Comment by aethertap

This is how it was for me too, but I actually think the world has moved out from under us. The environment today is way more complex, and it's a lot harder to be proud of little things when you see people crowing about how they "wrote this little app over the weekend" and it's already polished and full of features. I remember being proud of my little unit converter that ran on the command line, and even more proud when I got an actual window to show up on a screen (GUI programming took a long time to get into). These days, those things just aren't special enough to keep them engaged. I don't know if it's just too commonplace now, or too complicated to get started, but it doesn't feel the same as it once did.

My kids have finally gotten hooked by godot, after a few years of building up a foundation with simple programming assignments. It's fun to see them digging in for hours to make something, but man, it was a long road to get here.