Are you saying there's less 8 year old programmers now than there used to be? That's just silly.

Yep. All the good once are stuck playing *craft games.

Find a modern 8-year old, who understand PC circuitry (at analog and digital level), seen manufacturing processes, can re-solder components, can write C/assembly, can develop basic useful applications (like, say MS Paint). I bet you could easily find one like that, back in 70s-90s, particularly here in the silicon valley. Now - I'm not so sure.

I'm going to call you on that. First for moving the goal posts and second for generalizing without any backup whatsoever.

From "Basic -> C/assembly"? Wow. That escalated quickly.

Is'nt it the logical transition, at least in some schools it was, and i was thought the same way, begin with BASIC, and then as our curiosity increased we moved onto c and 8051 hardware/assembly.