But as long as there are future generations, there's always a chance to give more kids early training. We could start by giving them wide open computers where the ability to modify whatever program they're running is always at hand, like OLPC aspired to do. I regret that, so far, my nieces and nephew (ages 7 and under) have grown up with closed Fire tablets instead; that was partly my fault.
Kids are into what kids are into. I have introduced every 'STEM' toy on the market for my kid, plus played with Scratch, Arduino, Python etc with them. Gave them a laptop running Linux when they where 8. They don't care and are completely uninterested in any of it.
It is very likely they learned from all of that tho. Imo, the goal is not to turn them into obsessed geeks or anything like that.
The goal is to give them enough base that they will be able to catch up whenever they decide or whenever they need. And so they dont end up clueless or scared of technology. I think that scratch does that job to large extend - they learn a bit of thinking procedurally, have some fun with moving pictures and them move onto something else.
Also, most programmers were not obsessed by the age they were 8. A lot of good programmers started to seriously approach it only later or after then encountered something that clicked. Or had this as one of many interests. All of that is fine.
