11–20 of 82 posts
16 KB of memory? The “64” in “Commodore 64”, the name of a computer introduced in 1982, stands for 64 KB of memory. (A 128 KB version followed 3 years later.) It is now 35 years since 1982…
To be fair, the British government didn't give a Commodore 64 to every British child for free.
16 KB of memory? The “64” in “Commodore 64”, the name of a computer introduced in 1982, stands for 64 KB of memory. (A 128 KB version followed 3 years later.) It is now 35 years since 1982…
It's an educational device, and that education involves learning to write pieces of code for which industry users may well prefer to pull in large libraries. I'd be surprised if the target audience - 12-13 year olds - use all that; those that have a passion for it will of course end up using more expensive devices with bigger numbers. Those that don't will continue doing only compulsory exercises that could probably manage with less than 16KB.
There is actually a C/C++ layer that supports the higher level languages known as the micro:bit runtime[0], which means you can also program the device using C/C++... Another level of progression for children. [0] https://lancaster-university.github.io/microbit-docs/
We use it to teach kids to code. It's OK, but the screen is way too limited for it to be much fun. It is crying out for a good colour screen that can show more than one character at a time. Also, debugging is a pain. They need some sort of event log that can be inspected on the pc
I use mu, the micropython editor, it shows the error messages on the PC when connected via USB, instead of trying to read them scrolling across the display
There is actually a C/C++ layer that supports the higher level languages known as the micro:bit runtime[0], which means you can also program the device using C/C++... Another level of progression for children. [0] https://lancaster-university.github.io/microbit-docs/
Nice, thanks for the link! I didn't realize there was a web-based C++ IDE targeting the micro:bit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, the British government didn't give a Commodore 64 to every British child for free.
Perhaps, if they did, Silicon Valley would be in the UK.
We use it to teach kids to code. It's OK, but the screen is way too limited for it to be much fun. It is crying out for a good colour screen that can show more than one character at a time. Also, debugging is a pain. They need some sort of event log that can be inspected on the pc
In some ways the limitations help, don't have kids wanting to program Quake 7. I use mu, the micropython editor, it shows the error messages on the PC when connected via USB, instead of trying to read them scrolling across the display
For me, [stepping through the code] I would expect as a normal part of coding. Not having it seems to hark back to some primitive time.
16 KB of memory? The “64” in “Commodore 64”, the name of a computer introduced in 1982, stands for 64 KB of memory. (A 128 KB version followed 3 years later.) It is now 35 years since 1982…
To be fair, the British government didn't give a Commodore 64 to every British child for free.
We use it to teach kids to code. It's OK, but the screen is way too limited for it to be much fun. It is crying out for a good colour screen that can show more than one character at a time. Also, debugging is a pain. They need some sort of event log that can be inspected on the pc
In some ways the limitations help, don't have kids wanting to program Quake 7. I use mu, the micropython editor, it shows the error messages on the PC when connected via USB, instead of trying to read them scrolling across the display