That's what i tought. Furthermore it feels a bit strange to listen to a 6th grade boy is talking about creating apps. But why, it's just the same as we did some years ago. Just the possibility to speak up has gotten better =)
12 years old is high time to learn responsibility, I reckon. Throw a ruggedized case like LifeProof and a 3rd party warranty on it and let 'em have it.
Hell, adults should do that for their phones, let alone kids.
I wouldn't call him great, but I think it's really adorable how he takes his cadences/writing style from popular tech presenters. He's an excellent mimic.
He didn't oversell it (which is what every tech speaker does nowadays as they try, and fail, to imitate Jobs). His ton was even, he didn't sound or look nervous. He had minor trip ups a couple time and just kept going. He made the audience genuinely laugh.
Also, what makes you say he took "his cadences/writing style from popular tech presenters?" Isn't that a bit like watching a child score three pointers one after another and saying "ah, isn't that cute, he's imitating Ray Allen"
He sounds like a kid who's seen a lot of Apple keynotes. A lot of his tactics he takes right from Jobs, but for some reason his diction reminds me more of Scott Forstall, who's always a little more eager and a little more rehearsed than Jobs was on stage. (Jobs always took his time talking.) Not that this is a bad thing! When I was his age I was mimicking my favorite writers' styles, and teaching myself the comic pacings of my favorite comedians. That's how you first develop a sensibility, by studying the people you like.
He absolutely shows signs of nervousness – his movements are twitchy, he speaks too quickly and runs over his sentences. Clearly he spent a lot of time rehearsing what he had to say, and he does a good job of it. He gets the audience to laugh, though I'll be skeptical and suggest that audiences are predisposed to laugh at jokes made by young people, and also at jokes involving Justin Bieber getting whacked.
The reason I wouldn't call him great (though he is clearly good at this) is that he doesn't take his audience's perspective into account. I'd be stunned if he could; it's a damned difficult skill to have learned when you're a preteen. He takes (and sells) some effective cadences, but what he's actually saying fits awkwardly within the frame. He spends time explaining certain things unnecessarily, because from his younger perspective certain details are more interesting than they are when you're even a little bit older. Again, not surprising, and not a ding against him.
As for your Ray Allen quip, unfortunately I don't know basketball well enough to respond, but I argue that there's a difference between a basic action (like shooting a three-pointer) and a pattern (like constructing a speech in a certain way with certain rhythms). It would be like if a basketball player had a certain famous technique for making his way across the court once he had the ball. You could watch a younger player and notice that he was mimicking the tactics of certain players. Once again, not something to be held against a young person figuring out the rules of a game – that's one of the best ways to learn! But this kid is still sticking pretty rigorously to a template. It's a good template, and I think it's cute seeing a young kid mimic speakers with whom I'm quite familiar.
I just wouldn't call it great – because for me presentation is a nuanced art, and there's a lot more to it than what we're seeing here. Calling this great might close minds to the possibility of more sophisticated presentations, and that would be a real shame. It's nothing against this kid, who's clearly bright and having a lot of fun in the spotlight.
Huh? No one is criticizing the child for not being a good speaker. Noting that his speech wasn't perfect is entirely orthogonal to cutting or not cutting him a "fucking break."
Haha, no offense taken! Writing angry things is fun.
I really didn't want to come across as pedantic, which is why I tried to keep it light and say I thought his mimicry was cute. And I love stuff like this! We need more 6th graders like this. I would have mad chilled with him and his app club.
That said, I do believe that the way we use language frames the world for other people. So I try to keep things in perspective. It's not that this isn't wonderful, it's that there're so many wonderful things that I prefer specificity of compliment to a general word ("great") that may suggest this is some sort of pinnacle to others. Greatness in turn becomes the people with such a tremendous sensibility that they can incorporate many, many wonderful things and, in the process, underline some deeper truth.
To me the important issue in the 'mimic' thing is that the kid is not a one-in-a-million special kind of genius. (At least you can't tell that from the video.) Instead, he's just a smart sixth grader. I think this is important because we should realize that what this kid did is something most smart sixth graders can do, if they have the interest and devote themselves to it. So we can hold him up as a model to other sixth-graders and say, "Hey, you can do this too."
We're talking about both (1) his presentation and (2) his programming skills. Other kids should be encouraged by his presentation, instead of thinking, "Cool, but unfortunately he's a genius (or super-special, or etc.); I could never do that myself."
