The Little Coder's Predicament
whytheluckystiff.net
The Little Coder's Predicament
1–10 of 107 posts
Re: The Little Coder's Predicament
#2While this is rather old, it's also rather timely: http://hackety.org/2009/02/05/theFundamentalLittleHackersSum...
...oh, and personally, I can relate. If it weren't for the Apple IIe in my middle-school math teacher's class room, I wouldn't be a programmer today.
Re: The Little Coder's Predicament
#3The one thing that seems to be missing is the idea of including a programming tutorial with the pc or console. What if your XBox came with a manual called "Programming the XBox - a tutorial introduction"? When I got my Apple II+ it came with a programming manual on Apple BASIC presumably because that was part of the reason for the machine's existence - as an easily accessible platform for people to learn to program on. Nowadays, the idea that the common person would actually want to program their computer seems to have been lost.
Re: The Little Coder's Predicament
#4I get his point, but can't get away from the idea that he's describing the web... and php. New distribution system, larger audience, same idea.
Re: The Little Coder's Predicament
#5Truth. I got my start in programming with BASIC via DOS. Today, I find that the biggest mental block to learning a new language is the difficulty of setting up a development environment.
It's at least a little bit surprising that platform developers don't put more of an effort into making coding for their platforms more accessible. One might assume that Microsoft would have a lot to gain from a generation of young programmers learning to develop for Windows.
Re: The Little Coder's Predicament
#6The one thing that seems to be missing is the idea of including a programming tutorial with the pc or console. What if your XBox came with a manual called "Programming the XBox - a tutorial introduction"? When I got my Apple II+ it came with a programming manual on Apple BASIC presumably because that was part of the reason for the machine's existence - as an easily accessible platform for people to learn to program o…
That's because the Apple II+ was produced in an age where the inventors of computers envisioned everyone learning to program computers...as opposed to using them as really expensive fancy typewriters, which is essentially what most people use computers for today.
Re: The Little Coder's Predicament
#7While this is rather old, it's also rather timely: http://hackety.org/2009/02/05/theFundamentalLittleHackersSum... ...oh, and personally, I can relate. If it weren't for the Apple IIe in my middle-school math teacher's class room, I wouldn't be a programmer today.
it's also relevant.
mac's come with sqlite3, python, a terminal, a decent developing environment (extra cd). it's probably not a big deal for windows folks to download languages and developing environments, too, to say nothing of ubuntu.
the web is a trove of treasure tutorials. open source and the web are thriving, the community is more inclusive and inviting than ever. more and more i run into artists, non-video game players, females, mechanical or electrical engineers and young folks discovering the joy of programming (arduino, processing, openframeworks, scratch and python are examples from recent interactions i've had).
video game consoles might be less programmer-inviting than they used to be, but they're also catering to a more varied and more expecting audience than they used to.
Re: The Little Coder's Predicament
#8What about LÖVE? http://love2d.org/
It's really easy to program for; Lua is a language you can pick up without much effort. It's reasonably fast and built upon a few fairly ubiquitous libraries. Game distribution is easy (zip and change the extension to ".love").
Obviously it doesn't come pre-installed anywhere, but it's not hard to get. It would probably take a little work to make it run on game consoles, though, depending on how many of the libraries it depends on are already ported.
Re: The Little Coder's Predicament
#9While this is rather old, it's also rather timely: http://hackety.org/2009/02/05/theFundamentalLittleHackersSum... ...oh, and personally, I can relate. If it weren't for the Apple IIe in my middle-school math teacher's class room, I wouldn't be a programmer today.
it's also relevant. mac's come with sqlite3, python, a terminal, a decent developing environment (extra cd). it's probably not a big deal for windows folks to download languages and developing environments, too, to say nothing of ubuntu. the web is a trove of treasure tutorials. open source and the web are thriving, the community is more inclusive and inviting than ever. more and more i run into artists, non-video ga…
Sure, but I think _why's point is less about availability and more about approachability. As a 10 year old playing with BASIC, it took me all of a day or two to begin writing my first text adventure game. A few weeks after that, and I was writing graphical interfaces.
Available tools are worth nothing if it's not painfully obvious how to make them do something interesting...and you have to remember that interesting is different today than it was when I started programming. I doubt today's 10 year old would be impressed by a text adventure...unfortunately...
Re: The Little Coder's Predicament
#10I get his point, but can't get away from the idea that he's describing the web... and php. New distribution system, larger audience, same idea.
That seemed to the obvious answer to me. Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft aren't going to open up development on their consoles because they make money off of licensing fees.