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The Little Coder's Predicament

whytheluckystiff.net

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Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#21

Post by neilk »

jballanc wrote: post #6
gcheong wrote: post #3

The 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.

The only person who has ever had that vision, consistently, is Alan Kay.

The Apple was programmable because it was made by hackers for hackers. There were a few firms that would do software consulting for corporations and institutions, but the notion of consumer software barely existed.

Apple didn't mind it if a few people wrote third-party software and sold it. But I think in the beginning they expected to provide all the important software themselves, just like every computer manufacturer of the era.

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#22

Post by neilk »

ojbyrne wrote: post #4

I 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.

Possibly, but PHP limits you to web-style interactions. You have to be excruciatingly clever to get it to act like a chat server or something. And forget about doing animation or sound or anything fun.

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#24

Post by davidw »

psyklic wrote: post #12

I miss how difficult it is to get into graphics programming nowadays. DirectX and OpenGL have somewhat high learning curves for new programmers (especially kids). Even the "simplified" graphics libraries are usually OOPified and take some learning. I miss the days of mode 13h!

Tcl and Tk are pretty simple ways of getting started and putting something on the screen.

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#25

Post by [deleted] »

jballanc wrote: post #6
gcheong wrote: post #3

The 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.

[deleted]

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#26

Post by neilk »

neilk wrote: post #21
jballanc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The only person who has ever had that vision, consistently, is Alan Kay. The Apple was programmable because it was made by hackers for hackers. There were a few firms that would do software consulting for corporations and institutions, but the notion of consumer software barely existed. Apple didn't mind it if a few people wrote third-party software and sold it. But I think in the beginning they expected to provide a…

And, I speak as somebody who used to hand-compile SHAPE files on the Apple II. These were a sort of vector graphics which you had to first painstakingly draw on graph paper, unspool as a series of draw/turn commands, and then translate into bitmasks according to a lookup table, and then cut those up at seven-bit intervals, and convert those into decimal numbers. This is not something that anyone ever conceived of as a children's toy. Even though some kids (like myself) persevered.

Hm, I wonder if pg's concept of Languages For Smart People applies. Is it possible that kids just don't like kids' languages, like Logo and so on? I have to say that I certainly didn't, although I was exposed to it much later than Alan Kay would have preferred.

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#28

Post by tsetse-fly »

diN0bot wrote: post #15
jballanc wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

today's 10 year old is probably writing a twitter script in python in 2 days. as a non-video-game-playing female i didn't find programming approachable then, but i have found it approachable in the past 2 years. i can't speak for 10 year olds, though. there are numerous improvements in the approachability aspect (scratch, alice, processing, arduino on the educational front). i suspect approachability had little to do…

I think approachability is absolutely key. Kids wrote programs on their Commodores, Ataris, and TI calculators because the environment was already setup. You could type in a few commands and instantly have something running (a program that solves the area of a triangle or one that plays a cool sequence of tones). There's only one editor and one language.

The majority of today's 10 year olds are not writing twitter scripts. It requires a significant amount of understanding and time to do so. You need to pick a programming language, install it, figure out how to write your program and how to execute it. The barrier is a lot higher than writing a program for your calculator during math class.

It'd be much easier for you to find people who wrote trivial programs on their Commodore when they were 10 than it would be to find 10 year olds who are writing python.

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#29

Post by hedgehog »

Erf wrote: post #5

Truth. 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 pr…

Someone at MS cares:

MS Small Basic http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/cc950524.aspx

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#30

Post by Klonoar »

hedgehog wrote: post #29
Erf wrote: post #5

Truth. 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 pr…

Someone at MS cares: MS Small Basic http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/cc950524.aspx

I actually had my younger brother try this out, and it did what it set out to do very well - that is, it's very sandboxed, but at the same time gives you access to change certain things such as your desktop background, etc.

Pretty well done, at least in my opinion. The one problem is that there's really nowhere to go after that - if you stay with MS tech, it's far too large of a leap to build anything larger than what you can already accomplish with Small Basic.

Just my two cents. shrug

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