8 ms·

How is programming less magical today than it was in the past? if anything it’s far more fulfilling now considering how much more one can accomplish.

by heyoni 8y ago

skybrian 8y ago
Some of it was that early PC's didn't come with any software other than a BASIC interpreter. So you had to write a little program (or type one in) to get it to do anything, and you weren't comparing your accomplishments to professionally-written programs that you could just download. So yes, making an early computer play a simple melody was magical.
ModernMech 8y ago
In the past you fired up an editor and the tools were built in and ready to use. Im thinking back to BASIC. Today you have to download and understand a stack of tools and languages before you get anything printing on the screen.
- rogual 8y ago
  How about this framing: back then, an IDE was called a "microcomputer" and you couldn't just download it for your existing personal communications device; you had to go to the store and buy it as a physical piece of hardware. We have it so much easier today!
- ebarns 8y ago
  Not necessarily true :( Python is pretty out of the box in my opinion. There is setup involved if you want to create proper dev environments but you can avoid it also. Always love how easy it is to jump straight in and start coding something.
  - nurettin 8y ago
    Fire up your python IDE and make a bouncing ball. Nowadays programming feels a lot like an MMORPG. You can't do a solo mission, lest you will get stuck behind some bushes unable to move. You have to go downtown, fetch some libraries, visit their documentation stores, check facebook, take a look at your stackoverflow pending events, polish your IDE to work with whatever you've just downloaded, copy-paste some code, refurniture until it works, then refactor until you are satisfied. Repeat forever. Before, all my turbo pascal adventures were solo missions. Batteries were included. I did not leave the IDE and did not need another book. I did not download additional manuals. It was all there.
    - FiddlyPack 8y ago
      Highly recommend you check out PICO-8
    - phtrivier 8y ago
      I share the overal nostalgia here (I learned BASIC on an Amstrad 6128 with nothing but a book and some teenage summer nights to waste.) I also agree that I don't know which took I would point out to a kid wanting to start today, that would not involve a probably complicated setup. That being said, I also remember being pretty frustrated that the best I was able to do - lacking resources, books, Internet, etc... - was put a couple of pixels around, and pretend it was a game (and be ashamed of it, even if it was in 1993 or something.) A kid starting Unity3D today, on the other hand, would probably, (after a few hours lost installing stuff), create a decent-looking game in a few weeks of following Youtube tutorials and stealing art assets all over the internet. Or is it not even possible ? Anyway, my questions would be: what kind missions where you doing, entirely solo ? Do you think the language itself had anything to do with the ease of starting ? Do you think it would be satisfying to someone to start with something that lets them draw stuff, bounce a ball, etc... in a "limited" language, in a "fake" environment, before diving into the "hard" part, trying to do it by hand, etc...
      - nurettin 8y ago
        Had the exact same experience with C= 64 and the guidebook that came with it. Never thought I was doing something silly peek/poke'ing memory and using data segments to represent sprites on screen. I was adding numbers to represent pixels on a 16 bit row as soon as I learned how addition worked at school. Later on, I was using sin/cos to represent motion as soon as I learned how trigonometry worked at school. Along with some bresenham algorithms book I found at a university to draw lines and circles more correctly and effectively. Some time later, I was visualizing prime numbers and geometric primitives in ways I could only imagine. Later, I was using derivatives to represent optimal solutions to targeting problems as soon as I learned how differential equations worked. Later, I was using field equations to represent gravitational pull in n-body simulations as soon as I learned about them. Then things became more abstract, like visualizing finite automata and abstracting logic circuits. Until that time, I did not need to leave the editor or download someone's libraries. It was all there. My age of discovery was a continuous experience that spanned over 10-13 years and defined my abilities as a programmer today. I was never ashamed of "putting two pixels together" or envious of kids that "could make a game in two weeks using stolen assets and unity" - a program that places sprites on screen using easing algorithms and accelerated graphics. More power to them.
- hutzlibu 8y ago
  open devtools in your browser. (f12 in chrome) type: console.log ("hello world") pretty simple
  - ModernMech 8y ago
    Do people actually use devtools to write code?
    - projectramo 8y ago
      To be fair, s/he was responding to "Today you have to download and understand a stack of tools and languages before you get anything printing on the screen." It is true that people don't generally ship code written in devtools, but then most of the programs shipped on the Commodore 64 were not written in basic. (Unless you count hundreds of peeks and pokes as basic.) I do miss the immediacy of the programming experience, but I also think the correct modern day analog of that is the browser.
      - ModernMech 8y ago
        > but I also think the correct modern day analog of that is the browser. The browser is exactly what I had in mind when I said "you have to learn a stack of languages". Sure, okay, console.log() gets you "hello world", but so does "echo" so maybe I placed the bar too low. Still, getting into the modern web experience requires you to learn HTML + CSS + Javascript and how they relate and interop. Fast forward a little bit from the BASIC days to Visual Basic. Back then you could write a desktop application with a GUI, controls, a window, and needed one language and one environment. I don't see how the browser world is easier or more approachable than that.
        hutzlibu 8y ago
        Well," Back then you could write a desktop application with a GUI, controls, a window, and needed one language and one environment. " you still had to learn the different gui frameworks and how they work. Also, if you want, you can write GUI in the browser without html/css, with the canvas element. There are frameworks for that, not sure how mature they are, though.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- simonh 8y ago
  Windows comes with vbscript built in. MacOS has Applescript, Python and a bunch more out of the box. Plus incredibly high quality languages, libraries and IDEs are just a few clicks away. My daughters are learning VB.NET at school here in the UK, using Visual Studio for Mac and more recently Windows Visual Studio on a laptop. My eldest is setting break points, inspecting variables, etc like a pro. She loves it. They both started learning with Scratch. Plus there are a slew of virtual consoles out there very much like the home computers of old except faster and far more convenient, plus very affordable kits such as Raspberry Pi. It's never been better.
- cr0sh 8y ago
  > In the past you fired up an editor and the tools were built in and ready to use. 1. Turn on the TV and the computer. 2. Welcome to BASIC. 3. Code. No editor to fire up - just instantly available.
Vanderson 8y ago
Because when I was a kid, and I turned on my Apple computer, I found I could start coding right now... I mean right now. Write and run. No apps, no compile, no editor, nothing. It was just a bizarre and wonderful thing. In 3rd grade I had a logo class, but I didn't get it right away because I didn't have logo at home. When I learned the "break" command from a friend, and some other command to show the code, I started printing every program I could. I didn't understand it, but it was like I found a secret world. I tried to show my son how to program something, and it took so many things to even get started in every environment we worked in. By the time you got some code out, a lot of effort was expended on non-productive things. Things that he stumbled over just to get to the code. With the Apple, there was literally nothing in between you and the code. I found out about lo-res graphics from a friend and made my own animations by drawing the screen (I used graph paper to map out my drawings) and I was able to draw black over parts of it and then draw something else. I figured this out on my own from experimenting. You can't experiment and "guess" through coding today, it's too complicated. Oh well, rant is over.

