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Sir Clive Sinclair has died

theguardian.com

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Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#211

Post by dragonsky67 »

wiz21c wrote: post #69
zarkov99 wrote: post #11

RIP. Many a programming career, including mine, was started thanks to Sir Clive. There was a sense of wonder and awe around those machines that is no where to be found these days, even though we have so much power computational power. Something was lost.

I started with Apple 2+ but back then there were many computers to be fond of. There were Vic 20, Dragon 32, Amstrad, Thomson TO7, TRS-80, BBC. All were different, all had their capabilities. But what was fun is that everyone had access to the whole thing : hardware, software. Nothing was hidden behind layers of security. You could relate software and hardware in a very natural way. Everybody was fiddling around. Als…

I started with an Amiga 500. Wonderful machine, but the lack of a built in compiler/programming language that allowed you to access the power of the machine was a lack that limited your learning. I think it resulted in me taking a very wide path to my current programming job than would otherwise have happened. Looking back, there is a lot of power in having to work hard to get a program from a magazine entered and working. You are forced to learn something about programming.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#212

Post by hanoz »

Cheers Clive. Sorry to see you go. Your inventions were an incredible influence in my formative years and I wouldn't be here without you.

10 PRINT "RIP Clive Sinclair"

20 GOTO 10

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#213

Post by jarvist »

Chris_Newton wrote: post #163
jacquesm wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and today such a perspective is almost impossible to achieve outside the embedded space. Even a Raspberry-Pi is many orders of magnitude more complex than say a Dragon 32 (Color Computer clone, by the way) or a BBC Micro.

Given the availability of tech like the Pi now, I wonder what it would take to build a modern, child-friendly device in the same spirit around it: something that offered a fun and instructive introduction to programming, in a box that was self-contained, safe and practically indestructible. Design a case with a sealed keyboard? Expose standard power and display connectors with robust ports? Write some child-friendly…

The Raspberry Pi 400 is basically this. https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400/

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#214

Post by holoduke »

When I was 8 years old I had a teacher who let me explore the spectrum zx every midday break. I spend so many hours loading tapes with games and programs. It was for sure the spark for me to start my life with programming and computers in general. Rest in piece. A legend!!!

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#215

Post by dragonsky67 »

Chris_Newton wrote: post #163
jacquesm wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and today such a perspective is almost impossible to achieve outside the embedded space. Even a Raspberry-Pi is many orders of magnitude more complex than say a Dragon 32 (Color Computer clone, by the way) or a BBC Micro.

Given the availability of tech like the Pi now, I wonder what it would take to build a modern, child-friendly device in the same spirit around it: something that offered a fun and instructive introduction to programming, in a box that was self-contained, safe and practically indestructible. Design a case with a sealed keyboard? Expose standard power and display connectors with robust ports? Write some child-friendly…

TLDR - Kids who want to learn to program already have access to the tools to do this... It's just that most kids don't want to learn to program.

Wasn't this what the One Laptop Per Child (OTLP) project was trying to achieve? The problem is that when the ZX, C64 etc were around there was no alternative. If you wanted to play games, you could either shell out for more hardware and purchase the games on disk or cartridge, or you could type them in from a magazine (several times) and hopefully save them to a cassette.

These days, if you want to play a game, you reach for your phone and install a free one that is far more capable than anything you could develop yourself.

The real trick would be to create a development environment that will run on a phone. Apple have gone somewhat down this path with their Swift Playgrounds and you could always work with Scratch and similar systems or you could even do something in html/javascript, but none of these really give the same imperative to learning how that the original home computers did. You really need a system that lets you develop a full program, share it with your friends and modify (and break) it.

You know the reality is that we do have these systems, and kids that are interested in doing anything other than just playing games can access them with a minimum of problems. I wonder how many of those ZX Spectrums, C64 etc were given to kids, who on finding that they had to actually do some work to make them do anything useful relegated them to a shoebox under the TV. It is possible that for every positive story about "kid learns programming from ZX Spectrum" you would have a hundred stories of kid calling ZX Spectrum a piece of crap.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#218

Post by srcmap »

ghoul2 wrote: post #101

RIP Sir. I was gifted the 48K when I was 6 yrs old - it changed my life. I am here because Sir Sinclair built a machine whose setup instructions said: Now that you have set up the computer, you will want to use it. The rest of this booklet tells you how to do that; but in your impatience you will probably already have started pressing the keys on the keyboard, and discovered that this removes the copyright message. T…

My first compute was ~1984 Timex_Sinclair_1000 $99 and with 2K RAM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000

It definitively the gateway drug that hook me into computer.

Bought $6 book on how to program Sinclair computer and copy the Basic Code from the book into that computer and record that program into audio cassette tape and output to analog TV.

Now I working daily with systems that have 128 cores, 256 threads, 256-768MB of L3 cache memory, 1TB DDR+ 8xGPUs each with 32GB of HBM.

I still think I got more "High/Rush" from the sinclair 1000 37 years ago than the latest 128C/256T CPU. Now is a job, back than it was an adventure, exploration to whole new world!

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#219

Post by keithnz »

ianetaylor wrote: post #210

Like so many I learned to code on a ZX80 and basically never stopped. I'm here 40+ years later, typing this on a HoloLens and marveling at the impact that little computer had on me and the world. RIP Sir Clive

My first experience of programming was on a ZX81, we also had a thermal printer, I remember having this overwhelming sense of possibilities watching that little printer work and becoming fascinated with computers controlling machines. Much of my career has been doing hardware/electronic/mechanical systems. I have fond memories of those early times where it was an exciting time where we devoured every word about computers.
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