9 ms·

"I’d imagine that for a large amount of computer programmers (currently in their 30’s)..." 40s/50s surely. the 80s is 30 years ago.

topbanana 9y ago
I'm still in my 30s and starting coding in the 80s!
- tomlong 9y ago
  I was born in 84, and used BBC micros at school.
- jeffwass 9y ago
  I'm in my (early) 40's and started coding in the (late) 70's
matthewwarren 9y ago
Well, I was basing that on my own age!! (born in the early 80's, still just-about in my 30's). But yes, I guess I should've extended it a bit :-)
PaulRobinson 9y ago
In the UK programming was taught on BBC Micros in pretty much every school from the age of 5-6 years old as part of the school curriculum. I'm in my late 30s and learned Logo and BASIC almost 35 years ago in the early-mid 1980s. I then went back to it when I was 11 and learned BASIC "properly", and then by 14 was writing C which is around the early-mid-1990s. Most of my colleagues from the UK went through a similar curve, taking in Atari and Amiga machines at home not just as games machines but piqued by their capability to produce software of their own. The UK 8-bit market was one of the biggest economic helpers the country has had in generations. We then went about squandering it. Whilst I was a teenager the school curriculums moved to teaching PowerPoint and Excel which basically meant STEM entrants at University fell off. I was one of the last years to be able to learn how to code at school. Detecting an impeding and urgent skills gap, a couple of years ago a proper computer science GCSE was kicked off (by the much maligned, but on this occasion perhaps quite right, Michael Gove MP), but only 11% of pupils in the UK sat it last year, and most schools are struggling to hire teachers so the quality of the kids they're turning out is a problem for us as a country and economy. This is something I'm spending a lot of time thinking about right now. An open-source set of text books with teacher notes might help a lot of kids get exposure to the skills they need for the workplace in 30 years, the way I got exposure. Yes, the RPi and microbits stuff is part of that, but there needs to be some steps beyond that. Kids need to be able to go home, look at the PC or laptop and think "I could make something on that", and get the guidance needed to do so.
- matthewwarren 9y ago
  > Most of my colleagues from the UK went through a similar curve, taking in Atari and Amiga machines at home not just as games machines but piqued by their capability to produce software of their own. Yep, that's exactly my programming history! > The UK 8-bit market was one of the biggest economic helpers the country has had in generations. We then went about squandering it. Yeah, such a shame that happened. I wonder why?
  - djthorpe 9y ago
    In my humble opinion, the home computer market fragmented into business machines (Amstrad's PCW and PC ranges) and gaming. Acorn and Sinclair [bought by Amstrad] failed to come up with the next generation of home computers. We now have the Raspberry Pi to fill the "home computer" niche but it's a very different proposition to the home computer of the 1980's.
    - mavhc 9y ago
      My school had Archimedes and I learned to program on those as well as BBCs. Acorn did go on to come up with the next but one generation of computers, the 10 or so ARM cores in every smart phone. In terms of defaults matter, shipping with a programming language by default is great. Also shipping with a 400 page manual explaining how to use that language was great, which Acorn did until about 1995 I guess. I was the first person in my school to use the school computer. I can't say we had programming lessons that often, did Logo in secondary school, but only the graphical parts. But the teachers let us type in programs from magazines, learn ourselves. Depends on what teacher you had really, if they knew programming they probably taught it. That's what I do now.
- SamColes 9y ago
  I turned 30 this year, born 1987, and I had no idea that I missed out on this kind of education by so few years. I remember there were a couple of BBC Micros sat getting dusty in the corners of a couple of classrooms in both my infant (year 1-2) and junior (year 3-6) schools, but we never used them. Instead we had brand new Windows machines on which we learnt Powerpoint, Excel and used Encarta. Joy.

topbanana 9y ago

I'm still in my 30s and starting coding in the 80s!

tomlong 9y ago
I was born in 84, and used BBC micros at school.
jeffwass 9y ago
I'm in my (early) 40's and started coding in the (late) 70's

matthewwarren 9y ago

Well, I was basing that on my own age!! (born in the early 80's, still just-about in my 30's). But yes, I guess I should've extended it a bit :-)

PaulRobinson 9y ago

In the UK programming was taught on BBC Micros in pretty much every school from the age of 5-6 years old as part of the school curriculum. I'm in my late 30s and learned Logo and BASIC almost 35 years ago in the early-mid 1980s. I then went back to it when I was 11 and learned BASIC "properly", and then by 14 was writing C which is around the early-mid-1990s. Most of my colleagues from the UK went through a similar curve, taking in Atari and Amiga machines at home not just as games machines but piqued by their capability to produce software of their own. The UK 8-bit market was one of the biggest economic helpers the country has had in generations. We then went about squandering it. Whilst I was a teenager the school curriculums moved to teaching PowerPoint and Excel which basically meant STEM entrants at University fell off. I was one of the last years to be able to learn how to code at school. Detecting an impeding and urgent skills gap, a couple of years ago a proper computer science GCSE was kicked off (by the much maligned, but on this occasion perhaps quite right, Michael Gove MP), but only 11% of pupils in the UK sat it last year, and most schools are struggling to hire teachers so the quality of the kids they're turning out is a problem for us as a country and economy. This is something I'm spending a lot of time thinking about right now. An open-source set of text books with teacher notes might help a lot of kids get exposure to the skills they need for the workplace in 30 years, the way I got exposure. Yes, the RPi and microbits stuff is part of that, but there needs to be some steps beyond that. Kids need to be able to go home, look at the PC or laptop and think "I could make something on that", and get the guidance needed to do so.

matthewwarren 9y ago
> Most of my colleagues from the UK went through a similar curve, taking in Atari and Amiga machines at home not just as games machines but piqued by their capability to produce software of their own. Yep, that's exactly my programming history! > The UK 8-bit market was one of the biggest economic helpers the country has had in generations. We then went about squandering it. Yeah, such a shame that happened. I wonder why?
- djthorpe 9y ago
  In my humble opinion, the home computer market fragmented into business machines (Amstrad's PCW and PC ranges) and gaming. Acorn and Sinclair [bought by Amstrad] failed to come up with the next generation of home computers. We now have the Raspberry Pi to fill the "home computer" niche but it's a very different proposition to the home computer of the 1980's.
  - mavhc 9y ago
    My school had Archimedes and I learned to program on those as well as BBCs. Acorn did go on to come up with the next but one generation of computers, the 10 or so ARM cores in every smart phone. In terms of defaults matter, shipping with a programming language by default is great. Also shipping with a 400 page manual explaining how to use that language was great, which Acorn did until about 1995 I guess. I was the first person in my school to use the school computer. I can't say we had programming lessons that often, did Logo in secondary school, but only the graphical parts. But the teachers let us type in programs from magazines, learn ourselves. Depends on what teacher you had really, if they knew programming they probably taught it. That's what I do now.
SamColes 9y ago
I turned 30 this year, born 1987, and I had no idea that I missed out on this kind of education by so few years. I remember there were a couple of BBC Micros sat getting dusty in the corners of a couple of classrooms in both my infant (year 1-2) and junior (year 3-6) schools, but we never used them. Instead we had brand new Windows machines on which we learnt Powerpoint, Excel and used Encarta. Joy.