Computer programming by a child.

Ainan is ever surprising - and that, in itself, is the most surprising thing about him. One would have thought that he would have run out of surprises by now...but no, he hasn't.

One of Ainan's surprises is his ability at computer programming. Yesterday, for instance, my computer was behaving in odd ways. It was "talking" to me, in written words, in response to my typed entries. Furthermore, it was doing things in response to my typing, that I hadn't asked it to do.

I asked Ainan, knowing that he must have done it: "How did you do that?"

"It is simple." he began, obviously believing it to be, before he launched into a very rapid, detailed and utterly incomprehensible description of the programme he had used to do it. He listed the programme from memory (or recreated as he went along...I couldn't tell which), detailing, in a programming language, how to achieve what he had just done. After a while, I tuned out, knowing that attention would not inform me any better what he was saying. Finally, he ended his descriptive download. I hadn't understood a word of it.

"Who taught you to do that? Do they teach that at school?"

He looked at me like I had said something fundamentally silly. Perhaps it was the suggestion that school might actually teach him something.

"No, Daddy." he began with the kind of patience that told me he didn't think much of my question, perhaps questioning its underlying view of the world, "You can teach yourself that."

So, in between all the other things he was doing, in the sciences and maths, in art, and writing, in reading, and playing, he had found time to learn to programme computers, too - in what seemed a very natural way. He did it as if it were as easy as breathing.

I programmed computers, once. I was 17 and working at the National Physical Laboratory, in the UK. I had to create a programme to analyse data, but didn't know the language to do so - so I picked up a programming book and began to read. Three days later, I was programming. However, I was 17, not 9 and Ainan has been programming since at least 8, perhaps younger.

I am left to wonder what other surprises he has for me...and what other things he has learnt without me realizing that he has done so.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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