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Is Apple destroying a generation of tech whizzes?

economist.com

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Re: Is Apple destroying a generation of tech whizzes?

#31

Post by lazugod »

mkramlich wrote: post #23

Here's my take. When I was a kid, yes I had the Apple II, I had HeathKit radio kits, etc. And yes we now have iPhone, iPad, etc. But folks those all have SDK's. And Linux exists now. Arduino. Mindstorms. Roomba. All kinds of electronic and computer kits for experimentation. Make magazine. Mainstream bookstores now actually have lots of geeky computer magazines and books on the shelves. And the Internet: tons of free…

The iPhone and iPad are not the machines that ship with an SDK, though. That lies entirely on the Mac. And yeah, the Mac is definitely part of the hacker's Golden Age.

Re: Is Apple destroying a generation of tech whizzes?

#32

Post by ced »

jlangenauer wrote: post #25
omellet wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved Gorillas. But Windows ships with .NET, including a C# and VB.Net compiler. I'd rather have hacked on that than BASIC, nostalgia value notwithstanding.

Now yes - as I much prefer Ruby, C++ and a wee bit of Haskell these days. But to learn? Absolutely not. The beauty of BASIC was that everything was simple enough that a 10 year old kid could comprehend it: type in instructions, and run them. No compilers, no CLR, no API calls. All of those things make the barrier to entry too high. I started out writing things like: 10 PRINT "Jason" 20 GOTO 10 The reason why that's s…

Absolutely. I tried teaching Python to teenagers. It turns out that significant whitespace is a hurdle. I would use QBasic if I had to do it again.

Re: Is Apple destroying a generation of tech whizzes?

#33

Post by [deleted] »

mkramlich wrote: post #23

Here's my take. When I was a kid, yes I had the Apple II, I had HeathKit radio kits, etc. And yes we now have iPhone, iPad, etc. But folks those all have SDK's. And Linux exists now. Arduino. Mindstorms. Roomba. All kinds of electronic and computer kits for experimentation. Make magazine. Mainstream bookstores now actually have lots of geeky computer magazines and books on the shelves. And the Internet: tons of free…

[deleted]

Re: Is Apple destroying a generation of tech whizzes?

#34

Post by spc476 »

makecheck wrote: post #22

Actually, it might give students a real incentive to tinker: "hey, you might make thousands of dollars on the App Store". Parents? Spend $100 for a curious kid's birthday to get a dev kit, it would be a great investment. Especially if it takes away from time they'd spend doing passive things like watching TV.

Back in 1985, I remember bugging my Mom to get me the Radio Shack Assembler for the Color Computer and a book on Assembly language programming and I wouldn't be surprised if she spent around $60 or so back then. Using this calculator ( http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/ ) that works out to between $100 to $200 in 2009 dollars (depending upon which inflation scale is used).

Re: Is Apple destroying a generation of tech whizzes?

#35

Post by r0s »

kijuhygfhjk wrote: post #16

No - because they are expensive. It's like claiming that Mercedes is destroying the hot-rod industry because kids can't get the engine management codes. Macs were never for hackers now iApple isn't - so what?

Non-standard hardware, that's all there is to say. I don't know anyone who upgrades, repairs or hacks macs. Any hackers I know that use macs don't really care about the unique mac features, usually they just want an oem *nix machine with approved hardware. This is a decent option for a second computer, or portable, when price isn't that much of a concern.

Re: Is Apple destroying a generation of tech whizzes?

#36

Post by cubicle67 »

miratom wrote: post #6

"Apple is watering down computing" has been the principle argument governing the PC v. Mac holy war since the Macintosh made its debut. Nothing has changed.

which is odd considering every mac ships with Apache, Python, Ruby and who knows what else installed, ready to go. Windows ships with... (honestly, I have no idea)

Re: Is Apple destroying a generation of tech whizzes?

#37

Post by cubicle67 »

kijuhygfhjk wrote: post #16

No - because they are expensive. It's like claiming that Mercedes is destroying the hot-rod industry because kids can't get the engine management codes. Macs were never for hackers now iApple isn't - so what?

Macs were never for hackers

ooo... them's fightin' words :)

Re: Is Apple destroying a generation of tech whizzes?

#40

Post by ido »

jlangenauer wrote: post #25
omellet wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved Gorillas. But Windows ships with .NET, including a C# and VB.Net compiler. I'd rather have hacked on that than BASIC, nostalgia value notwithstanding.

Now yes - as I much prefer Ruby, C++ and a wee bit of Haskell these days. But to learn? Absolutely not. The beauty of BASIC was that everything was simple enough that a 10 year old kid could comprehend it: type in instructions, and run them. No compilers, no CLR, no API calls. All of those things make the barrier to entry too high. I started out writing things like: 10 PRINT "Jason" 20 GOTO 10 The reason why that's s…

That's true, but these days most people have always-on broadband internet connections, so prebundling with windows is not as important as it once was.

I don't think something like Processing is any harder to get into than basic was. I started programming with GW-BASIC, LOGO and QBasic myself - the first thing that I thought when I started playing around with Processing is that it is remarkably similar to a modern QBasic.

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