Amazing!
And it parallels the early learning my peer group and I experienced in the 80's.
We had Apple 2 type computers to work with and a small group of us were split off to do a deeper dive education. And really it was a sort of student guided education.
Basically, the teacher asked is to declare what we were going to try and do and that was more about making sure we did something besides play games than it was anything else.
So we did that and came to the same conclusion!
And that kicked off a love of the lower level computing that persists to this day. 6502 was not too difficult and what the teacher did was of high value:
They found us the info we needed. Data books, magazines, whatever contained material we could use. And we attacked it together.
One thing I picked up on super early was the powers of two and how it really all boils down to address lines! Was a great insight for a young person and I remember teaching others about hexadecimal, the first 16 powers of two and lots of number related things.
Others had something they grokked and together we learned a ton, each person teaching what they could to the others and doing projects together.
And we are talking stuff like:
Count numbers 0 to 9999999 on screen
Draw a Sprite and move it around
Play music on the speaker
Do maths of various kinds.
These were all slow or impractical using the Applesoft BASIC.
In assembly language, they made sense and were performant.
As machine code, they could be loaded from disk and called by BASIC.
The logic parts took me a while, but the moment AND, OR, XOR started to make sense was the moment I really started to do computing. Those things and the numbers and how they are used to represent stuff was the core of all that was to come.
We all sort of came to that understanding and it was all a beautiful experience. One of the best bits of it was our teacher being curious and as playful as we were! The tech was literally intoxicating.
Bet your experiences are much the same.
For what it is worth, the other core piece was I/O. That moment when one realizes they can POKE a number into a register, and for that matter knowing what a register vs. a RAM memory were, and then seeing an LED or hearing a speaker click were the absolute BEST!
In my view, making sure we have this kind of education happening is super important and ultra high value.
It is no different from the other basics:
Money
Wood
Metal
Computing
Cars and farm machinery
Electronics
Etc...
Many of my class ended High School with good, all around basic competency. I grew up in sometimes profound poverty. For me, it was actually a benefit because I was lucky to be among people who did not judge and gave me opportunity to put all those learned skills to use.
Made a huge difference in my own life.
But the same can be said of just about all the students I know being exposed to what I will just call fundamental type education. Everyone was capable and ready and able to learn just about anything.
Looking back at my class, a fair number of us went to college. Another big slice went into the various trades, and some into business.
The ones who were not involved in the fundemental type education generally struggled more.
Now this is all anecdotal, but I do find common themes when these discussions happen. Generally speaking, it can really help people and rarely hurts them to be exposed to potent basics early in life.
Well done.
What have they done with their little computers? Anything notable? If you can share, please do.