I definitely agree that children of 13 or 14 can learn assembly.  The
advantage to starting out this way is that they will get a true feel for
what is going on in the process of turning an idea into a device that does
something.  If one hides too many of the intermediate steps, it looks too
much like magic and the whole idea is to teach a concept and maybe even to
teach a few secondary ideas like the need to learn higher math and the value
of putting forth a sustained effort to achieve a long-term goal.

        I turned 14 in 1965 and I distinctly remember my sister bringing
home a handout from her math teacher about binary numbers and how they were
the life blood of computers.  It was the usual stuff about how 1
was represented by voltage and 0 by none.  There were examples of counting
in binary and maybe even some addition and subtraction, but I remember a
distinct brain flash.  As a kid who thought that science was the only reason
for having the world, I remember having a thousand questions.  I would have
loved to have learned how to do something with a computer back then, but
that just wasn't practical.  I think that the desire to satisfy one's
curiosity is a great force multiplier in the learning process.

        While the immediate goal is to teach the programming and operation
of a PIC, the whole idea should be to give the students an understanding
of why some things are the way they are.  Maybe one should start with assembly
level programming and then, when the students understand that concept,
show them how a high-level language can be used to build great things out of
little blocks.  Starting off with another GUI-driven marvel just interposes
a layer of complexity disguised as simplicity.  The trouble is that when
something goes wrong, the complexity tends to swarm on teachers and students
alike.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK 36.7N97.4W
OSU Center for Computing and Information Services Data Communications Group