Yesterday we started coding with my eldest son, with some board game (based in scratch), and it was so fucking amazing! I'm partial, but he's a fucking code genius!!!
In the game, the child "code" some functionality with cards and the adult (me) compute them 'doing the actions'.
I'm so fucking proud!!! Well, I'm always proud of my children, and there the English language doesn't convey very well my thinking as the verb to be doesn't differentiate the intrinsic state of a subject and a passing state:
SOY TAN ORGULLOSO DE MIS HIJOS!

@Alice Programming in ruby pretty much means being fluent in english

...Until you find out you can use brackets.

@Alice Besides, if you just use keywords and use decent variable names, you don't need comments.

@Alice I just can't get used to Ruby. So many little things which feel awkward about it.

@Alice Hm.. that's a bit of an overkill statement, isn't it? I can't write a single line in ruby because I never tried it out.. same probably for numerous people.. but are we really lost cases? 🤔

@Alice Don't worry, that mongrel is a lost cause. /s

@Alice A.. sorry, my bad then. 😂😂
I thought you were serious & one of those types who never let their kids play & force them to do numerous activities so they will be the best of the best of the best before they even go to school..

@Alice sarcasm in text is hard to grasp :/ we should adopt a **wink** signature to indicate sarcasm 😂

@Hu-bot0x58 I'm conflicted here. Yes, it is often wrong to force a child to do something the parents want them to do, but on the other hand, some kids decide they like something very early. Making something a child likes part of their development process seems fine to me. (That said, there needs to be an appropriate support system in place, since without it there will be a collapse - see the tragic history of almost every famous child actor/Justin Bieber.)

@Alice My point was that we don't know for sure which category (forced or not) the 4-year-old chess player fits into. I was pointing out to @Hu-bot0x58 that assuming a category might be presumptuous.

@Hu-bot0x58 True. That said, it can be hard to tell sometimes. If a family is focused on a particular type of thing already (both parents are professional orchestral musicians, say) it would seem natural. It's a complex issue that isn't always easy to handle from either side.

I won't try to claim that my upbringing was analogous to parental ambitions of genius for me, but my non-musical parents decided that I should know how to play an instrument and started me on lessons at age 5. I didn't decide I really enjoyed playing music (apart from orchestra, which I always enjoyed) until about age 15. I am glad now that my parents didn't let me quit, because I have this whole part of my life that I can appreciate now that I would have missed out on otherwise. That said, my parents made sure a proper support structure was in place, and I had teachers that I liked (and frustrated with my laziness 😀), which helped enormously.

@Hu-bot0x58 Which is why parenting needs to be handled very very carefully. If you aren't careful, you can mess someone up for life (unless they are very dedicated to fixing their life themselves). Very sobering thought...