[pjhyett]

I know it's in vogue to throw the word bubble around, but I'd be interested to see the CS enrollment stats worldwide. The first generation of kids that spend more time in front of their computer than the TV are starting to hit college. More screen time is bound to create more people interested in how they can program the thing they sit in front of all day.

[icey]

I think a side effect of kids growing up with computers is that CS doesn't carry the same social stigma it carried 10 or 15 years ago.

It's much less common to see a programmer portrayed as a fat, slovenly nerd as it used to be.

[bad_user]

I kind of wish for that to happen, but for children of friends / relatives that do sit in front of the computer all day I do not see it.

The problem is that many things are taken for granted (normally) and there are lots of distractions available -- when my parents bought me my first computer (in 95) I only had games like Doom to play and no net available, and I got bored easily. Loved sitting in front of the computer, and there was nothing more interesting than learning to program it.

Kids nowadays only stay on chat/facebook/myspace all day and/or play games, which is understandable to a certain point since there's lots of stuff to do with a PC that's attractive even to non-technical people. You don't need to program it to feel good about yourself, to show off, to have some fun or to get some work done ... that's the difference between now and the nineties.

[hack_edu]

I too had my first machine at a super young age in 1994 and learned to program just the same. Our only difference was that I was still on chat/IM all day back then too, a distraction, but not as big of one as doing anything on a 25mhz Mac with a 33.6kbs modem.

What really made me learn to program was the NEED to figure out how to work the machine and network to be as fast as I could. I do doubt I'd be as interested in learning the innards on a smartphone or netbook...