Robert Morris: All About Programming • Hacker News Board

Re: Robert Morris: All About Programming

#51

Post by allendoerfer » Sun, Jan 18, 2015, 6:13 PM UTC

fit2rule wrote: post #39

3pt14159 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mom taught me programming as a 6 year old almost 25 years ago. I went on to study it at college night school from 10 to 14 and held a job before graduating high school programming ASP, JS, and MS SQL. Sometimes parents can teach their children things and have it stick.

Yeah, not everything involving generations is so myopic. My kids, 7 and 4, are absolutely entranced by computers and love to sit down at our old-school 8-bit battlestation and bash things out. The elder has figured out how to do his maths homework on it, and the younger has become an expert at loading files and running them. None of this would be possible if I hadn't encouraged them to investigate computers by settin…

It seems to me, that you are exactly doing what I suggested: Provide the platform and let them make experiences on their own.

Re: Robert Morris: All About Programming

#52

Post by fit2rule » Sun, Jan 18, 2015, 8:48 PM UTC

allendoerfer wrote: post #51

fit2rule wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, not everything involving generations is so myopic. My kids, 7 and 4, are absolutely entranced by computers and love to sit down at our old-school 8-bit battlestation and bash things out. The elder has figured out how to do his maths homework on it, and the younger has become an expert at loading files and running them. None of this would be possible if I hadn't encouraged them to investigate computers by settin…

It seems to me, that you are exactly doing what I suggested: Provide the platform and let them make experiences on their own.

In case it wasn't clear - I was agreeing with you and contributing to furthering your point! :)

Re: Robert Morris: All About Programming

#53

Post by sushirain » Sun, Jan 18, 2015, 9:05 PM UTC

galori wrote: post #38

Can someone translate? Might be some good wisdom in there but that is the most convoluted, badly written several paragraphs I've seen in a while. Maybe they're taken out of context or something or assume some knowledge that is missing?

In sum, he never saw programming as work. Graham wrote that if you feel that what you do is not "work", then it indicates that what you do is a good career choice. But Morris says that even if someone explained it to him, he wouldn't have been able to grasp it back then. It took him a long time to realize that programming was more important to him than math, because of social pressure.

Re: Robert Morris: All About Programming

#54

Post by rwallace » Mon, Jan 19, 2015, 12:53 PM UTC

gwern wrote: post #32

pakled_engineer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small stealth mode startup in Vancouver, Canada that does custom DSLs for the oil & gas industry. I found the job on my local CL, they were advertising looking for anybody who had read SICP, or had experience doing functional programming. It doesn't pay a lot but enough to live comfortably while single plus I get to hack around in Scheme all day, though now they want me to learn Haskell too. I work 6hrs a day usually…

A job for the oil & gas industry which requires SICP level coders which doesn't pay well? I'm not sure what to think - that that industry really doesn't pay well, or that you need to read patio11's guide to salary negotiations.

Or that the employer correctly realized a six-hour working day is a valuable enough perk that they could exchange it for a substantial salary cut.

Re: Robert Morris: All About Programming

#55

Post by fit2rule » Mon, Jan 19, 2015, 2:47 PM UTC

nazka wrote: post #50

fit2rule wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, not everything involving generations is so myopic. My kids, 7 and 4, are absolutely entranced by computers and love to sit down at our old-school 8-bit battlestation and bash things out. The elder has figured out how to do his maths homework on it, and the younger has become an expert at loading files and running them. None of this would be possible if I hadn't encouraged them to investigate computers by settin…

I will be very interested if one day you write about it. How you "designed" the right battlestation (not too hard, but still challenging enough for their age), and how you get them interested while avoiding not to over push them. Really cool!

Actually I didn't have to do much beyond setting up the machines (in our case an Oric-1/Atmos) and getting the means together to load the old software archives on it.. once that was ready and booted, the kids just took over. It turns out that 8-bit computing is really accessible to little kids, just like it was for me in the 80's, and while that may have changed with the current generation: the old machines still live!

;)