3 ms·

Yes that was hugely important. You had a machine that was entirely safe to use - no risk of exposure to questionable content or malicious code, no risk of break

by gaius 8y ago

Yes that was hugely important. You had a machine that was entirely safe to use - no risk of exposure to questionable content or malicious code, no risk of breaking it because the OS and BASIC were in ROM - and fully documented down to the purpose of every byte in memory. Literally the only limit was your own imagination and ingenuity. That kind of experience doesn't really exist anymore, even the RPi doesn't come close.

jacquesm 8y ago
You can get close to that though using the RPi + a read-only mounted SD. It's still not going to be 'instant on' but it can be reasonably quick.
- gaius 8y ago
  It was not just about the speed, back then, it was also that a parent who didn't know much about this stuff could give it to their kid and just not worry about it. The RPi is closer to a modern PC than it is to an 80s 8-bit, even tho' it can run BBC BASIC.
  - digi_owl 8y ago
    Only for Timmy to get something naughty handed over via the sneakernet....
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  It still would have dozens of extra layers of abstraction and complexity to it. The 8-bit micro era was great because everything was simple. It wasn't necessarily easy in the sense that Linux Desktop users seem to think everyone wants things, but it was understandable. That's what's sadly missing from modern computing. Everyone involved with making anything new seems to have a complexity-fetish. Consequently, it is now 2018 and applications are still perceptably non-responsive even when performing the same tasks we used to do with technology several orders of magnitude less performant.
jdietrich 8y ago
Lessons were learned from the Raspberry Pi and were applied very effectively to the micro:bit. It's a $16 development board based around a Cortex M0 microcontroller with Bluetooth LE, an accelerometer/magnetometer, a 5x5 LED array and alligator clip compatible IO. I think it's the best platform for teaching the basics of CS - simple enough to be understandable, but powerful enough to be useful. Pupils can get started with a browser-based drag-and-drop code editor, then graduate to Scratch, Python, C or assembler. http://microbit.org/ http://microbit.org/
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
  But both the Bit and the Pi fall between two stools. 8-bit micros like the Spectrum and BBC were powerful enough to get useful work done, but simple enough to offer simple instant gratification. You could learn everything you needed about BASIC from a fairly small paper manual, and after that - or sometimes during - you learned the rest by example from monthly magazines. The monthly format worked very well, providing a digestible amount of information on a regular schedule. The Pi is a complete different experience. Command-line Linux is completely unsuited to most beginners, and desktop Linux really needs command-line skills to be usable. The Pi tries to teach Linux, basic electronics, Python (etc), and simple web tech all at the same time, and that's too much ground to cover at once. Meanwhile the Bit is too simple to be useful. You can make LEDs flash on and off, but that's not nearly as exciting as being able to write and play a complete game. I'm occasionally surprised no one has built an 8-bit-like neo-micro booting into the Python interpreter, which is probably the closest thing to BASIC we have today. Although given that everyone has a phone now, and most people have tablets and desktops, the ideal modern environment would probably be something like a more accessible version of Swift playgrounds - if only because that "You too can access incredible technology at home" thing is an historic relic now.
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    The kind of software you can write on an 8-bit micro just looks pathetic to kids who were raised on iPhones. Teaching kids to write application software is a long and painful slog, because of the huge gulf between expectation and reality. Removing the screen is the essential concept that makes the micro:bit such a great teaching tool. Moving the turtle in Logo is deathly boring, but blinking an LED or turning a motor with code is weirdly magical. Micro:bit is remarkably similar to the programmable badges you get at conferences like Defcon, which is no accident. It's tremendous fun to have a little gadget that you can tinker with and show off to your friends. Kids are natural hackers. Every time they grok a basic concept, they have twenty different ideas about what they could do with it. The micro:bit isn't a primitive computer - it's the brain of a robot, it's a burglar alarm, it's a fitness tracker, it's a million different things just waiting to be built. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35824446 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35824446

by gaius 8y ago

jacquesm 8y ago

You can get close to that though using the RPi + a read-only mounted SD. It's still not going to be 'instant on' but it can be reasonably quick.

gaius 8y ago
It was not just about the speed, back then, it was also that a parent who didn't know much about this stuff could give it to their kid and just not worry about it. The RPi is closer to a modern PC than it is to an 80s 8-bit, even tho' it can run BBC BASIC.
- digi_owl 8y ago
  Only for Timmy to get something naughty handed over via the sneakernet....
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
It still would have dozens of extra layers of abstraction and complexity to it. The 8-bit micro era was great because everything was simple. It wasn't necessarily easy in the sense that Linux Desktop users seem to think everyone wants things, but it was understandable. That's what's sadly missing from modern computing. Everyone involved with making anything new seems to have a complexity-fetish. Consequently, it is now 2018 and applications are still perceptably non-responsive even when performing the same tasks we used to do with technology several orders of magnitude less performant.

jdietrich 8y ago

Lessons were learned from the Raspberry Pi and were applied very effectively to the micro:bit. It's a $16 development board based around a Cortex M0 microcontroller with Bluetooth LE, an accelerometer/magnetometer, a 5x5 LED array and alligator clip compatible IO. I think it's the best platform for teaching the basics of CS - simple enough to be understandable, but powerful enough to be useful. Pupils can get started with a browser-based drag-and-drop code editor, then graduate to Scratch, Python, C or assembler. http://microbit.org/ http://microbit.org/

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
But both the Bit and the Pi fall between two stools. 8-bit micros like the Spectrum and BBC were powerful enough to get useful work done, but simple enough to offer simple instant gratification. You could learn everything you needed about BASIC from a fairly small paper manual, and after that - or sometimes during - you learned the rest by example from monthly magazines. The monthly format worked very well, providing a digestible amount of information on a regular schedule. The Pi is a complete different experience. Command-line Linux is completely unsuited to most beginners, and desktop Linux really needs command-line skills to be usable. The Pi tries to teach Linux, basic electronics, Python (etc), and simple web tech all at the same time, and that's too much ground to cover at once. Meanwhile the Bit is too simple to be useful. You can make LEDs flash on and off, but that's not nearly as exciting as being able to write and play a complete game. I'm occasionally surprised no one has built an 8-bit-like neo-micro booting into the Python interpreter, which is probably the closest thing to BASIC we have today. Although given that everyone has a phone now, and most people have tablets and desktops, the ideal modern environment would probably be something like a more accessible version of Swift playgrounds - if only because that "You too can access incredible technology at home" thing is an historic relic now.
- jdietrich 8y ago
  The kind of software you can write on an 8-bit micro just looks pathetic to kids who were raised on iPhones. Teaching kids to write application software is a long and painful slog, because of the huge gulf between expectation and reality. Removing the screen is the essential concept that makes the micro:bit such a great teaching tool. Moving the turtle in Logo is deathly boring, but blinking an LED or turning a motor with code is weirdly magical. Micro:bit is remarkably similar to the programmable badges you get at conferences like Defcon, which is no accident. It's tremendous fun to have a little gadget that you can tinker with and show off to your friends. Kids are natural hackers. Every time they grok a basic concept, they have twenty different ideas about what they could do with it. The micro:bit isn't a primitive computer - it's the brain of a robot, it's a burglar alarm, it's a fitness tracker, it's a million different things just waiting to be built. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35824446 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35824446