I wonder if programming is as appealing to kids today as it was to me more than 20 years ago. Back then, I was amazed by the control I had over my computers -- first my TI-99/4A, then my Apple II, PC Clone, and so on. But while I spent days designing sprites and making rudimentary games, would this be appealing to kids today, when they have games with gorgeous graphics from their console boxes? I started out programming with BASIC and LOGO, and I thought it was really cool at the time. But at that time, the best game consoles were Atari 2600s and Colecovisions, so it was easy to be amazed. I'm just not sure that kids would be as interested in, say, moving a turtle icon around on a screen. It just doesn't seem that interesting anymore.
But I would whole-heartedly encourage my kids to program when they're a little older. I think I would start with Lego Mindstorms -- there's an immediate pay-off to some simple programming instructions. After they're sick of that, I might move them to something like C-Robots and Logo. And after that, maybe some simple VB or .NET programming.
And of course, I'm trying to expose them right now to the wonders of case-modding and other hardware stuff. I'm happy to say that my 4-year old knows the difference between a USB and a FireWire port.
I'm also looking forward to this being a good bonding experience, because I've always loved computers all my life, and I hope to share this with my kids.