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Ask HN: Is there a modern “power on to basic” computer, for kids to learn on?

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Ask HN: Is there a modern “power on to basic” computer, for kids to learn on?

#1
I want to give some young kids a small cheap computer that "switches on to basic" or some other programming language?

Like in ye olde computer days when you brought home your Commodore 64 and turned it on you were in basic.

I'm guessing everyone will want to say "Raspberry Pi" of some form, but does that meet my requirement? Plug it into TV, turn it on and you're in basic and can start programming. Ideally with some sort of book or resource for learning how to make the computer do things on the home TV screen.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a modern “power on to basic” computer, for kids to learn on?

#2
You'd think that we'd have a modern version of such a thing, wouldn't you?

Closest modern analogue I can think of is the "console" tab in the browser "developer tools" window. Still stuck with a host OS and JavaScript though...

Re: Ask HN: Is there a modern “power on to basic” computer, for kids to learn on?

#3
The closest thing I've found to this is Pico-8: not a computer, a piece of software, but it's very cool. It has a simple text editor for writing Lua code, a simple sprite editor, and a simple sound editor, all for creating games. It's a nice little sandbox for playing with code and creating things.

https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

Re: Ask HN: Is there a modern “power on to basic” computer, for kids to learn on?

#4
At a technical level, JSFiddle or equivalent comes kind-of close. Set up a template with a nice big element, then you've got a simple imperative API to draw stuff which really does come pretty close to what you'd get from a BASIC> prompt.

That said, I wonder if it's even possible to replicate the C64 (or equivalent) experience. Looking back, I think a big part of the "magic" was that there were relatively few distractions. Just you, the machine, and (maybe) some paper documentation or a magazine with a few listings [1]. Can that be replicated once you're used to network-connected computers that are gateways to almost unlimited amounts of video, colourful games, etc.?

(My child is getting to the point where I wish I knew the answers to some of this myself...)

[1] I'm pretty certain type-in listings were the biggest contributor to my learning, early on. That doesn't seem to be something that comes up terribly often nowadays (although I note that Zed Shaw's "Learn Python the Hard Way" is pretty specific about telling you to hand-type in the examples...)

Re: Ask HN: Is there a modern “power on to basic” computer, for kids to learn on?

#5
> Plug it into TV, turn it on and you're in basic and can start programming.

No reason why someone couldn't create a Pi installation which does that - RetroPie boots into the game console screen, after all. BasicPie could just as easily boot into a Basic / Lua / Pico8 interpreter.

(Get a normal Pi install with X and set Scratch to be the startup/only X app? Would that work?)

Re: Ask HN: Is there a modern “power on to basic” computer, for kids to learn on?

#7
I'm sure you could setup a machine with FreeDOS and boot it right into QBasic at startup. That'd probably be almost perfect; you'd have the relatively good built-in interactive help files, and all the graphics and sound APIs to actually do some cool stuff out of the chute.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a modern “power on to basic” computer, for kids to learn on?

#9
I found the CG Maximite lately, which powers on to BASIC and has composite video or VGA out:

http://geoffg.net/maximite.html

There's also the fignition which has a composite out and powers on to forth:

https://sites.google.com/site/libby8dev/fignition

But does require assembly & soldering.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a modern “power on to basic” computer, for kids to learn on?

#10
Depending on their age, for young kids best results I've had are Pi's (or old/cheap pc's) that boot straight into scratch. Far better results than an intimidating command prompt.

https://scratch.mit.edu/

Alternatively Pi's (or old/cheap pc's) that boot straight into Minecraft Eduction Edition:

https://education.minecraft.net

This has paths for the very young in minecraft itself to older kids using ide's.

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