I can say with absolute certainty that other people in his place would be anxious, nervous or insecure. He seems to like it. And when you like what you do, well... it's pretty obvious.
I love the tools and resources that are being available to kids these days! The sad thing that I find is that some of the younger generation now do not have the same amount of curiosity and imagination that we had when we were younger. Most kids that I encounter now don't even bother to ask why or how a specific thing works. This kid gives me a lot of hope :) I'm glad that there are kids like that out there, willing to understand and absorb the information available to them, especially in this day in age where information is so easily accessible.
I wonder what we will shape for our kids. I hope its not useless iFart apps and social networking junk.
> Most kids that I encounter now don't even bother to ask why or how a specific thing works. This kid gives me a lot of hope:)
It is really up to the parents. Extreme example, I remember having lunch with my cousins and one of them asked how a microwave worked. The dad, an engineer for IBM, disappeared and returned with a magnetron from his basement workshop. And then told his sons exactly how a microwave works.
The eldest son is now an undergraduate studying physics. He was about ten at the time of the question.
As a lesser example, my sister (who is not a Ph.D. like my cousins' father), loves BrainPop. BrainPop makes science fun without getting into too-many of the nitty-gritty details. Which is enough, when you are just 5.
I think it's also a cycle. If a parent is repeatedly dismissive of a child's questions, the child is conditioned not to ask them, and so becomes less inquisitive as a result of nurture. It's clearly not nature, as the generation isn't intrinsically different. Parents don't necessarily need to do something like the extreme example mentioned above, but they could certainly plant a seed by being more open to a lot of "Why?"'s, as annoying as it can be.
I subscribe to this theory. My rules are: always answer a 'why' question without dismissal, unless it is repeated continuously as a game. Rule 2: always tell the truth, even if it is somewhat over the Childs ability to understand. I do not make things like fairies and magic up, except as an obvious fantasy story, and everything from gravity to stars and farming and manufacturing is explained to the best of my ability. I am constantly told how smart my son is, which I accept graciously, but in my head I like to say - that's because I don't fill his head with superstitious bullshit. One of my clearest memories of childhood was the constant disappointment of finding adults had been feeding me crap for years, either out of laziness or ignorance.
I think this is an example of limited perspective. I spent two recent summers working with kids ages 9-17 and was delighted at their curiosity, brightness, and willingness to get involved in elaborate conversations. Granted, the older kids were also trying to get in each others' pants, but that's the fun of being a kid, right?
I don't mind the social networking junk too much either; it's detrimental in the short term but everybody I know is getting weary of how pointless it is. I've been reading A. S. Neill's fantastic Summerhill School, where he details the things he learned after 50 years of teaching children, and he argues that letting children play is essential to their growing up properly. Freedom to play eventually leads to kids deciding what they most enjoy doing, and it leads to them being more willing to work within their society. Since reading that, I've wondered if social networks aren't just our modern form of play: useless wastes of time objectively, but people will move on from them and find better things to do.
(I hope. Facebook/the status feed are still only half a decade old. If five more years pass and everybody's still just as hooked, we've got a problem; I think we'll see feed obsession subside, but I could very well be wrong.)
> The sad thing that I find is that some of the younger generation now do not have the same amount of curiosity and imagination that we had when we were younger.
I'm willing to bet some of your generation did not have the same amount of curiosity and imagination you did when you were younger.
I help coach a FIRST Tech Challenge robotics team. When I opened up my MacBook one day there the kids went nuts seeing XCode and the iPhone simulator open. A couple of them would probably rather be building iOS apps than doing robotics. One of the kids even has apps in the Android store.
I think back to my middle school days and it doesn't seem that different from us tinkering with (ok, I'm old so humor me) BASIC and assembler on Commodore 64s, Atari 800s, and Apple IIes. The big differences are that kids today have a chance to publish stuff without years of building business relationships. There's also something Paul Hegarty said in his iOS class in iTunes University (another thing we didn't have as kids - access to free college-level courses): There's just something neater about having your app in your hand to show people wherever you go.
>There's just something neater about having your app in your hand to show people wherever you go.
This is so true. I used to build TI-83 games and physics apps for precisely this reason. Handheld devices are hugely popular among kids and the ability to go from a content consumer to a content creator is huge for them.
Ohey, I used to make TI-calculator programs too, when I was 12~ish. Most people at school had a TI-83+, and lunch hour (amongst the geeks) was spent trading apps.
