Of course, but having the technical possibility to create something on the machine make this minority exists in the first place. Now take the same demographic with a locked down class of devices and the basic programming crowd fall to 0%.
With iOS 12, Apple will be integrating automation that lets you automate actions within other programs either visually or from what I’ve read JavaScript. Just imagine what kids can do when they can use their phone to automate smart home devices.
Yes, I know Apple wants to police their App Store, but writing something for your own personal use (and maybe to give some copies to friends) shouldn't be a huge bureaucratic hurdle.
(Android has smaller hurdles but still not insignificant --- when the first step in the tutorial is "download and install this gigabyte-sized piece of software", you can be sure a ton of potential users have already been put-off. Compare with early home computers that booted to a BASIC prompt, or PCs where DEBUG was there and ready to create tiny/small "apps" immediately.)
How will it be a huge hurdle to write your own Siri actions that can control other apps on your phone and your smart devices with iOS 12? You can look on the Internet to see what people have been doing with the Workflow app (the app that Apple acquired and is integrating into iOS) without Apple’s hooks.
Well, you are speaking about an OS that isn’t publicly released. I’m speaking about programming capabilities of iPhone et al. as they are right now and have been in the last 10 years.
Besides the Swift playground nothing is really close to real programming. Even worse, it relies on expensive+ external hardware of questionable utility (the "smart" devices) that repetitively shown how insecure they are. And Alexa is a whole problem of its own given the huge privacy thread it is. I will definitely not teach my kids about happily wasting money on GAFAM/PRISM surveillance tools.
+I would rather spend 40€ on a raspberry PI than a smart light bulb or anything like that.
Writing my first program in Applesift Basic wasn’t “real programming” either even in 1986 but it was my gateway that got me interested.
Programming with Swift playgrounds or doing an Automator action that can control smart home devices will hold kids interests way more than “real programming”.
I was excited in 1985 at 12 just to be able print something on the screen. More recently I was asked to give a presentation to some kids during career day. Knowing that they wouldn’t be interested in a talk about doing yet another SAAS app, I recommended that they talk to a friend who does game development.
If they were younger, I would definitely recommend a presentation on automating smart home devices activated by Siri or Alexa.
