Part of what made the Apple II great was the Apple II Reference Manual, which started out gently with an introduction to the hardware, how to turn it on, how to type on the keyboard, and ends with an assembly listing of the autostart and monitor ROM.
Ask HN: How can I make a “kid's computer” today as good as an Apple II?
71–80 of 244 posts
Re: Ask HN: How can I make a “kid's computer” today as good as an Apple II?
#72Not for a kid in elementary school but I think a machine running a BSD variant would be a better learning environment than one running Linux.
It is a lot easier to make a source code change, rebuild and update.
Re: Ask HN: How can I make a “kid's computer” today as good as an Apple II?
#73Apple 2 was more like a prototype for the C64 that has graphics and sound unmatched without cheating on 8-bit with 16-bit memory.
But honestly today I would give a Raspberry Pico instead, it uses less energy and has more performance but it's still low level!
Re: Ask HN: How can I make a “kid's computer” today as good as an Apple II?
#74There are $100 Chromebooks now that can run Linux and Android. And Windows. And Apple II emulators.
In comparison, my parents paid $2,000 for an Apple IIc. Back then. Like, I'm not adjusting for inflation.
Re: Ask HN: How can I make a “kid's computer” today as good as an Apple II?
#75I think the problem here is that the world has moved on a lot since some of us kids were amazed at what we could make machines like an AppleII do with basic (and assembler and peek and poke). I remember being amazingly proud of myself for getting an ascii version of Space Invaders working. I could, as a 10 or 12 year old, make something for myself that kinda looked like and was way more fun (for me) to play that _lit…
When I was at school in the 90s the computer room used to be full of kids at lunch time writing code in qbasic. The reason why was that was all there was to do on the machines that wasn't writing a document or making a spreadsheet. If you want kids to not play Fortnite and instead write code, take away Fortnite and leave them with something they can code on.
Re: Ask HN: How can I make a “kid's computer” today as good as an Apple II?
#76I think this is a lost cause. Other have already mentioned this, but I'll state it again. The computers themselves are the trivial part, both the hardware and the software. You can buy a budget 11- or 13-inch laptop, new for $300 or used for $100, load them with emulators of all the 1980s and 1990s machines, and have literally the same software and much better hardware than we did back then. If you give that to them,…
This is super depressing. What do we do? Firewall all the things at the house and get rid of tablets/phones?
Re: Ask HN: How can I make a “kid's computer” today as good as an Apple II?
#77Kids nowadays have too much distractions.
Back in the day most of the entertainment kids got were TV and occasionally film but both are also family/friend activities. Then the personal computer showed up, and many kids wanted to make games because 1) That's so cool and 2) There was not many games anyway. They naturally learned BASIC because that was the only high level language pre-installed and then naturally learned Assembly because that was the only language left and is of high performance -- exactly what games need. Once they bag that as a skill there is not too much to stop them.
Nowadays there are way to many instant-gratification floating around. Kids get in touch with phones and pads so early that a whole generation from my country actually don't know much about computers, just phones and pads. Can't blame them though, because phones and pads were the first thing they got hooked up and addicted.
Honestly I don't even know what I can do as a parent. The only way is to see if a kid has a thirsty for creativity, and go for it if he/she does. I'm not sure if a Pi is equivalent to Apple II back in the day, but perhaps that's the best we can get. I still believe that people should start from some bare metal and grow gradually from there, because that dispels a lot of black magic. But maybe that's too much nowadays because of the instant-gratification culture we are grooming worldwide. Life is too short use Python.
Re: Ask HN: How can I make a “kid's computer” today as good as an Apple II?
#78I think the problem here is that the world has moved on a lot since some of us kids were amazed at what we could make machines like an AppleII do with basic (and assembler and peek and poke). I remember being amazingly proud of myself for getting an ascii version of Space Invaders working. I could, as a 10 or 12 year old, make something for myself that kinda looked like and was way more fun (for me) to play that _lit…
My 7yo is absolutely thrilled by scratch on Lego Mindstorms Robot Innovator [1]. The physicality of it is engaging. Granted, I'm generally a very restrictive parent about mobile/console gaming. 1: https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/robot-inventor-51515
Agreed. Mobile gaming should absolutely be banned from kids. Most of the games out there were designed to be money-grabbing. Consoles are better especially if you give them a retro one as the first machine.
Re: Ask HN: How can I make a “kid's computer” today as good as an Apple II?
#79pi or arduino with a bunch of extra parts to make things and see action. They can learn simple code basics without layers of bullshit from modern dev.
but wait... do you want them to go from that to today's dev environments? ;)
Re: Ask HN: How can I make a “kid's computer” today as good as an Apple II?
#80I've setup a misterfpga with the atari ST core and put it in a keyboard case. I think that a lot of the old software from back then are perfect for a 3-6 years old and my hope is that he'll be used to it by the time he's 6 and will be more likely to be open to retro games/environment.
Of course, this is all speculation, my son is only 2 years old so let's see how it turns out, but I did start using such a computer at 3 and it was great for me so I'm highly hopeful :)
I will also not allow any mobile gaming, mobile gaming is a wasteland of predatory practices.