Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 340 posts

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

#231

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

astrodust wrote: post #195
bdamm wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting... I had no idea Lua was in Minecraft.

There's a number of mods for Minecraft that put Lua into the mix. One I was using (ComputerCraft?) had all the common UNIX commands implemented as things like ls.lua, so typing "ls" actually just ran a Lua script with the corresponding name. You really couldn't get a more hackable computer. These instances can have 4-16MB of memory allocated to them which honestly is way more than is necessary. They can make remote H…

Unfortunately ComputerCraft is no longer developed, even though you can still use it on an older version of the game.

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

#232

Post by dragonwriter »

astrodust wrote: post #201
dragonwriter wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did it come with a mentor to help you understand all of that highly technical material? It mostly was written for an audience of non-technical users, since there weren't enough technical users to make a mass market. The only mentor I had early on was my father (who had work done his way up from sales into an branch operations manager position for a farm machinery firm), who was learning alongside me. > Did you know…

Lucky you. Here the school districts were partitioned along different brands of computer. One would have Amiga, one Macintosh, the others a mix of C64/PET. Mine had, for reasons nobody could ever explain, settled on the Unisys ICON system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisys_ICON Nobody knew how it worked, and all you could do with them was look up books in the library or run some terrible typing tutor program. Ever…

> Here the school districts were partitioned along different brands of computer.

And...what does that have to do with it? My elementary school had a handful of TI-99/4As. Oh, and a single PET. Others, sure, had different systems.

> Everyone's personal computer, which was extremely rare to have, would be some random thing. C64 for one person, Sinclair for another.

Yes, same here, except the “extremely rare to have”; most, but not all, of the people I knew from middle class backgrounds had at least one computer in the home. (My answer about similar computers was by class, not make and model; I didn't personally know anyone else with a Timex-Sinclair, though after I got a PC some other people I knew that did, too, but mostly several years later; people I knew had C64, TI-99/4 or /4A, Atari, Apple, TRS-80, and possibly some others.)

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

#233

Post by madengr »

astrodust wrote: post #124

In the old days you saved up an extraordinary amount of money, bought a Commodore 64, plugged it in, and then had absolutely no idea what to do unless you had books. So you went and got books or magazines, some maybe from the library, some from bookstores, and many of them might be for systems other than the C64. It wasn't uncommon for a magazine to have to cater to a dozen slightly different versions of BASIC: Apple…

The C64 came with a decent book.

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

#234

Post by jpfed »

Impossible wrote: post #221
jpfed wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pico-8 was my son's very first introduction to programming. He does much more with the integrated sprite editor and sfx/music editors than he does with actual coding. I would like to get him interested in TIC-80 as a replacement. Key weaknesses of Pico-8 for kids learning to program: 1. The editor runs at the same resolution that the games do. Maybe this is because they didn't want to make their VM flexible enough to…

All of these are explicit design choices, for example a fixed palette is important to give games a "Pico-8" look and also reduce decisions regarding color choice. I suggest you watch Joseph White's practice talk ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87jfTIWosBw ) if you're curious about design decisions that guided Pico-8. Multiple resolutions would absolutely break the "Fantasy console" feel of Pico-8, even though I und…

>All of these are explicit design choices, for example a fixed palette is important to give games a "Pico-8" look and also reduce decisions regarding color choice.

Indeed, which is why they won't change, which is why (for me) an alternative like TIC-80 is preferable to waiting around for Pico-8 to become what I wish it were.

The virtual console space is tantalizing, but the culture around it has different tastes from mine. For example,

>I don't like it (or any of the other fantasy console\pico-8 clones) quite as much as Pico-8 because they remove constraints

This is a pretty common sentiment on the Pico-8 boards; I understand there are people looking for a certain aesthetic thrill that comes from working within the constraints to make something unexpectedly cool. And yes, when I have time, I would like to make e.g. a metroidvania that uses individual tiles to encode 4x4 chunks of tiles to allow for a big-ass map. It just so happens that those constraints aren't necessary for, and sometimes are in tension with, the goals of a good first-coding-experience learning environment.

I also totally understand why virtual consoles almost all use BASIC or lua, but (for me, not for my kids) I wish there were an option with static types. The combination of not being able to see much code on the screen at once plus no static type checking is pretty uncomfortable for me.

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

#236

Post by DavidSJ »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #205
JacobJans wrote: post #178

This post reminds me of a running line of thought that's been going on in my head for quite some time: "Single Purpose Devices." The main disadvantage of most computing devices is that they offer too many options; making them mentally unwieldy. A "single purpose device" is created to support just one purpose. The Kindle is perhaps the most famous example; it practically created an industry. Sure, it can do more than…

Something seems off about learning general-purpose programming on a single-purpose device. How would you run your programs?

Single purpose doesn’t mean non-programmable, it just means designed with a particular use case in mind (in this case, programming).

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

#238

Post by bunnycorn »

evo_9 wrote: post #104
s73v3r_ wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would come down to if you can get the lesson books in Xcode's Playgrounds (or if they have a separate Playground application) that you can in the iPad app. Those are most of the benefit right there.

Thanks, very helpful !

Also, one more thing, the Playground functionality on the iPad is great.

On Xcode it sucks (buggy, stops refreshing, etc.)

Kind of strange, because it's the same infrastructure...

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

#239

Post by JacobJans »

excalibur wrote: post #230
JacobJans wrote: post #178

This post reminds me of a running line of thought that's been going on in my head for quite some time: "Single Purpose Devices." The main disadvantage of most computing devices is that they offer too many options; making them mentally unwieldy. A "single purpose device" is created to support just one purpose. The Kindle is perhaps the most famous example; it practically created an industry. Sure, it can do more than…

Dumb phone -> Talk and text, no camera, no browser, cheap and readily available. Please?

Device -> Purpose

iPhone -> sell apps & subscriptions

Android phone -> sell ads / harvest user information

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

#240

Post by AzMoo_ »

excalibur wrote: post #230
JacobJans wrote: post #178

This post reminds me of a running line of thought that's been going on in my head for quite some time: "Single Purpose Devices." The main disadvantage of most computing devices is that they offer too many options; making them mentally unwieldy. A "single purpose device" is created to support just one purpose. The Kindle is perhaps the most famous example; it practically created an industry. Sure, it can do more than…

Dumb phone -> Talk and text, no camera, no browser, cheap and readily available. Please?

The Nokia 3310 is about as close as you'll get I think.
Post reply on HN