4 ms·

I understand your worry, but your TI calculator was a tinkerer niche that was similar to the openness and simplicity of early home computers. Different niches p

by dv_dt 9y ago

I understand your worry, but your TI calculator was a tinkerer niche that was similar to the openness and simplicity of early home computers. Different niches proliferate, grow, and wane all the time. After you and TI calcs, probably came a generations of web programming tinkerers, and hobby makers and minecrafters. People who are interested in programming will hopefully find their own starting niches. Hopefully we don't ever stop opening up new areas - I think the best we can do as a community is promote tinkering in any form to provide a variety of avenues for kids to get exposed in different ways.

johnmaguire2013 9y ago
> probably came a generations of web programming tinkerers Neopets allowed "pet pages" containing HTML when I was 10 years old, and this was my first foray into programming.
- seangrogg 9y ago
  Likewise; to this day I still talk about how Neopets' pet pages were my introduction to building web content.
  - Apocryphon 9y ago
    Neopets, MySpace, Xanga, Angelfire, Tripod, Geocities...
    - seangrogg 9y ago
      Minus Xanga, I made heaps of terrible UI decisions on those platforms. Good times =)
- giggles_giggles 9y ago
  My girlfriend, otherwise non-technical, still maintains one of these. There's this huge tribal knowledge built up around copy-paste CSS hacks to enable things like tab navigation all on one page with no JS. It's actually pretty wild some of the stuff these folks do, especially since almost none of them have any technical knowledge and it's all trial-and-error and sharing what works through the forums. The amount of hackery they do for their forum guild pages (hosted as pet pages) and such almost blows my mind more than the fact that Neopets is still around and somewhat active after all these years.
donkeyd 9y ago
> your TI calculator was a tinkerer niche that was similar to the openness and simplicity of early home computers It wasn't in the Netherlands. A graphical calculator was required for math and many kids learned at least some programming by creating their own little programs to cheat in tests. Also, you could get code for games and then program them. The newer ones with USB cables made adding games much easier though.
- cavanasm 9y ago
  In my public high school in the US, it was required for all my math classes past basic algebra, but I only knew one person who ever tried to code anything on it themselves (although people transferred games pulled online frequently; this was early 00s, transfer was this weird USB to something that looked like an headphone jack to connect to computer), and there were either test calculators, or an instructor would clear RAM.
  - Chaebixi 9y ago
    > to something that looked like an headphone jack to connect to computer The word you're looking for is "serial port."
cableshaft 9y ago
I'm sure they still exist, but like I mentioned further down, none of those are very portable. When you're a kid, you're often forced to be away from home and your computer, because of parents or school or other things, and having something onhand to create with was wonderful when I was a kid, no matter where I was. I carried around pretty much everywhere.

by dv_dt 9y ago

johnmaguire2013 9y ago

> probably came a generations of web programming tinkerers Neopets allowed "pet pages" containing HTML when I was 10 years old, and this was my first foray into programming.

seangrogg 9y ago
Likewise; to this day I still talk about how Neopets' pet pages were my introduction to building web content.
- Apocryphon 9y ago
  Neopets, MySpace, Xanga, Angelfire, Tripod, Geocities...
  - seangrogg 9y ago
    Minus Xanga, I made heaps of terrible UI decisions on those platforms. Good times =)
giggles_giggles 9y ago
My girlfriend, otherwise non-technical, still maintains one of these. There's this huge tribal knowledge built up around copy-paste CSS hacks to enable things like tab navigation all on one page with no JS. It's actually pretty wild some of the stuff these folks do, especially since almost none of them have any technical knowledge and it's all trial-and-error and sharing what works through the forums. The amount of hackery they do for their forum guild pages (hosted as pet pages) and such almost blows my mind more than the fact that Neopets is still around and somewhat active after all these years.

donkeyd 9y ago

> your TI calculator was a tinkerer niche that was similar to the openness and simplicity of early home computers It wasn't in the Netherlands. A graphical calculator was required for math and many kids learned at least some programming by creating their own little programs to cheat in tests. Also, you could get code for games and then program them. The newer ones with USB cables made adding games much easier though.

cavanasm 9y ago
In my public high school in the US, it was required for all my math classes past basic algebra, but I only knew one person who ever tried to code anything on it themselves (although people transferred games pulled online frequently; this was early 00s, transfer was this weird USB to something that looked like an headphone jack to connect to computer), and there were either test calculators, or an instructor would clear RAM.
- Chaebixi 9y ago
  > to something that looked like an headphone jack to connect to computer The word you're looking for is "serial port."

cableshaft 9y ago

I'm sure they still exist, but like I mentioned further down, none of those are very portable. When you're a kid, you're often forced to be away from home and your computer, because of parents or school or other things, and having something onhand to create with was wonderful when I was a kid, no matter where I was. I carried around pretty much everywhere.