Comment by kyriakos

I come from a similar background and learned to program long before getting any formal cs education. The problem I find with my kid now is that back when I was learning the spectrum of things you could spend time on a computer was vastly smaller than it is today. The distractions are there and it's almost impossible for adults to avoid, imagine children.

A pet project a child commonly wants to develop is a video game. Now imagine going on Google and searching how to build a game and what kind of results you get. How do you convince that child that he doesn't need the shiny flashy thing the ads are trying to sell and just needs to sit down and learn real coding?