The people who have to listen to my diatribes about what is wrong with programming in person know there is one thing that bothers me more than anything: we’re not getting kids interested in programming, and we’re going to pay for it in the future.

When I think back to how I got into writing software, I realise I just don’t see it the way teenagers do. They see it as a career choice and will actively avoid writing a single line of software until they get to University. For me, code was something I delved into from the age of 11 and never really returned. I was writing C when I was 14, and I think it actually changed the way I thought about software permanently - it meant that something changed inside my brain as it was still growing. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

That said, I understand the barrier of entry is now way too high. Most kids do not want to get into an IDE. When they think “it might be nice to learn to program” and go to the bookstore, they are confronted with a wall of very expensive, very dull looking books. The first book I ever read on programming was on BBC Basic and was illustrated with pictures of robots in factories pretending to be FOR loops. That isn’t really comparable to what kids have access to today.

It’s wonderful then that _why has put some effort into fixing this little conundrum and released the first build of HacketyHack which calls itself “the Coder’s Starter Kit”. He’s only released for Windows so far, so I’ve not been able to try it out (still less get involved in helping him close tickets - I’d throw time at this without thinking about it for a second), but his Manifesto is something I wish I had written myself. He’s on the same page I’ve been whining on about for the last year.

I hope it the best of success, and the moment _why releases it for other platforms that I actually have access to, I’ll make sure I get stuck in on helping submit patches and spreading the word further.