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Childhood Computing

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Re: Childhood Computing

#111

Post by theragra »

pixel_popping wrote: post #6

I'll always remember that moment on RPG maker (probably around 9 years old) where suddenly I've understood Variables (I was experienced with HTML and so-on prior), a whole world was unlocked, VB6 programs became possible, everything "clicked" suddenly. I feel once you understand the fundamentals on how it works, it's easy to progress very fast as a child/teenager afterward. With my kid I want to ensure that fundament…

I remember how I started to make a simple text based game, and conditionals (in Pascal) were not enough. Ive asked my father, and he explained that the thing I want is possible with loops. At this moment, I was given all the tools that allow writing any kind of program.

Re: Childhood Computing

#112

Post by mintflow »

I do not have the luck to get access to computer in my childhood. But the articles still make me feel nostalgia, especially the sound. With limited resource, people at that times just create some good stuffs.

Re: Childhood Computing

#114

Post by Chronos74 »

My entire life has revolved around tech as a result of a Tandy 1000 SX in the mid 1980's. I'm not exactly sure how old I was, but it was single digits when my dad brought it home. He worked for a small, local retail chain and maintained their early computer-based point-of-sale systems, along with a mainframe for their office. I learned how to create batch files to set IRQ interrupts for the sound and graphics cards to play games before I learned to write in cursive. I went to a "computer camp" and learned how to write games in BASIC at 8 or 9, had my first online experiences using TandyNet, and went on to create my first website in the mid-90's using HTML 0.9. It was a crazy time, but it led me to my current IT career of about 30 years.

Re: Childhood Computing

#115

Post by jadbox »

Chronos74 wrote: post #114

My entire life has revolved around tech as a result of a Tandy 1000 SX in the mid 1980's. I'm not exactly sure how old I was, but it was single digits when my dad brought it home. He worked for a small, local retail chain and maintained their early computer-based point-of-sale systems, along with a mainframe for their office. I learned how to create batch files to set IRQ interrupts for the sound and graphics cards t…

I had the same Tandy 1000 SX and also a Commodore 64. My parents did not approve of video game, so outside of pacman, these were equipment to learn programming when I was in my single digits. My major complaint of today's computers is that they are getting harder to harder to 'learn' coding. When you used the Commodore for example, the interface was the programming language. In a way, you HAD to learn a little bit of programming to even use it. iOS devices for a long time made local development an impossibility, although the situation has improved a bit since the early days (still no JIT allowed, but I digress).

Re: Childhood Computing

#116

Post by irishcoffee »

c22 wrote: post #74
safety1st wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I essentially owe my career to two great strokes of luck. The first was that my father purchased a PC in the early 1990s to help out with his self-employed publishing business, and like most PCs of the time, it came preloaded with QBasic and the source code for a couple of games like GORILLA.BAS that an introverted kid with a lot of free time could mess around with. The second was attending a high school with a reaso…

> ...an unusually open minded computer teacher. I've heard this story several times before and I, myself, had an unusually open minded computer teacher as a youth. I'm beginning to suspect this attribute is is not so unusual amongst computer teachers as has been assumed.

I learned absolutely nothing from my AP compSci teacher in highschool, java was taught at the time, I missed the c++ version by a year.

He was awful. I learned nothing.

Re: Childhood Computing

#117

Post by jadbox »

yason wrote: post #59

I got my C64 in 1985. Obviously, I can revisit the graphics and sounds of that machine online now, via emulators and youtube videos. But one thing I always remember is the smell of warming circuit boards that oozed from the casing soon after you turned on the computer. Anecdotally, the cassette player that came with the machine had a misconfigured tape head. Because there was no internet nobody knew why it didn't loa…

I LOVE how the C64 OS was a programming language (BASIC). Even if you used the hardware the gaming, you had to learn a little bit of programming (LOAD "*",8,1).

Re: Childhood Computing

#118

Post by echelon »

vunderba wrote: post #65
echelon wrote: post #21

I remember the titles on the old Apple II machines at elementary school: - Oregon Trail - Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego - Super Solvers (the best of the lot) I also got a Windows 95 IBM Aptiva PC from my parents that had a lot of educational software. I can only remember some of it: - The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain (I loved this game - it had logic programming, 3D spatial reasoning tasks, biology, ...) - Encarta…

Awesome, you're one of the few people who played nearly the same set of games I did. My favorite was probably The Island of Dr. Brain, though all of the Dr. Brain games were great as a kid. One particularly hilarious part was right at the beginning of Island of Dr. Brain, back in the old-school days of manual-based copyright protection. The game would give you longitude and latitude coordinates, and you had to look t…

I love HN for this.

I'll go digging for your game!

Re: Childhood Computing

#119

Post by Chronos74 »

jadbox wrote: post #115
Chronos74 wrote: post #114

My entire life has revolved around tech as a result of a Tandy 1000 SX in the mid 1980's. I'm not exactly sure how old I was, but it was single digits when my dad brought it home. He worked for a small, local retail chain and maintained their early computer-based point-of-sale systems, along with a mainframe for their office. I learned how to create batch files to set IRQ interrupts for the sound and graphics cards t…

I had the same Tandy 1000 SX and also a Commodore 64. My parents did not approve of video game, so outside of pacman, these were equipment to learn programming when I was in my single digits. My major complaint of today's computers is that they are getting harder to harder to 'learn' coding. When you used the Commodore for example, the interface was the programming language. In a way, you HAD to learn a little bit of…

Yes, you really had to understand how a computer worked in order to do the most basic things that are now just taken for granted. How many people now even know what an IRQ interrupt is? Never mind writing a script to set the system parameters required just to launch a program.

Re: Childhood Computing

#120

Post by PebblesRox »

zakisaad wrote: post #79
daft_pink wrote: post #71

I too started using computers at a young age and loved them and even got my own Nintendo when I was young. I feel very conflicted about the current anti screen fad. My son is very young and my wife doesn’t want him to use screens at all. I don’t want him to use tik tok or facebook but maybe I will buy an apple 2 or setup a rpi emulator and play little old school games that weren’t available online.

We're currently at this stage with out kids, too. I think the staunch "no screen" mentality is a broad-stroke lever that non-technical thought leaders in the child wellness space have stuck to, and I understand where they come from. Though, as someone who owes his livelihood to being able to tinker and experiment with technology as a child, I'm looking toward a more measured approach. I may very well set up an airgap…

We set up a “kid laptop” for our kids (ages 3, 6 and 9) that has a short list of allowed websites and a curated set of installed programs.

We treat it like any other toy: they can pretty much play with it whenever they want for as long as they want. Of course they have to share it between the three of them, so there’s a natural limit there.

Every so often we’ll add something new; most recently I installed SimAnt after we were watching ants in our backyard.

So far we’ve been very happy with this approach!

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