I was savvy with computers at a young age (which is especially impressive when you consider that the average person didn’t even have a computer back when I was young). Not only did I know the basics, my dad also taught me some basic computer programming as a child (which I used to make a text based Ghostbusters game, as you do). Along these same lines, I taught myself HTML and then Java when I was in middle and high school so I was web design savvy well ahead of my peers.
I mention this because I was thinking about my future children and how I want them to have this same advantage of being ahead of the curve when it comes to not just computers in general but website construction. I was talking this out with my husband because I was trying to figure out what age it would be appropriate to start to teach some of the web stuff of today like CSS and HTML 5. He made fun of me, mercilessly may I add, because we don’t even have a toddler, let alone a kid and it seemed insane to even discuss this topic. Like he was reading a book title, he kept saying, “How soon is too soon to teach my infant HTML?” (which I posted on Tumblr but not over here.)
Anyway, the joke’s on him. Check it. The following is a completely real board book for babies:
and let’s not overlook the sequel…
Please don’t buy me these (OK, you can buy them for me as a gag if you find them for like 25 cents somewhere at a garage sale) but I just had to share this because the author of these books is a web designer who created them to teach his baby HTML and CSS thereby proving that I am not insane or at least not the only one who’s given this some thought.
Hillary DePiano is a playwright, fiction and non-fiction writer who loves writing of all kinds except for writing bios like this.
LOL! Wow, I heard of early adopters, but this is a bit of a stretch. I do feel a bit old, though, because HTML wasn’t around yet when I was in high school – or college. My first computer was a Commodore 64 on which I programmed in BASIC and assembly language. I was ahead of the curve, too, but a bit older than you, it seems 🙂
I don’t remember how it was all timed exactly but I knew my way around the web very well by the end of high school. Most of my friends only starting getting internet by senior year of high school when we’d had it for several years at that point.