61–70 of 235 posts
There's nothing stopping you from downloading Android development tools, and programming away to your heart's content. And nothing stopping you from pushing your app to Google Play so all your friends can download it onto their phones. Probably the major reason why early 80's computers made basic so prominent is that there wasn't much else to do with them.
In BASIC times there were dozens of incompatible platforms and they were competing on the available software. Programmers were very scarce (and you had to persuade them to write for your platform instead of other platforms). You couldn't expect to have most use-cases solved by the available code, so people were willing to code what they needed. 8-bit computer without BASIC was almost useless. Software was also very c…
There are more teens programming than ever and creating more things.
The pie is bigger. There might have been thousands or ten thousands of kids programming before now it's millions.
Programs don't take millions of man hours. I can point to many useful one man open source projects. Selling business software is as hard as ever and it's hard to get buyin without connections. Teens are not making those connections neither were teens in the 80s or 90s.
Back than ever computer type was a different platform. Your c64 basic program couldn't run on an Mac. Things were much harder to package for others to use.
Programming has less benefits now for teens
Early 80s computers were a niche market largely sold to people interested in computers and programming.
I disagree. The "killer app" of the Apple II was VisiCalc, a spreadsheet. That's why my dad bought a computer for his home office. Computers were also used in education: I was exposed to them in junior high.
The non profit hosts a race where the participants build their own cars. My app helps track the race cars. We use GPS, 3g, wifi, a touch screen, and a 12 hr battery to: track cars and send their location live to our website. This simply wasn't possible before tablets - amd it is really cheap with a cheap tablet.
Because it's not in their best interest. Smartphone makers are big tech, big tech only wants you to learn their framework to be locked into using big tech for life. No one wants you to learn to think on your own. Learn Dashly(tm) for Pear Phone or don't program at all. The reality is the time for tinkering and stuff is over (for pc workloads, you can tinker all you like with hardware/agri/space/radio/nuclear open-sou…
In the nineties computers hot Excel and similar, which took over basic tasks and people built their databases for their hobby or business, there ledgers, ... on top of that.
Today there is special software for most of those things and computers are mass market products, made by companies which want the user's to consume media (via iTunes, or YouTube ads etc.) and approachable for everybody. The product managers fear that just seeing a glimpse of a programmable interface drives people away and reduces the media consumption.
But it can be done to an extent. Grab a cheap external BT keyboard, a folding monitor stand, and Termux or a Scheme interpreter, or a BASIC interpreter (I haven't looked, but I assume they exist), and you're there.
I've done a lot of programming and writing on the phone that way.
Both Android and iOS are designed to be locked-down consumer goods owned by the manufacturer and only used by you; they're not tools that encourage you to learn and tweak. You need to look elsewhere for that.