It seems like interest and passion are key when it comes to coding. It's good to expose kids, and if they like it, they'll keep learning and growing as programmers. If they don't resonate with that type of work, it probably won't get them that far.

I like your conception about supporting your kids to grow on what they like. I didn't want to be forced in the medical field by my parents. I liked computers and was dreaming about being a software developer since I was a kid.

But, on the other hand, I do encourage my kid, who is 7 years old, to get his hand dirty with programming. I let them solve problems using Scratch and Minecraft Education Edition.

I am not forcing him to be a software engineer at all. But I can see how software development has changed my approach to solving problems. It trains the mind to tackle problems and solve them.

For a very long time my biggest regret was not following my parents’ desire for me to become a doctor.

I “followed my dreams”, being naive and young.

I think I ended up ok. But I would have saved myself a lot of stress and headache had I gone to med school. Granted - I’ll probably have experienced a lot of a different kind of stress.

And yet, there is a big gap between encouraging a kid to grow up to work as a book author, and just teaching them to read. It is good for kids to learn the basics of many skills, even if they only end up using some of them

Totally. Help them learn and try many different things, it will be obvious what they like and don't. When your kid is upset and crying about going to Cub scouts, repeatedly (not just a bad day), scouting isn't for them.

They like playing minecraft and building others recipes/formulas (not sure what to call them) for farming things. Their motivator isn't the curiosity of "how does this work" or "what can I build" like an engineer's mind, their motivator is competitively acquiring more than each other and their friends.

I’m conflicted with this. Though my opinion matters little since I don’t have kids and may very well never have any.

But if I have a hypothetical child, I wonder if I’d give a stab at helping them become a world class athlete, musician, etc.

Many of those people started extremely early in life, and supposedly only were able to achieve what they did by doing so.

One of my friends is an incredible pianist. As a non-musician, I feel he is easily as good as anyone that goes on world tours.

But he tells me he is at best mediocre as a professional pianist, and had no chance to become better because he started at age 6 instead of before age 5.

While it's true that people start their careers early in life, this may also be an indication that they simply have a strong proclivity towards that field. There have been longitudinal studies, for example, that demonstrate that when kids do play-based learning in kindergarten vs hard core academics, they do as well, if not better at academics later on. There have even been studies that show it's better to delay kindergarten for some kids. https://pz.harvard.edu/projects/pedagogy-of-play

The other danger is that forcing a kid to learn a skill they're not interested in early can turn them off to it all together.

I haven't done a ton of research on this, but I do know that often when kids start early, they can also burn out (look at child actors as an example). The only area I've seen research on a real difference is children who learn languages before age 5 (and how they process the languages in their brain)

There are some amazing developers who learned to code as adults.

While it could be true, I'm pretty skeptical about age five versus age six being the difference your friend didn't become a world class pianist (sounds maybe like an excuse for not having the talent, discipline or simply the luck, which does play a huge factor). Starting early may help their technique and memorization to some extent, but afterwards judging a musician is highly subjective, and even someone who plays well at one moment in history, may not at another.