Comments on: Back to BASIC

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 11:35:33 +0000

I’ve engaged with this, too, having got the “ZX Spec”/BBC/PCW Basic t-shirt. My own memories of the BASic age are that although it was easy to get started, and conveyed important concepts, it was incredibly time-consuming to make it do anything interesting or useful. And if you are trying to get kids interested, rapid pay-off is vital.

I’ve decided I ought to learn a real programming language, anyway, and am taking advice from my commenters – it’s currently about 60-40 between Python and Ruby. Python has been ported to Nokia/Symbian Series 60 OS, which is certainly an advance, as you can guarantee the kids will all have mobile phones.

By: TheSchwartz

TheSchwartz — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 15:18:27 +0000

I thought I’d let you know that David Brin replied to my blog about his article with some good clarification about “Why Johnny Can’t Code”. I’ve linked the blog exchange at my name’s URL. Seperately, from his web page: “What I didn’t expect was the flurry of intensely passionate replies!” :)

By: Amin

Amin — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 09:38:08 +0000

The fact that computers have almost become invisible suggests that children will not feel the need to program as acutely as I did when I got my first computer. I had no real choice then, but kids do these days.

By invisible I mean that to most kids a computer these days isn’t a computer. It’s a music library, or a communications conduit (MSN Messenger et al), or a games console, a word processor, whatever. Its purpose is no longer to computer, it is to do something else. Look how many ‘Joyces’ Amstrad sold when they called it a word processor and not a computer!

A bit like cars where once upon a time knowing about the engine was a good idea if you wanted to drive one and nowadays you barely need to know how to drive with all the bits and pieces on them.

I like the fact that children, or anyone for that matter, have so many other choices with their computer.

Seems like a good thing to me. The software stars of tomorrow will still be found. The rest of us can get on with doing something useful with our machines!

By: Phil

Phil — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 22:54:46 +0000

some sort of collosseum for hackable virtual robots that fight each other to the death

Robocode got my son and me into Java, briefly and rather abortively – there was a chasm to cross between modifying the default robots and coding up the kind of thing that won contests. I’m still intending to get into it properly some time. But Java’s not the most welcoming (or forgiving) of languages, for kids or aging ex-programmers.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 16:59:30 +0000

I did consider advocating JavaScript as a ready-made programming environment, but it has a few problems: standards are not universal across browsers, there is a lack of graphical capability, and browser debuggers tend to be very unhelpful. Also things like the DOM and event model are not simple nor intuitive. That said, someone could build a Firefox extension to solve all these problems, and have a simple in-browser line interpreter frontend for JS – that could work.

By: Jeremy Ruston

Jeremy Ruston — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 16:43:06 +0000

I *loved* BBC BASIC, and the whole 1983 Sunday Times-endorsed idea that you should get a home computer so that you could teach youself to program. It strikes me now that there is in fact a new “instantly accessible programming environment” – and it’s called a web browser. HTML+CSS+JavaScript offers a very similar environment: quick to get started, interpreted, forgiving, and easy to share.

By: Jane

Jane — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 15:28:19 +0000

My father was a lecturer in Computer Studies, his dept loathed BASIC because of the bad habits.

But it was the only computer language that I can remember at all I did dabble with Fortran and C but all forgotten now.

It was fun though writing little programmes that drew lines and printed out your name and such like, for my Computer Studies O level we had to write 4 programmes in BBC BASIC ah happy days.