10 ms·

I think the suggestion to remove the kids' computer arises out of the expected likelihood that the kids will just load up Facebook, YouTube, Twitch etc. and ins

I think the suggestion to remove the kids' computer arises out of the expected likelihood that the kids will just load up Facebook, YouTube, Twitch etc. and install Steam, and never engage with anything other than those activities. When I was a kid and I spent hours on the computer, none of that stuff existed, and it was difficult _not_ to learn interesting things because the primitive nature of the computers forced me to figure out a lot of non-obvious things. I wanted to play computer games too, but sometimes I had to figure out pretty advanced troubleshooting processes to even launch a game (for example).

ryrobes 8y ago
Same. Had a Commodore 64 hooked up to a CRT in the living room. Thinking back - "a programming language as an 'operating system'" is actually still very cool idea for those reasons you mention above. Hell, even moving foward - in the 90s using DOS - you had to be somewhat computer literate to get anything to run well (esp games those days which bundled their own hw drivers, etc). HIMEM.SYS, different system boot files per application, etc. In some ways things are much better now... in some ways they are far far inferior. This mini-dichotomy reminds me of Rich Hickey's "Simple and Easy" talk. Much in favor of more Alan Kay, Bret Victor, Doug Engelbart type ideas coming to market as opposed to being "locked" (somewhat) in academia.