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In the 80's, the local arcade owner in a podunk rural town could put up a random arcade machine from Japan, and the local kids would figure out how to play it.

In the 80's, the local arcade owner in a podunk rural town could put up a random arcade machine from Japan, and the local kids would figure out how to play it. (Then lose interest, because it was some stupid movie tie-in thing.) In the 80's, kids would run out of games on their dad's personal computer, then start typing in source code for additional games from paper magazines, and accidentally teach themselves how to program. I know this. I was one of those kids. Necessity is the mother of invention. Boredom is a fantastic motivator. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqKdEhx-dD4&t=135s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqKdEhx-dD4&t=135s

GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
Those machines generally had instructions on the attract screen and the ones that were too hard to figure out didn't get played. (Source: I was one of those kids too)
smilbandit 10y ago
my first adventure in programming was changing a snake program to use different ascii characters. then that got boring so i taught myself a little bit of basic so i could make it put random letters on the screen so i could move the snake around and eat letters to spell out bad words in the snake.
- gvurrdon 10y ago
  Mine was altering a BASIC space shooter so that one's laser beams would fire directly at the location of the target without having to manoeuvre so it was in one's crosshairs. The hacking was more fun than the game became after my modification.
pitaj 10y ago
This sounds like confirmation bias. I'm sure that this happened, but I doubt it resulted in any more kids being interested in and competent with computers. After all, I have similar anecdotes, and I grew up in the 2000s. I know several friends who that would also apply to. Generationally, I think the number of people able to accomplish intermediate computer maintenance as described in the article is probably about the same across the board. This article has one good point in my eyes: if you want people to learn, make them do it themselves. When my younger brother asks me, "how do I do [thing I know about], I tell him to Google it, first. Then I'll help him work the kinks out after he's at least tried to do something himself.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  After all, I have similar anecdotes, and I grew up in the 2000s. Another anecdote from 2014 watching a kid walk up to a Battlezone 1980 emulator: Waggles the joysticks around for 2 seconds. This causes the tank to waggle. Kid gives up.
  - pitaj 10y ago
    What's the purpose of this comment? Providing another anecdote doesn't invalidate my argument. Nor does it counter what you quoted there.
    - stcredzero 10y ago
      My thesis is that kids in days past would go to further lengths than kids nowadays to figure things out, mostly out of boredom. Middle class kids in the past also had access to "the sum of all human knowledge" through their public library and inter-library loans, but the barriers were higher than for kids growing up with the Internet. Nowadays, it seems like every kind of game imaginable is being implemented (albeit badly) by someone out there. Providing another anecdote doesn't invalidate my argument. Nor does it counter what you quoted there. Nope. Just sharing. Ok, fine, you win, I guess.

GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago

Those machines generally had instructions on the attract screen and the ones that were too hard to figure out didn't get played. (Source: I was one of those kids too)

smilbandit 10y ago

my first adventure in programming was changing a snake program to use different ascii characters. then that got boring so i taught myself a little bit of basic so i could make it put random letters on the screen so i could move the snake around and eat letters to spell out bad words in the snake.

gvurrdon 10y ago
Mine was altering a BASIC space shooter so that one's laser beams would fire directly at the location of the target without having to manoeuvre so it was in one's crosshairs. The hacking was more fun than the game became after my modification.

pitaj 10y ago

This sounds like confirmation bias. I'm sure that this happened, but I doubt it resulted in any more kids being interested in and competent with computers. After all, I have similar anecdotes, and I grew up in the 2000s. I know several friends who that would also apply to. Generationally, I think the number of people able to accomplish intermediate computer maintenance as described in the article is probably about the same across the board. This article has one good point in my eyes: if you want people to learn, make them do it themselves. When my younger brother asks me, "how do I do [thing I know about], I tell him to Google it, first. Then I'll help him work the kinks out after he's at least tried to do something himself.

stcredzero 10y ago
After all, I have similar anecdotes, and I grew up in the 2000s. Another anecdote from 2014 watching a kid walk up to a Battlezone 1980 emulator: Waggles the joysticks around for 2 seconds. This causes the tank to waggle. Kid gives up.
- pitaj 10y ago
  What's the purpose of this comment? Providing another anecdote doesn't invalidate my argument. Nor does it counter what you quoted there.
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    My thesis is that kids in days past would go to further lengths than kids nowadays to figure things out, mostly out of boredom. Middle class kids in the past also had access to "the sum of all human knowledge" through their public library and inter-library loans, but the barriers were higher than for kids growing up with the Internet. Nowadays, it seems like every kind of game imaginable is being implemented (albeit badly) by someone out there. Providing another anecdote doesn't invalidate my argument. Nor does it counter what you quoted there. Nope. Just sharing. Ok, fine, you win, I guess.