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My school was extremely poor and underfunded. I was using Apple IIs in the late 90s. If my school had them I’m sure 99% of all schools in the US have at least e
by malvosenior 8y ago
My school was extremely poor and underfunded. I was using Apple IIs in the late 90s. If my school had them I’m sure 99% of all schools in the US have at least early 80s computers available.
> I think the suggestion that the choice is between "learning to program" or "watching sports" is extremely reductive and not accurate to a lot of people's experiences.
I strongly disagree. That’s exactly what other people were doing while I was learning to master technology. We were all very poor. I’m not anymore, the vast majority of people I knew who didn’t use their time wisely still are.
- JanisL 8y agoIronically some of those older machines seem like they might have been good to learn to code on. I remember the first code I wrote was on some really old Apple computer with basic (I think it was Chipmunk Basic) and it was really quite straightforward compared with some of the things I deal with now. I don't know how favorably I would have responded to something like C++ or Java some other professional-oriented language that was starting to get popular at the time. Clearly as a professional I wouldn't use that now but having a low barrier to entry at that point in life seemed quite fortunate.
- sitkack 8y agoAnd the Apple II the parent is talking about aren't connected to the net. The singular purpose and tasking of loading Logo into machine like that is liberating. No distractions, one path forward, the keyboard, the screen, the manual and you.
- JanisL 8y agoYou raise a really good point there, I hadn't considered the distraction aspect when writing my comment but there's definitely a lot of benefit from reducing the distractions when learning.