There is hope, indeed!  We (Saginaw Valley State University) hosted this
year's Society of Manufacturing Engineers Robotics competition for
college, high school and grade school students.  I was impressed with the
quality of work they produced.  One pre-teenaged participant told me their
teacher's grading criteria included (hold your ears, Bill Gates!)
how tight the code was on their Parallax Stamp II-based project.

John