This could be a simple tool that creates some rudimentary iOS apps (plenty of apps in the App Store would be considered subpar anyway), and purchasing it should include a free developer’s license for kids to get started programming.

I can't believe this article quotes Mark Pilgrim and yet inexplicably fails to note the presence of the first-class, top-quality, absolutely free Javascript runtime that is built into every iPad. No license required, and you can built more than just rudimentary tablet apps with JS if you are so inclined. Bonus: They will run on your friends' machines too, even if those machines don't run iOS.

So this article is just a giant pile of fallacy.

And, yes, if you are a young hacker who has exhausted the possibilities of web apps and who wants to develop for iOS you will have to spend money. To wit: you need at least a second-hand Macintosh, and to actually run your apps on a device you need a $99/year developer subscription.

But how soon we forget that to write first-class apps for, say, the Apple II also cost money. One reason that I was a lousy Apple II assembly programmer is that I never owned a real macro assembler [1], because those cost real money:

http://apple2history.org/history/ah17/#05

The cheapest commercial assembler in this list, the "four character" Microproducts Assembler, was "inexpensive at only $39.95" in 1980. But $39.95 in 1980 dollars is $102.67 in 2009 dollars.

I didn't know about that assembler back in 1980. Instead I vaguely knew that real programmers used Merlin, but I remember Merlin costing real money. I can't find reference to the original price, but it must have been at least, say, $75 1980 dollars ($193 in 2009) and might have even been several hundred dollars ($400+ in 2009).

What I really wanted to use in the 1980s was Pascal. I taught myself Pascal from a book, circa 1984; I wrote all my code on pieces of paper and never executed it because it was another two years before I got my hands on my first Pascal compiler. The Apple Pascal compiler cost hundreds of dollars. It came out in 1979 at $495. ($1443.88 in 2009 dollars). No way I was going to afford that.

Of course, eventually we were all saved when Turbo Pascal came out, and later Turbo C. Turbo Pascal 1.0 was legendary for being inexpensive and accessible: It was only $54.95 (with shipping) in 1984. Of course, that's $112 in 2009 dollars. And you needed to own an IBM PC or a CP/M machine, which I did not, and which could not be bought on Craigslist for a few hundred (2009) bucks the way a second-hand Intel Macintosh can.

Of course, you could pirate Turbo Pascal. If you could find someone else who owned it and was willing to give it to you. In the days before broadband and BitTorrent that was much more difficult: You had to learn about BBSes, and about such esoteric concepts as leeching, and you had to learn to live without the documentation.

The scrounging process is now much easier. Obviously, "piracy" is now simple and fun, but you needn't even resort to that: You can scrounge everything you need for iOS development legally and fairly easily -- schools own Macs, libraries own Macs, xCode can be downloaded for five bucks, and the docs are all free and legal, and even the emulator is free. The only thing you can't fudge is the $99 license to install your apps. But you can find one friend or teacher who has the license and convince them to install your app for you, legally. If there's popular demand for school libraries to own iOS developer licenses we could easily start a charity to donate some.

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[1] Though this is just the least embarrassing reason, not the most significant reason.