I was part of a FIRST team in high school, I think the second year of the competitions. One other friend and I were big into RC cars at the time, and we went in with all kinds of designs for drivetrains, oil-damped suspensions, control linkages, etc.
We had a decent design voice (shock/horror none of our oil-damped suspension designs made it), but essentially zero construction was performed by students in the club. Engineers from our partner org built the chassis from whole cloth using laser-cut polycarbonate and other legit machine tools. We didn't even get to watch that happen...the first rev of the mobility platform just sort of showed up one week.
At the time, my friend and I were really disappointed by that. But we stuck around and I'm glad we did, because it took a TON of teamwork and not-infrequent heroism for all of us to use and improve the robot without destroying it.
Software would have allowed far more room for experimentation and individual tinkering, but the group-social stakes would have always been way lower. Our robot literally had cheerleaders by the time we took it to compete in NH. That mix of fragility, anthropomorphism, weirdness, size/heft...can embody weeks of teenage group effort in a way that even a wicked-sweet app just can't.
So merits on both sides, I guess. And hey, app-controlled robots? Boom.
I have mixed feelings about some aspects of FIRST Robotics, mostly about how much kids really learn when they're so focused on winning. (That's actually a core value of FIRST - "What we learn is more important than what we win", but a lot of teams don't really follow that.) FRC (the biggest class of robots) gets all the press, but FIRST LEGO League is a tremendous challenge for elementary and middle school kids. No remote control, completely autonomous operation of the robot. (Well, the students can pick up the robot and run different programs, but there's no joystick drive.)
The real physical robots vs. all software / simulation is a classic debate. I heard MIT's Rodney Brooks (of the "build real robots" camp) used to tell prospective grad students something like "it may take you a year longer to graduate with me but you'll have one hell of a demo tape."
This year's FRC teams will be getting Microsoft Kinect sensor bars to use. Should be some interesting stuff.
It's also a lot easier to learn about programming these days.
When I was in elementary school, I really wanted to write adventure games in Logo and Basic... learning resources were limited to books and magazines, and the naescent online world (PeopleLink? BBSs?) was out of reach. I tried to get my mother to sign us uip for Q-Link, but being ahead of her time she said I'd get molested or something.
Later, as a teen I learned all I could about ARexx and AmigaShell, but never came up with the $350 it cost for a good C compiler.
These days, C compilers and IDEs can be had for free... XCode is $5 and the iPhone dev. program, $100 a year. There's an endless supply of help, reference and tutorials available online, for free to anyone with an internet connection and a computer.
It just dawned on me that I didn't mention the TEDx part of this. This kid building apps is pretty cool, but the fact that he put together a talk and presented at a TEDx is what might be even more impressive.
There are many different sizes of TEDx conferences but coming up November 18-21 there are a cluster of TEDx Youth Day conferences. I think there are about 40 just in the U.S. They're a great event to take youth to or for youth to come present at. At our local one, our presenters ranged from I think 4th grade to an artist in his 60s. If you don't have a local one or can't make it, many are webcast live and almost all the talks are recorded and posted to YouTube at some point. If you have time, a lot of TEDx conferences always seem to need techies to help. And if you really have some time, organizing a TEDx of your own isn't that difficult.
And this is why I don't believe it when people say that Apple's closed platforms will be the death of the technological creativity and curiosity at young ages that we were able to enjoy when we were younger.
Either the kid committed fraud when he digitally signed the Apple NDA and said he was at least 18 or the parent signed the NDA with the intent to break it . Google, Apple, Amazon, Paypal et al don't ever knowingly do business with minors and have been known to freeze accounts/keep kids' profits.
This not Apple. This is every company that deals with both the Internet and the laws of the United States under which minors are legally toxic (because they/we cannot sign a binding contract and therefore cannot agree to terms/conditions, indemnity, release of copyright, etc).
I recently learned that children can learn sign language before they can even learn to speak. This tells me that, yes, the can probably speak to computers prior to learning to speak to humans.
When I was 12 (18 now) I decided to make a website for my boy scout troop and I ran Microsoft Frontpage and used GoDaddy and got a website up. It was something about putting something I made online and being able to access it anywhere that really drew me in to the web world. I haven't stopped from there and have been very successful in my endeavors since then. I am living in a downtown apartment working for myself doing things I love after just graduating high school. Sadly but truly not many people my age can say that, especially around here (in the south.) All that to say, it was an awesome feeling at age 12 having something online and being proud of something I made. From there it never stopped and really grew into a passion I hope to carry for a lifetime.
