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Give kids the tools to program their own games and they will be plenty motivated to learn the skills. That's how I got started, was having a TI calculator with

Give kids the tools to program their own games and they will be plenty motivated to learn the skills. That's how I got started, was having a TI calculator with a full TI-BASIC programming language in it. I was sitting in my classes and programming games while listening to the teacher at the same time. I wish there was something equivalent in modern devices, but devices in general are too sandboxed, and pretty much all require programming from the computer, which interferes with kids being able to code from wherever they're at, because they have to go and do what their parents/teachers/etc tell them to do. Back then I could access the graphing calculator, from code, and draw my own graphics directly to it, or create native menus (great for choose your own adventure games), check key input realtime, all sorts of fun things. I don't know an existing mobile device that allows native access to things from code on the device, and that sucks.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> I wish there was something equivalent in modern devices, but devices in general are too sandboxed, and pretty much all require programming from the computer, which interferes with kids being able to code from wherever they're at, because they have to go and do what their parents/teachers/etc tell them to do. On Android (without rooting or any other "magic") there are plenty of fairly complete programming environments with comprehensive access to device features (including at least one dialect of BASIC with fairly comprehensive access to sensors, etc.), and there are even dev environments where you can build Android apps on device. iOS may be "too sandboxed" to allow as much freedom (back when I was using iOS, I remember some similar things, but they were much more restricted than what was on Android at the time, don't know how that has changed since), but if so that's an iOS thing, not a "modern devices" thing.
- cableshaft 10y ago
  That's cool. Which apps? I do have an Android phone myself. I only use iOS for tablets nowadays. And that being said, really there should (also) be something built into every device, so everyone has it and can be curious what it is and can look it up and tinker with it. Having to download apps requires them to be actively looking for it, and every IDE is competing with each other and fracturing the community and support behind it. (They should exist as alternatives, I just want something built in also).
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    FASL, BASIC!, Pocket Code, QPython/QPython3, Ruboto, and AIDE are among the ones out there in this area.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> I wish there was something equivalent in modern devices, but devices in general are too sandboxed, and pretty much all require programming from the computer, which interferes with kids being able to code from wherever they're at, because they have to go and do what their parents/teachers/etc tell them to do. On Android (without rooting or any other "magic") there are plenty of fairly complete programming environments with comprehensive access to device features (including at least one dialect of BASIC with fairly comprehensive access to sensors, etc.), and there are even dev environments where you can build Android apps on device. iOS may be "too sandboxed" to allow as much freedom (back when I was using iOS, I remember some similar things, but they were much more restricted than what was on Android at the time, don't know how that has changed since), but if so that's an iOS thing, not a "modern devices" thing.

cableshaft 10y ago
That's cool. Which apps? I do have an Android phone myself. I only use iOS for tablets nowadays. And that being said, really there should (also) be something built into every device, so everyone has it and can be curious what it is and can look it up and tinker with it. Having to download apps requires them to be actively looking for it, and every IDE is competing with each other and fracturing the community and support behind it. (They should exist as alternatives, I just want something built in also).
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  FASL, BASIC!, Pocket Code, QPython/QPython3, Ruboto, and AIDE are among the ones out there in this area.