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> the things that a child could produce in BASIC weren't "interesting" That's just not true. For I/O you had keyboard input, screen output, and maybe file I/O

> the things that a child could produce in BASIC weren't "interesting" That's just not true. For I/O you had keyboard input, screen output, and maybe file I/O. 3 basic things that pretty much all programs used. Most commercial programs were 80x25 text mode with 16 color attributes. If you could learn to read scancodes from the keyboard, write text to the screen, and save/load files, (along with a few fundamental ideas like loops and conditionals) you could do almost anything that a commercial program did. With just that basic knowledge of a few simple things. It was simple because it was direct, there weren't 72 layers of abstraction and UI libraries that you had to know before you could even begin. You could also do pixel graphics, and again it was pretty simple - just set the screen mode and go with DRAW, LINE, CIRCLE, POKE etc. Again, no layers of indirection or libraries or window managers or canvases or DrawableObjectFactoryManagerFactoryInterfaces needed. One of the problems of modern attempts to recreate that feel is just that there is so much between the programmer and the hardware and it's so much more complex. Back then, we had single-user, single-process systems with direct access to simple hardware. Everything you needed to do was either a built-in part of the language or a BIOS/OS interrupt that you could call just as easily. It's hard to recreate that on a multi-user multitasking system with indirect access to more complicated hardware and countless layers of software between the programmer and the machine and BIOS/OS interrupts. Sure you can do more powerful stuff now, but it's not as interesting.

klodolph 8y ago
Direct access to hardware is not the difference. It is easier to get things done today. You can argue that it was simpler in 1985, but I don't think that simplicity is the right way to measure things. You can present an easy-to-use programming environment to people, accessible to newcomers, usable by experts, and it doesn't have to be simple but it has to be possible to use it in simple ways. Just personal observations here. Someone with a computer in 2019 can download Unity, which is free, and watch a tutorial on YouTube, which is also free. With near zero understanding of what is going on, and no prior experience, they can have some kind of rudimentary platformer working within hours. This is then a good starting point to learn programming (you can dive into C#) or you can continue to jumble together copy/pasted bits of code that you see online (kind of like how I remember doing with BASIC and library books). Sure, there are a bunch of layers of abstraction, and those abstractions will break down all the time. You don't need to learn those abstraction layers, you can stay at the top layer and still get good work done, maybe working around a few problems that you don't understand from time to time by futzing around with stuff until it works. Or you can dive in and try to understand what's underneath an abstraction. That's the whole point of having abstractions in the first place. They exist to hide the complexity, to let you get work done without understanding the entire system. 72 layers of abstraction is a bit of an exaggeration. I'd say if BASIC has three layers (interpreter/machine code/hardware), Unity only has six (editor/scripts/engine/os/machine code/hardware), but who knows how you count them. In my experience, watching people learn how to create things, it has never been easier to learn programming and start building things. The main difference is that in 1985, programming was considered an essential computer skill, and in 2019, you're expected not to program. BASIC was amazing because it was what you saw on the screen when you turned your computer on, nothing more.

klodolph 8y ago

Direct access to hardware is not the difference. It is easier to get things done today. You can argue that it was simpler in 1985, but I don't think that simplicity is the right way to measure things. You can present an easy-to-use programming environment to people, accessible to newcomers, usable by experts, and it doesn't have to be simple but it has to be possible to use it in simple ways. Just personal observations here. Someone with a computer in 2019 can download Unity, which is free, and watch a tutorial on YouTube, which is also free. With near zero understanding of what is going on, and no prior experience, they can have some kind of rudimentary platformer working within hours. This is then a good starting point to learn programming (you can dive into C#) or you can continue to jumble together copy/pasted bits of code that you see online (kind of like how I remember doing with BASIC and library books). Sure, there are a bunch of layers of abstraction, and those abstractions will break down all the time. You don't need to learn those abstraction layers, you can stay at the top layer and still get good work done, maybe working around a few problems that you don't understand from time to time by futzing around with stuff until it works. Or you can dive in and try to understand what's underneath an abstraction. That's the whole point of having abstractions in the first place. They exist to hide the complexity, to let you get work done without understanding the entire system. 72 layers of abstraction is a bit of an exaggeration. I'd say if BASIC has three layers (interpreter/machine code/hardware), Unity only has six (editor/scripts/engine/os/machine code/hardware), but who knows how you count them. In my experience, watching people learn how to create things, it has never been easier to learn programming and start building things. The main difference is that in 1985, programming was considered an essential computer skill, and in 2019, you're expected not to program. BASIC was amazing because it was what you saw on the screen when you turned your computer on, nothing more.