I was coding in Q-Basic when I was about 9 years old. It wasn't much more than colored text on the screen and some inputs for a text based choose your own adventure for a little while but I was doing it. I was also playing other Q-Basic games and then reading their code to learn how to do certain things, then tweaking certain aspects of the code to change things, like what was said in messages and the hud and how much the score went up, etc.
Likely the only reason it wasn't earlier is I didn't have access to a computer until then. My parents didn't buy one until around that age, and I was already bugging them about it because my friend had one and was showing me these cool Q-Basic games he found on Compuserve. I started programming almost immediately after we got a computer in the household.
Now granted 5 is pretty young, I didn't even really know how to read then. But I probably would have by 7 years old if there was a computer in the house at that point.
I was also making Hypercard programs on the school library Macintosh (the original Macintosh) around that time, mainly images I drew with clickable portions to navigate to new screens, like navigating a maze.
My more serious programming was when I got a TI-85 calculator in 7th grade, though, so when I was around 12 years old. I started making text-based games on there, then action based games like Breakout, and at that point I was using plenty of for and while loops and checking keyboard inputs and creating menus and slinging variables around and calling functions and everything else.
Likely the only reason it wasn't earlier is I didn't have access to a computer until then. My parents didn't buy one until around that age, and I was already bugging them about it because my friend had one and was showing me these cool Q-Basic games he found on Compuserve. I started programming almost immediately after we got a computer in the household.
Now granted 5 is pretty young, I didn't even really know how to read then. But I probably would have by 7 years old if there was a computer in the house at that point.
I was also making Hypercard programs on the school library Macintosh (the original Macintosh) around that time, mainly images I drew with clickable portions to navigate to new screens, like navigating a maze.
My more serious programming was when I got a TI-85 calculator in 7th grade, though, so when I was around 12 years old. I started making text-based games on there, then action based games like Breakout, and at that point I was using plenty of for and while loops and checking keyboard inputs and creating menus and slinging variables around and calling functions and everything else.