Everyone should learn programming because it teaches you to think.” “Said Steve Jobs. In the face of the growing craze of programming, many people lead their children to flock to it. Some people think that children should be given a comfortable childhood. As a programmer, will you teach your children to learn programming from an early age?



From “Hello World”, which is the basis of prenatal education for programmers’ parents, to “Baby Quantum Physics”, which is selected by Mark Zuckerberg for his daughter less than one year old, to the blockchain fairy tale book……, which is drawn by alipay’s warm dad for his 7-year-old son Programming from the upsurge of children to today is still celebrating the size of the children’s day friends hit head on. For the parents of programmers in the tech world, who have the skill advantage of a first teacher, but still struggle to decide whether to teach their kids to code? Here, we also wonder about the childhood of some of the biggest names in the tech world. Whether is also from childhood training to win at the starting line?

John Carmack — The godfather of first-person shooters

John Carmack, one of the founders of Id Software, is known as the “godfather of first-person shooters,” and he created the 3D world of personal computers with six games.

For the legendary programmer, his childhood seemed unusual. In second grade, at the age of seven, he scored perfect scores on almost all standardized tests, the equivalent of ninth grade. When he was in primary school, he was admitted to a gifted class in a key junior high school with full marks. At that time, carmack began to contact computers. At that time, he was obsessed with genesis, witchcraft and other games, and even learned some simple programming by himself, and began to make some small AppleII games by imitating genesis.



With a fanatical interest in computers and programming from an early age, Carmack got where he is by studying on his own, and even believing he could do it all with programming.

Markus Persson — Indie game developer

Notch, a better known online username than Markus Persson’s real name, is seen by many in the tech world as an indie game developer and an icon in the indie software world.

The creator of the massive open-world game Minecraft, Notch was introduced to computer programming at the age of seven, when his father bought a Commodore 128 home computer and he started subscribingto computer magazines with Type-in Programs. He fed the code from the magazine into his computer, and in the process he discovered that if he changed some of the code, the game would change or crash. Through practice, at the age of eight, he created his first text adventure game, in which you had to type the right sentence to get to the next room.


He said that he began to learn to write code at that time, and later learned programming languages including Basic, Pascal, C, C++, Java and ActionScript. His favorite programming languages are a combination of Java and C++.

Elon Musk — Iron Man of Silicon Valley

Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, grew up in a difficult family and couldn’t adapt to school life, but he began to teach himself when he was very young.

In 1981, at the age of 10, Musk used pocket money he saved and part of his father’s sponsorship to buy his first computer, then a coding textbook and learn how to program.

In 1983, at the age of 12, he made his first fortune designing Blastar, a commercial software game he later sold for $500.


Bill Gates — A real, realistic programmer

How good is Bill Gates, the world’s richest man at 31, at programming? Opinions vary on the Internet. But after the source code for Microsoft BASIC for 6502, which he wrote in 1978, was made public, many programmers began to worship him. Even the author of Software Capriccio wrote in his book, “Don’t mess with him, even for a minute, because he’s a programmer, too, a real, realistic programmer.”

So what was Bill Gates like as a child? In fact, As a child, Gates had an amazing memory and could recite literary works without error, but he was also rebellious and disruptive, and his parents even sent him to see a psychologist at the age of 12.



Mark Zuckerberg — The Second Gates

The son of a dentist and a psychologist, Zuckerberg grew up in a wealthy family, which gave him a good education and a carefree way to explore his interests.

Zuckerberg got his first computer when he was 10 years old, and his father taught him Atari BASIC Programming before hiring software developer David Newman as his tutor. While in high school, he designed an MP3 player for his school.


Zuckerberg’s father also said: “From an early age, Zuckerberg loved to code. He created the original INSTANT messaging tool for his dental office.”

Knowing the childhood of the foreign big cow, what about the famous people in China?

Lei Jun — Removing functional hands

Lei Jun, founder of Xiaomi, a popular Internet company in China, was very fond of disassembling and assembling radios and TELEVISIONS when he was young. However, it was very expensive to buy these appliances at that time, but his father encouraged him very much. So in the process of disassembling, he developed his interest in radio.

As for the programmer’s career, Lei Jun once said that he was not born like writing programs, when high school did not think of programmer’s life. He chose computers because he wanted to share more of the same language with his friends, but as he learned some, he found that he loved writing programs.



Robin Li — a small student with white face

For Baidu boss Li Yanhong, when he was young, he had been fascinated by opera, shanxi Yangquan jin troupe was recruited into the theater, the theater teacher saw him at that time, white through red, water is very clever, immediately clap case admitted him. But in middle school, Li returned to his “main job” and devoted himself to schoolwork.

When I was young, everyone didn’t think much of Robin Li. “They say I’m fit to be a spy, probably because I don’t have any obvious features.”



Ma Huateng — a good boy

Pony Ma, founder of Tencent, once described himself as an otaku and said it was his nature not to interact with people. In his childhood, ma huateng was obsessed with astronomy and often studied some natural sciences. His greatest interest was to communicate with the stars in the sky. He also wanted to develop in astronomy, but after the dissuasion of his teacher, Ma Huateng finally gave up and transferred to the network.




Zhou Hongyi — Going with the flow

Compared with others, Zhou Hongyi, founder of qihoo 360, comes from the same background as many ordinary children. His parents are the most ordinary employees of a state institution and he attended the most ordinary primary school. However, he grew up with the birth and growth of the Internet in China. As a young man who loves computer language wholeheartedly, his dream since childhood is simple: to make a good software and product for the benefit of people who use computers.



Zhang Yiming — Independent space

For Zhang Yiming, his childhood was different from that of other parents who kept their children under strict control. His parents, who loved to try new things, gave Zhang a relaxed environment early on, allowing him to decide his own life direction at an early age.

During Zhang yiming’s childhood, his parents often talked about their friends developing certain technologies and products abroad. It is difficult to judge whether the innovation that spired in this small family in the 1980s affected Zhang yiming’s future life path, but it is certain that his parents’ lenience and the family’s early exposure to business exposed him to some connection between the business world and innovation at an early age.




▌ finally

For the big wigs in the tech world, many of them have developed a strong interest in programming since childhood, while some of them have been cultivated gradually. Under the current craze of national programming in China, many children have been involved in it. For example, Wang Zhengyang, a 12-year-old from the High school attached to Tsinghua University, is the smallest hacker in China. Ten-year-old Liang Haofen is the youngest programmer in China.

Based on this, whether to teach children to code? Many netizens have said:

  • Must teach, inherit his father’s work;
  • Yes, I believe that being able to code will soon or soon become as necessary as being able to drive a car.
  • We can imagine the scene of debugging with three members in the future.
  • It has to. Technology is changing the world. Although I don’t know if the baby’s father can program, but I have a code farmer’s mother, the baby must be out of the first sentence is hello world……

But many programmers are also concerned:

  • I don’t want my child to learn programming, for fear that he will like it once he learns it, and suffer more when he is a programmer.
  • Look at my hairline, don’t teach it;
  • No, it’s too boring to find a girlfriend.

So, do you teach coding at an early age? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.

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