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ExDOS is developed by Omar, “almost 14 years old”

exdos.eu.pn

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Re: ExDOS is developed by Omar, “almost 14 years old”

#91

Post by chetanahuja »

aninhumer wrote: post #90
chetanahuja wrote: post #24

Regarding learning assembly, I'm beginning to come to the view that it's in fact the best way to teach the first course in programming to kids. They don't come with any preconceived notions of what programming should look like and given an explicit, visual model of the computer, they quickly learn the small number of operations to write programs. More over, once they learn to do LDA A ADD TWO STA A DAT TWO 2 in C or…

Surely something like Logo has similar advantages (small set of simple instructions) without requiring students to learn about CPUs before they can start? Plus it means they get to draw pictures instead of relatively boring calculations. And switching to assembly seems like a pretty overkill solution to the = vs == problem.

the = vs == is just an example of how having a robust mental picture of how computers actually work makes high level programming more intuitive. And you don't really have to teach a real CPU for this to work. Check out that link I posted. It's a greatly simplified CPU simulator with visual feedback on every step the CPU is taking (e.g., PC increment, fetching the next instruction, storing something in memory etc.) It's great fun for kids to watch how a little program they wrote made the computer do all that work.

Re: ExDOS is developed by Omar, “almost 14 years old”

#92

Post by chetanahuja »

RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #35
chetanahuja wrote: post #24

Regarding learning assembly, I'm beginning to come to the view that it's in fact the best way to teach the first course in programming to kids. They don't come with any preconceived notions of what programming should look like and given an explicit, visual model of the computer, they quickly learn the small number of operations to write programs. More over, once they learn to do LDA A ADD TWO STA A DAT TWO 2 in C or…

I've had some success teaching middle schoolers with Chip8 and a structured assembler: http://johnearnest.github.io/Octo/

If you're still involved in teaching school kids some sort of assembly but still in a fun and visual way, I highly recommend checking out the link to LMC I posted above.

Re: ExDOS is developed by Omar, “almost 14 years old”

#94

Post by jacquesm »

dang wrote: post #86
jacquesm wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Omar, You can flesh out your profile by clicking on your name in the top right, suggest you add a link to your project there. Super neat to see your stuff, keep at it! Jacques

It wasn't Omar, just a troll using multiple accounts in this thread.

I was applying your 'principle of charity' and that's why I asked for him/her to update the profile instead of calling them out on being a troll.

Re: ExDOS is developed by Omar, “almost 14 years old”

#95

Post by themartorana »

tachion wrote: post #70
chetanahuja wrote: post #24

Regarding learning assembly, I'm beginning to come to the view that it's in fact the best way to teach the first course in programming to kids. They don't come with any preconceived notions of what programming should look like and given an explicit, visual model of the computer, they quickly learn the small number of operations to write programs. More over, once they learn to do LDA A ADD TWO STA A DAT TWO 2 in C or…

In my personal case I am not sure if it didnt end up 'bad' for me. The first language I've learned was 6502 ASM on C64 (and learned is a word of many degrees here, I can't say I've written anything serious in it, ever) and for some reason I've been struggling with many other languages for years to come after that - tried Perl, PHP, C, AmigaE, without being able to grasp any of those. Until I've met Python, that in fe…

Well yeah, except now I have some `while True:` statements to clean up...

Re: ExDOS is developed by Omar, “almost 14 years old”

#96

Post by _nedR »

pekk wrote: post #12
derefr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No joke: I strongly believe that "real programmers" do indeed write in assembler. Not x86 assembler, mind you. Rather, "real programmers" first compose an abstract machine semantics for the solution domain, create an instantiation of those semantics in the form of a virtual machine on some host architecture, and then express the solution in an assembler language targeting the abstract machine semantics. (See, for exa…

Can you explain why this is a smarter way to build software?

My personal opinion: Because there are very few if any leaky abstractions waiting to blow up in your face. True WYSIWYG.

Re: ExDOS is developed by Omar, “almost 14 years old”

#97

Post by vezzy-fnord »

iopq wrote: post #64
cbd1984 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're acting like this wouldn't be interesting if it were an adult doing it.

it wouldn't

I don't see why not, given that the threshold for plenty of Show HN entries that make it to the front page isn't high at all.

Re: ExDOS is developed by Omar, “almost 14 years old”

#98

Post by wtallis »

riffraff wrote: post #38
wtallis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kerfuffle about Brendan Eich was a direct result of him not being in a hacker role anymore.

how is that the case? Had he donated money in the middle of writing a while loop people would have said "ah well, but he's was working as a programmer"? Such things happen regardless of the role, the role just make them more relevant. There was a recent case (I'd rather not be specific, but about a month ago) in which people asked for a dev to leave open source project cause of his opinions. Sadly, I'm not even sure…

Eich donated the money in 2008, but nobody made a big deal of it until his promotion in 2014 to CEO. The standards for a project leader are clearly different than the standards for just any hacker.

Re: ExDOS is developed by Omar, “almost 14 years old”

#99

Post by trsohmers »

frest wrote: post #89
trsohmers wrote: post #27

This is anecdotal, but when I was his age and getting into the "real" tech world (and getting my work recognized), I really disliked my age being made a big deal. A big influence on my own view (and I think many others in this community) of being a "hacker" was Steven Levy's "Hacker Ethic", which specifically said: "Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not criteria such as degrees, age, race, sex, or position"…

Regarding ExDOS (or your EyePC), would we be discussing it right now if it weren't for the creator's age? Not to discount this work, but if it had been the side project of a mid-career engineer, it would be a non-story. Not because the work is good or bad, but people simply wouldn't care. The point being, you benefitted tremendously by your work being judged relative to your age, so it seems disingenuous for you to s…

Totally agree in regards to EyePC, but at that point (when I was 13) I had those sort of feelings. I prefaced my comment with that it was my opinion based on anecdotal evidence. Omar made a couple of comments here (which he seemed to have deleted) in which he said he was disappointed that his age was the main focus.

The main reason I brought this up was because even today (I know 19 is still young, but I am a full adult with 6+ years of professional experience) I am still judged by my age by many people and not my actual work, and today I think my current work is actually something worthy of extreme interest regardless of who developed it or how old they are.

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