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As joeyh said, jumping to an IDE seems premature. But another problem is the lack of need. Back in 1980, there just were not that many games and other apps.
by all 16y ago
As joeyh said, jumping to an IDE seems premature. But another problem is the lack of need. Back in 1980, there just were not that many games and other apps. A computer was more or less an extension of electronics and was driven by "How does this thing work?". Now, computers are appliances. And even the most reliable appliances, as the old Maytag adverts used to show, require trained "technicians". But I, too, wonder how to recupe that wonder of "How things work" for the up-and-coming ranks of hackers.
- wazoox 16y agoBack in the 80's, people who wanted computers were geeks. Now everybody an his dog uses a computer; geeks are a tiny part of the whole. I suppose that geeks who want to know how things work, well, just learn it one way or another. the remaining 90% of the population won't ever know shit on how a computer works, because they're absolutely not interested in this matter.
- mechanical_fish 16y agoI think this is the answer. JS is the new BASIC - or a new BASIC, anyway - but it is harder to tell because the audience is more diffuse, and mixed up with so many other audiences. In the earliest days of PCs it was easy to spot the BASIC programmers: most people who owned a PC learned a little. What else was there to do with it? And computers were expensive, so odds were that if you owned one you were pretty fond of computers. Now the situation is like that in music: we are in a golden age of programming, but it is hard to appreciate because it is so diffuse and varied: The equivalent of the big arena rock show isn't there.