Their parents can't afford a laptop? They can't afford an Internet connection? The kids don't have a good place to learn in their house? They don't have time?
Is programming affected more than other subjects like math, English/grammar, science, etc?
Yes! There are millions of kids in the US whose parents can't afford a cheap $300 laptop. The federal government pays for school lunches because there are so many kids who otherwise wouldn't even be getting decent food otherwise.
> They can't afford an Internet connection?
See above. Also, there are many places in the US where getting broadband service is very difficult. Including places just an hour outside of Washington, DC. My parents were only able to get conventional broadband service a few years ago. Prior to that they paid exorbitant fees for satellite internet service with a 500mb per month cap.
> The kids don't have a good place to learn in their house?
Imagine being a kid with 3 siblings and your parent(s) living in a studio apartment. Or a kid that doesn't have a stable "home" at all.
> They don't have time?
That can be an issue too, depending on age. A teenager may be working outside of school hours to help take care of the family's financial needs.
All of the above, and it's surprising this isn't obvious. It may be hard to notice or internalize if you've never seen it and only know privilege, but possession of all or even some of those things is not a guarantee for everyone. Believe it or not, there are some who don't come home to a computer, caring (or even existent!) parents, stable meals, or free time.
Maybe I didn't use the right words to formulate my question.
> Their parents can't afford a laptop?
Holy crap, the amount of privilege shown off in just two sentences is absolutely astounding.
This may come as a shock to you, but a very significant number of people don't have a couple hundred dollars to buy a low-end used laptop. 40% of Americans would struggle to come up with $400 for an emergency expense [0], let alone save $400 for a laptop.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/heres-why-so-many-americans-...
It actually doesn't say that, it says they don't have $400 in cash equivalents but may be able to produce it by selling "assets". So a person who keeps all their savings in CDs or investments also counts, although only for expenses you can't put on credit cards.
They often take payday loans, mortgaging their next minimum-wage paycheck; since the next paycheck minus payment no longer covers their regular living expenses, they take another predatory loan or pawn another heirloom. 80% of people who take a payday loan have to renew it because they can't repay it. I have a deep personal dislike for Dave Ramsey, but he does a good job of explaining how even minor emergency expenses can lead to a cycle of debt and further despair. (https://www.daveramsey.com/blog/get-out-payday-loan-trap)
There is so much more instability and precarity in this country than most PMC people can imagine.
Figure 12 on page 21 of the underlying report - https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2017-repor... .
https://www.statista.com/statistics/756054/united-states-adu...
Conversely, programming was not available in my fairly middle-class school. In terms of money, we only have to look to the laptops schools are providing to students (or not depending on government funding) to see how many children don't have access to a laptop. A good place to learn can also be hard to find for large families in small houses which is sadly all too common for low income households.
Probably a bit more, as it is common to learn other subjects by a book, but learning programming without a computer ... sounds hard.
