Adolescents are not allowed to join the workforce until their specialized, but are not allowed to specialize until college. I have always thought it would be cool for kids to be able to begin an apprenticeship in medicine or engineering earlier on in their lives.
You can specialize in engineering long before college. I was writing programs for our home computer at age 12. I'd bet that more than half the people reading this started out the same way.
In the specific case of computer hacking, this works - because even professional-level computer work doesn't require any equipment that a twelve-year-old cannot get. People in other fields aren't so lucky: You really can't learn much about the reality of practicing law, or medicine, or manufacturing from books or websites. You kind of have to learn these things on the job.
Why are so many tech companies founded by people in their twenties? Because software is one of the few fields where a twenty-two year old can have more than ten years of experience.
Of course, even young hackers face problems. They're still treated like children. Back when I was young, teens were rarely exposed to real mentors, taught real computer science, given real tasks, or paid real money. The web has helped to change a lot of this - on the internet nobody knows you're a teenager - which explains why young people are the web's most enthusiastic users.
Indeed, I was panicked back in high school over the sudden need to suddenly pick a college major, specialty college and/or career. I had just been focused on "college prep" up to that point. I knew little about engineering, which is what everyone who I asked for advice pushed me towards, but I did end up going to an engineering school. That's really not a good way to do it.
I endorse learning by specializing early and often. You really can't beat serial specialization to give you a broad set of experiences, rather than a little about a lot or a lot about a little.
One of the most common improvements I see in our local schools is earlier specialization. Here in LA, we have life sciences, math & [hard] science, and even marine biology high school programs. For my part, I went to an arts elementary school (grades 5 & 6) to learn acting and still value that experience.
However, I notice that well-regarded private primary and secondary schools rarely specialize in that same way. There's Julliard and Olin and even Deep Springs, but not so much before that, is there? I don't think there is, but I'm not sure whether that's an issue of quality or simply parental demand.
Hate to be a stickler here, but one of the reasons people are encouraged to specialize later rather than earlier is so that they get broader exposure and education in all fundamental fields - including (ahem) the English language.
I also hate to be a stickler, but I would distinguish between "the English language" as such, and orthography. The (grammar of the) former is learned all-but-completely by the age of 8 or 9. The latter is arbitrary and mostly meaningless. Shakespeare spelled his name numerous different ways. Is he uneducated in the language?
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So: Would any companies be willing to take on 13 year olds for 4 year periods ("apprenticeships"), receiving a modest tuition in the process? That is: For 40,000 dollars over 4 years, would a company like Microsoft be willing to train up teenagers into professionals?
There is no doubt that such a system would educate more fully, and more broadly, than high school.
For what it's worth, it worked for me. I dropped out of high school (I was failing anyway) and "apprenticed" at my place of work when I was 17, two years ago. For about 8 months I wasn't paid, then I was hired. Over the last 6 months I feel I've contributed very nicely to the company's project.
The problem is a lot of employers aren't as nice as mine was. In fact, I doubt he would have let me come on had he known the full extent of what he was getting into. I asked questions like mad about the project until I had a knowledge base wide enough to really sit down and figure things out for myself. This translated directly into lost time for one employee (My mentor, Andy. He's an awesome guy). But in the end they have another productive employee.
So a company would have to be extremely patient to do something like that. And the downside for me is that I don't have a degree. That doesn't matter in terms of raw ability, but it does matter for salary and other employment options.
I suppose the question comes down to what you want to do later in life. If you are happy doing what you are doing what you are doing for the rest of your life, I'd say you've made a great choice. If you say, hit 30 and start wondering about what life would be like doing something other than coding you may be shit-out-of-luck, possibly having no skills with which to change careers.
All I can say is what you are doing would not work for me personally. I'm the kind of person who likes doing a lot of different things. I was just working doing economics consulting. Now I am managing a large Ruby on Rails development project. I like the change and challenge of shifting rapidly from one industry to another, picking up things as I go along and adding to my overall database of skills & knowledge.
Spelling was phonetic around Shakespeare's time, and, thus, the most common words had many different acceptable spellings. Nowadays, if you don't conform to dictionary spelling, you'll look like an idiot, and your sentences may require a few extra deciseconds of mental head-scratching to read.
As for the rules of proper English, while it is completely arbitrary whether split infinitives are proper English, if you constantly comma-splice, have improper capitalization, or even omit punctuation, then many will have trouble understanding you, and you'll really look like an idiot.
The moral of the story is that those who speak "the English language" have difficulty understanding those who speak "teh inglish langwidge."
<<The latter is arbitrary and mostly meaningless>>
Although I'm a terrible speller myself, often arbitrary conventions are important for communication w/ both humans and machines. Why does lisp use parens instead of brackets? Arbitrary, but your code won't work if you change it. Why should a spoken/written language be otherwise?
<There is no doubt that such a system would educate more fully, and more broadly, than high school.>>
Speak for yourself. I certainly would not entrust the education of my children to Microsoft.
No. But I did intend the word "microsoft" to be a placeholder for any given company. Maybe that was unwise given the ms-hatred around here. Really--high school is all but worthless, and learning software design + 0..n domain-related topics at a company would be...immeasurably...more valuable than sitting in social studies class.
I agree high school may be mostly worthless for people who are set on one particular career path. My brother wanted to be a cook - dropped out of HS - and now attends the Culinary Institute of America. Should graduate at 19 w/ a degree & mucho work exp.
Still, this seems to come back to PG's hackers & painters essay. I agree w/ him that the best people in any given field are those that don't stay entirely w/in that field. Living completely w/in the realm of domain specific knowledge is like living in a fishbowl. There are other waters & aquariums - if you swim in them a little bit you can learn enough so you can decorate yours a little better. At least that's my two bits.
Also, doesn't look like you got down-modded for your MS comment so I don't think you can claim to be on the receiving end of any hatred. For my part, if you said google/yahoo/ibm my response would be the same. I just don't want that for my kids.
For anyone who has read this, is the argument much more detailed than the one John Taylor Gatto makes in his book? It's pretty long (at over 400 pages), but if others think it's worth reading then maybe I'll go through it at some point in the future. The article in Psychology Today made it look like there wasn't that much new from the Gatto though.
