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I grew up playing video games, and now I'm a graphics programmer. I learned to program because I wanted to make games. Trust me, it slaps.

Some years ago I worked at a technology-oriented summer camp where I personally taught several bright young children to program. Minecraft mods were an incredibly popular project and a big driver of interest for many of the kids. Many of my counselor colleagues got into programming themselves modding Warcraft III and other games of that era. The absolute conversion rate may be low because the playerbase is so huge, but I think something like Minecraft is definitely the first (or zero-th) step in the journey of a lot of kids these days who become interested in technology and will later develop into the next generation of programmers & technologists.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess youve removed most forms of gaming from you life?