writing is about (or maybe I am misunderstanding you)
Sure it depends on age I never said it wouldn't. Just like they need to be able to handle an instrument to learn to play it children of course needs to be able to have some basic skills to do programming.
Papers writing isn't about infants learning to program it's not even about toddlers. It's about children in school and how they can use programming as a tool for creating, tinkering and thinking by using the computer as a simulator to simulate things that they internalized (like playing ball, running down hill, throwing stones).
It's not about creating production ready code.
My oldest son who is now 7 has been doing something called number stories in math for some years it's not far from computer program construction. Last year he did some basic programming in the way of number solving.
I simply don't understand this weird obsession with keeping kids from being exposed to programming I don't see what it's based on.
I don't think we are disagreeing. I was referencing pure text-based programming. I think if you extend programming to being things like specialized puzzles, etc. it is applicable to a much wider group of people and ages.
Up to a certain age, the mental models just aren't there yet to make it worthwhile. It's not that useful trying to teach a child programming when they are only learning to make out different letters or numbers or their concept of time (or any abstract thought for that matter) is very rudimentary.
That leaves you only able to teach them very basic things, which end up looking more like a game than something that you would regard as programming.
By the time a child is say 10, things start to change. At that point though, their personality and the general direction of their interests is going to drive itself.
Better to get them interested in building things, tinkering, abstract thought and games, etc. and help them develop mental models which make it easy to pick up programming later.