The relationship between pre-university students and technology is frequently overrated. While we receive glowing reports about how young people are knowledgeable about computers, the truth is that their knowledge is typically about computer content and the manipulation of applications. Young students too often treat the actual programming and understanding of computers as a sort of magical mystery.

In this paper we look at a new Albanian initiative to identify and nurture the most talented of our pre-university students. In particular we look at contributions to the goal of making Albanians the most talented programmers in this area of Europe.

The study addresses the issue of how to get young people interested in programming by focusing on non-syntactic procedures. The authors consider two programming environments that teach through the use of objects and problem solving skills.