You get a similar feeling when seeing your tangible product's first run or seeing it on the shelf in the wild. It is more than a feeling of accomplishment but a feeling of creation.
Heh, that's almost exactly how I started: making websites using Frontpage for school. For some reason, we had a really thick Frontpage book lying around at home; I found it fascinating. My designs back in the day involved animated backgrounds, unstoppable music and weird fonts. I even hacked together my own version of @font-face where the visitor would download and install the font manually... Fun times.
It's really reassuring to hear of other people with similar experiences, especially those my age. There is nothing comparable to knowing what you want to do in life and being able to enjoy it immediately.
I really hope you continue to be successful and go on to build many cool things.
I was really into BASIC in school but I wonder if teaching specific technologies such as iPad development or HTML5 really has the same value than sport or music. These things change so fast.
The point isn't to master a specific technology but to get a general understanding of how things work and develop an insatiable curiosity coupled with a creative drive.
Learning how to make an interactive website with JavaScript will teach you how to think in computer terms, teach yourself new technology (reading the documentation is itself a valuable experience) and take a project from imagination to reality. The very best programmers--and somebody starting out so young is probably more likely to become a great programmer--are not the ones that have mastered the technology de jour but rather the ones who have solid fundamental skills, a logical and inquisitive mind and can teach themselves new technologies easily.
Ultimately, all the short-term changes in the software field are ultimately fairly superficial. Going from Flash to JavaScript or C++ to Java is not an earth-shattering change--it's just a natural progression. There are changes, to be sure, but you're ultimately just doing similar things in similar ways. If anything, it just gets easier.
So, in short, the quick pace of the software industry isn't really as quick as it seems and writing programs is at least as healthy for developing intelligence and curiosity as anything else. I really don't think it a worse choice than sports or music for an extracurricular activity.
What this kid say in the first minute is really true. I was craving to make video games when I was a kid, if there was a book about creating video games, I would buy it. I tried everything, my parents didn't really know how to help me...
I ended up choosing flash, it was back in 2002 and started to learn action script (which was very basic then). Made a lot of crappy games, but got bored by the limitations of the software.
Now, years after, I still really want to make a game, but I'm in the wrong major, I'm trying to get into directX but It's really too difficult for me... I don't even know where to start.
As someone who has written a game (To The Stars 3D on iPhone) and as someone who has gone through many different routes, I would suggest taking a look at Unity3D. They have a free version and they really take a large portion of the pain out of creating a game on basically any platform.
If you have a Flash/ActionScript background, I recommend checking out Ansca Mobile's Corona. It's a (commercial with free trial) Lua programming environment (including device simulator and Lua debugger) that can generate iOS and Android apps.
Corona's media and physics libraries are a great match for 2D games. Other types of apps would be more difficult.
I have no vested interest in Corona; as an ex-Flash guy, I just think it's really cool!
And an open source alternative I just discovered here on HN a week or so ago is Moai: http://getmoai.com Also Lua, also with media & physics libraries.
I hope making a game never gets easier. I think it is so many people's path to programming. When I was 11 or 12 I was intent on making my own games. I really had no idea how to do any of it. So I went searching for an easy tool(was hoping for a gui of some kind) I stumbled on RPG maker which was ported by some Russian guy. Then I found this product called the GCS (Game creation system) by pie in the sky software. Both of these tools made games, but not the games I had in my imagination. So I decided I needed to learn how to program so I can make my own engine, and make those games in my mind. Little did I know the path I had just embarked on. Along the way I learned C++, win32, Direct X 7, and more. My interest in programming games soon waned, but what was left was a skill, and a lifelong interest. Had there been a GUI that allowed me to create the games that were inside my imagination, It probably would have been just another one of my fleeting obsessions that got lost along the way.
Well what's so fascinating about it? I personally started dabbling in coding at the age of 12 and at the age of 14 I started to earn money from it. I believe many among us followed this path.
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[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] threadHell, adults should do that for their phones, let alone kids.
He didn't oversell it (which is what every tech speaker does nowadays as they try, and fail, to imitate Jobs). His ton was even, he didn't sound or look nervous. He had minor trip ups a couple time and just kept going. He made the audience genuinely laugh.
