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The Computer Revolution Has yet to Happen

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Re: The Computer Revolution Has yet to Happen

#11

Post by nitrogen »

MCRed wrote: post #6

I grew up before the generation of kids who booted into basic-- I started programming with a soldering iron. I designed my first computer. Then I designed a video card for it. Then I had to write a BIOS for it. Here's the reality though, Hypercard was a failure. People didn't use BASIC on the Apple II. some did, sure, but most didn't. Most people are not programmers and not programming inclined. Apple gives away the…

But heres the thing. Most people don't care. It's never been a better time to be a programmer.

But the vast majority of people don't want to be.

That just means the tools aren't done yet.

Re: The Computer Revolution Has yet to Happen

#12

Post by daveguy »

bobby_9x wrote: post #2

more than a minority of specialists? All of the software, apps, and services out there should tell you that it's more than this. I've seen multiple articles talking about people as young as 10 years old creating apps. This wasn't possible in the 80s and 90s. I'm still not sure why adblock was thrown in there. It has only made it more difficult for indy sites and thw average person to make money and is helping to crea…

I started programming in the 80s with BASIC as an 8 year old. So yes, it was very possible in the 80s for kids younger than 10 to learn to program. AdBlock is in reference to the quote from the early 70's from Alan Kay as a suggestion of one of the first "simple programs" a computer user might want to program. This was in the 70s long before ARPA net was called the internet and he had the foresight to identify ads as a nemesis to an enjoyable user experience.

Re: The Computer Revolution Has yet to Happen

#15

Post by kemiller »

I think minecraft fits the bill pretty well actually. Kids make all kinds of things in there, and it's not fragile in the way traditional programming is.

The article sort of gets hung up on form factor. Tablets are yet another window into the universe of computing, and there's a lot of creation happening.

I suspect that the real promised land will need VR for Lego-like construction of components and/or AI-assisted compilers enabling a sort of DWIM programming. As it is programming is just too fragile to be of interest to the "laity."

Re: The Computer Revolution Has yet to Happen

#16

Post by manigandham »

nitrogen wrote: post #11
MCRed wrote: post #6

I grew up before the generation of kids who booted into basic-- I started programming with a soldering iron. I designed my first computer. Then I designed a video card for it. Then I had to write a BIOS for it. Here's the reality though, Hypercard was a failure. People didn't use BASIC on the Apple II. some did, sure, but most didn't. Most people are not programmers and not programming inclined. Apple gives away the…

But heres the thing. Most people don't care. It's never been a better time to be a programmer. But the vast majority of people don't want to be. That just means the tools aren't done yet.

Or that most people don't want to be...

Re: The Computer Revolution Has yet to Happen

#17

Post by ntumlin »

In my opinion the most powerful and useful thing a computer does isn't flappy birds or finding massive primes, but allowing people to communicate more easily. Everything the computer does on top of letting people tell things to other people half way across at world at the speed of light (or close enough) is just icing on the cake.

Re: The Computer Revolution Has yet to Happen

#18

Post by XenophileJKO »

MCRed wrote: post #6

I grew up before the generation of kids who booted into basic-- I started programming with a soldering iron. I designed my first computer. Then I designed a video card for it. Then I had to write a BIOS for it. Here's the reality though, Hypercard was a failure. People didn't use BASIC on the Apple II. some did, sure, but most didn't. Most people are not programmers and not programming inclined. Apple gives away the…

To be fair, Microsoft is also giving away a full featured IDE now.

Re: The Computer Revolution Has yet to Happen

#19

Post by greggman »

MCRed wrote: post #7
ised wrote: post #5

To the author: I could not agree more. In the long term history of computing, I would hope this stage we are in now is not the height of the "revolution". In my humble opinion, to which I am entitled, current Apple hardware is still well-designed like the Apple hardware of the past, but none of it resembles a "bicycyle for the mind". These phones and tablets are "computers" but are programmable only by permission; th…

Don't be silly- Apple gives Xcode away for free, it is not bloated nor complex, nor particularly proprietary (who do you think made LLVM?) and you don't need to seek anyone's approval to upload your software to github or to run it on your own device. You can write Arm assembly on your laptop and run it on your iPhone even easier than you can on an rPi. You are really wasting time hating on Apple and spinning them (i…

XCode is not free. It costs 1 Mac. Given the price difference between the cheapest mac and the cheapest alternatives the cost of XCode something > $0

Posted from a mac

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