Society doesn't generally expect much of five-year-olds, but most of them are capable of great things if they're programmed correctly (e.g. being taught to read and do simple arithmetic at an early age instead of waiting for school to do it). I've just been looking at one of the books from the days when home computers started appearing. The early machines were designed to make programming instantly accessible, and the way in was shown through simple example programs that any five-year-old who can read should be able to follow with ease, if they have sufficient interest:-
Code:
10 LET A=9
20 LET B=7
30 PRINT A*B
40 PRINT A/B
50 END
RUN
63
1.28571
Having shown that example, the reader is then challenged to do the following:-
Quote:
Write a program to add numbers to the variables in the program on the left so that it would print out the answers 100 and 1 on one line with a space between. Change lines 30 and 40 so that they print out the numbers, what you are doing to them and the answer, e.g. "7 times 9 is 63".
Bit by bit it arms the reader with simple skills and builds them up to be able to create more interesting programs with graphics, ultimately leading to games, and in those days simple games were a big attraction which gave children the motivation to work their way through this kind of book. It's also filled with colourful cartoons to make it look friendly, and it simply gets on with the job by showing everything through examples and never throwing too much junk at the reader before they need it. I would imagine that most dads would also have been heavily involved, helping to drag the child past any comprehension barriers.
I missed out on all that in those days because we didn't have the money to buy such a machine (everything we had went into sailing dinghies instead, so I wasn't in a position to complain). All my friends were obsessed with computers though, but only a few of them kept on with programming while the rest simply bought games to play instead. Over time, gaming became the main event and machines were designed specifically for that instead of for programming. With the PC, it was hard to find any way to program the thing without buying extra applications to run on them to do the programming, and the tutorials for using these things were not aimed at children any more - they were deeply boring and dumped far too much clutter on the learner up front. As a result, it wasn't long before most children knew nothing of programming at all, but the Raspberry Pi is partly aimed at bringing back the old days by making programming more accessible to children again.