Also, what makes you say he took "his cadences/writing style from popular tech presenters?" Isn't that a bit like watching a child score three pointers one after another and saying "ah, isn't that cute, he's imitating Ray Allen"
He absolutely shows signs of nervousness – his movements are twitchy, he speaks too quickly and runs over his sentences. Clearly he spent a lot of time rehearsing what he had to say, and he does a good job of it. He gets the audience to laugh, though I'll be skeptical and suggest that audiences are predisposed to laugh at jokes made by young people, and also at jokes involving Justin Bieber getting whacked.
The reason I wouldn't call him great (though he is clearly good at this) is that he doesn't take his audience's perspective into account. I'd be stunned if he could; it's a damned difficult skill to have learned when you're a preteen. He takes (and sells) some effective cadences, but what he's actually saying fits awkwardly within the frame. He spends time explaining certain things unnecessarily, because from his younger perspective certain details are more interesting than they are when you're even a little bit older. Again, not surprising, and not a ding against him.
As for your Ray Allen quip, unfortunately I don't know basketball well enough to respond, but I argue that there's a difference between a basic action (like shooting a three-pointer) and a pattern (like constructing a speech in a certain way with certain rhythms). It would be like if a basketball player had a certain famous technique for making his way across the court once he had the ball. You could watch a younger player and notice that he was mimicking the tactics of certain players. Once again, not something to be held against a young person figuring out the rules of a game – that's one of the best ways to learn! But this kid is still sticking pretty rigorously to a template. It's a good template, and I think it's cute seeing a young kid mimic speakers with whom I'm quite familiar.
I just wouldn't call it great – because for me presentation is a nuanced art, and there's a lot more to it than what we're seeing here. Calling this great might close minds to the possibility of more sophisticated presentations, and that would be a real shame. It's nothing against this kid, who's clearly bright and having a lot of fun in the spotlight.
I really didn't want to come across as pedantic, which is why I tried to keep it light and say I thought his mimicry was cute. And I love stuff like this! We need more 6th graders like this. I would have mad chilled with him and his app club.
That said, I do believe that the way we use language frames the world for other people. So I try to keep things in perspective. It's not that this isn't wonderful, it's that there're so many wonderful things that I prefer specificity of compliment to a general word ("great") that may suggest this is some sort of pinnacle to others. Greatness in turn becomes the people with such a tremendous sensibility that they can incorporate many, many wonderful things and, in the process, underline some deeper truth.
We're talking about both (1) his presentation and (2) his programming skills. Other kids should be encouraged by his presentation, instead of thinking, "Cool, but unfortunately he's a genius (or super-special, or etc.); I could never do that myself."
I agree.
I would go as far as to say that he is a better speaker than I am now and I would remain so without training.
That requires no qualification about his age or any of the other nonsense from some of the responses to your post.
I wonder what we will shape for our kids. I hope its not useless iFart apps and social networking junk.
It is really up to the parents. Extreme example, I remember having lunch with my cousins and one of them asked how a microwave worked. The dad, an engineer for IBM, disappeared and returned with a magnetron from his basement workshop. And then told his sons exactly how a microwave works.
The eldest son is now an undergraduate studying physics. He was about ten at the time of the question.
As a lesser example, my sister (who is not a Ph.D. like my cousins' father), loves BrainPop. BrainPop makes science fun without getting into too-many of the nitty-gritty details. Which is enough, when you are just 5.
http://www.brainpop.com/topics
"Children in professional families are talked to three times as much as the average child in a welfare family," Hart says.
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/10/132740565/closing-the-achievem...
I don't mind the social networking junk too much either; it's detrimental in the short term but everybody I know is getting weary of how pointless it is. I've been reading A. S. Neill's fantastic Summerhill School, where he details the things he learned after 50 years of teaching children, and he argues that letting children play is essential to their growing up properly. Freedom to play eventually leads to kids deciding what they most enjoy doing, and it leads to them being more willing to work within their society. Since reading that, I've wondered if social networks aren't just our modern form of play: useless wastes of time objectively, but people will move on from them and find better things to do.
(I hope. Facebook/the status feed are still only half a decade old. If five more years pass and everybody's still just as hooked, we've got a problem; I think we'll see feed obsession subside, but I could very well be wrong.)
I'm willing to bet some of your generation did not have the same amount of curiosity and imagination you did when you were younger.
The basic social traits are there in a 6th grader too. Sharing knowledge for a better world!
