AI is teaching my nine year old to code

My daughter started writing Python this weekend. I cannot overstate how much different it is to learn to code today thanks to this new crop of AI tools that's come on the scene over the last year.

Years ago I wrote a post about how I learned to code on the TRS-80, and lamented that my introduction to coding in 1986 was so much more accessible than what kids have today.

Today Emma and I are are using Cursor, "The AI-first code editor." It's a fork of VS Code that adds a bunch of different AI-assisted features which drastically reduce the friction and frustration that are historically inherent in coding, and increase the instant gratification that's critical to developing a love for digital building.

Here's a quick example: no syntax errors. My friend Rob Spectre says of programming that, "the distance between feeling like an idiot or genius is one character wide." Many novice developers get pushed away by the sheer amount of head-banging-against-the wall that occurs when you lack the intuition/experience to get the characters to line up juuuuuust right. Every developer has a "lost an hour hunting for the missing semicolon" story.

Fancy autocomplete, syntax highlighting and extensions like error lens catch 95% of the silly errors before you run your code.

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