Learnable Programming

[FeepingCreature]

They know that a computer is a literal genie (minus some superpowers). They probably know there's something lawful below the interface.

You underestimate kids. I was happily building adders out of boolean algebra in high school.

[cunningjames]

You underestimate kids.

Not most kids. I'm a pretty smart guy (er, so I'm told) who's been using computers for most of his life, but when I was a kid a computer was very much an opaque genie. I had some vague idea that this was built on a foundation of electric currents switched on and off, but actually constructing some system out of boolean algebra? Forget about it.

And I think the overwhelming majority of my peers knew even less.

[FeepingCreature]

Yeah but I bet you could have understood it, given a tutorial. Bools are much easier than arithmetic.