I think back to my middle school days and it doesn't seem that different from us tinkering with (ok, I'm old so humor me) BASIC and assembler on Commodore 64s, Atari 800s, and Apple IIes. The big differences are that kids today have a chance to publish stuff without years of building business relationships. There's also something Paul Hegarty said in his iOS class in iTunes University (another thing we didn't have as kids - access to free college-level courses): There's just something neater about having your app in your hand to show people wherever you go.
This is so true. I used to build TI-83 games and physics apps for precisely this reason. Handheld devices are hugely popular among kids and the ability to go from a content consumer to a content creator is huge for them.
We had a decent design voice (shock/horror none of our oil-damped suspension designs made it), but essentially zero construction was performed by students in the club. Engineers from our partner org built the chassis from whole cloth using laser-cut polycarbonate and other legit machine tools. We didn't even get to watch that happen...the first rev of the mobility platform just sort of showed up one week.
At the time, my friend and I were really disappointed by that. But we stuck around and I'm glad we did, because it took a TON of teamwork and not-infrequent heroism for all of us to use and improve the robot without destroying it.
Software would have allowed far more room for experimentation and individual tinkering, but the group-social stakes would have always been way lower. Our robot literally had cheerleaders by the time we took it to compete in NH. That mix of fragility, anthropomorphism, weirdness, size/heft...can embody weeks of teenage group effort in a way that even a wicked-sweet app just can't.
So merits on both sides, I guess. And hey, app-controlled robots? Boom.
The real physical robots vs. all software / simulation is a classic debate. I heard MIT's Rodney Brooks (of the "build real robots" camp) used to tell prospective grad students something like "it may take you a year longer to graduate with me but you'll have one hell of a demo tape."
This year's FRC teams will be getting Microsoft Kinect sensor bars to use. Should be some interesting stuff.
When I was in elementary school, I really wanted to write adventure games in Logo and Basic... learning resources were limited to books and magazines, and the naescent online world (PeopleLink? BBSs?) was out of reach. I tried to get my mother to sign us uip for Q-Link, but being ahead of her time she said I'd get molested or something.
Later, as a teen I learned all I could about ARexx and AmigaShell, but never came up with the $350 it cost for a good C compiler.
These days, C compilers and IDEs can be had for free... XCode is $5 and the iPhone dev. program, $100 a year. There's an endless supply of help, reference and tutorials available online, for free to anyone with an internet connection and a computer.
There are many different sizes of TEDx conferences but coming up November 18-21 there are a cluster of TEDx Youth Day conferences. I think there are about 40 just in the U.S. They're a great event to take youth to or for youth to come present at. At our local one, our presenters ranged from I think 4th grade to an artist in his 60s. If you don't have a local one or can't make it, many are webcast live and almost all the talks are recorded and posted to YouTube at some point. If you have time, a lot of TEDx conferences always seem to need techies to help. And if you really have some time, organizing a TEDx of your own isn't that difficult.
http://tedxyouthday.ted.com
It's really reassuring to hear of other people with similar experiences, especially those my age. There is nothing comparable to knowing what you want to do in life and being able to enjoy it immediately.
I really hope you continue to be successful and go on to build many cool things.
Learning how to make an interactive website with JavaScript will teach you how to think in computer terms, teach yourself new technology (reading the documentation is itself a valuable experience) and take a project from imagination to reality. The very best programmers--and somebody starting out so young is probably more likely to become a great programmer--are not the ones that have mastered the technology de jour but rather the ones who have solid fundamental skills, a logical and inquisitive mind and can teach themselves new technologies easily.
Ultimately, all the short-term changes in the software field are ultimately fairly superficial. Going from Flash to JavaScript or C++ to Java is not an earth-shattering change--it's just a natural progression. There are changes, to be sure, but you're ultimately just doing similar things in similar ways. If anything, it just gets easier.
So, in short, the quick pace of the software industry isn't really as quick as it seems and writing programs is at least as healthy for developing intelligence and curiosity as anything else. I really don't think it a worse choice than sports or music for an extracurricular activity.
I ended up choosing flash, it was back in 2002 and started to learn action script (which was very basic then). Made a lot of crappy games, but got bored by the limitations of the software.
Now, years after, I still really want to make a game, but I'm in the wrong major, I'm trying to get into directX but It's really too difficult for me... I don't even know where to start.
Corona's media and physics libraries are a great match for 2D games. Other types of apps would be more difficult.
I have no vested interest in Corona; as an ex-Flash guy, I just think it's really cool!
http://www.anscamobile.com/corona/