How is programming less magical today than it was in the past? if anything it’s far more fulfilling now considering how much more one can accomplish.

by heyoni 8y ago

How is programming less magical today than it was in the past? if anything it’s far more fulfilling now considering how much more one can accomplish.

skybrian 8y ago

Some of it was that early PC's didn't come with any software other than a BASIC interpreter. So you had to write a little program (or type one in) to get it to do anything, and you weren't comparing your accomplishments to professionally-written programs that you could just download. So yes, making an early computer play a simple melody was magical.

ModernMech 8y ago

In the past you fired up an editor and the tools were built in and ready to use. Im thinking back to BASIC. Today you have to download and understand a stack of tools and languages before you get anything printing on the screen.

rogual 8y ago
How about this framing: back then, an IDE was called a "microcomputer" and you couldn't just download it for your existing personal communications device; you had to go to the store and buy it as a physical piece of hardware. We have it so much easier today!
ebarns 8y ago
Not necessarily true :( Python is pretty out of the box in my opinion. There is setup involved if you want to create proper dev environments but you can avoid it also. Always love how easy it is to jump straight in and start coding something.
- nurettin 8y ago
  Fire up your python IDE and make a bouncing ball. Nowadays programming feels a lot like an MMORPG. You can't do a solo mission, lest you will get stuck behind some bushes unable to move. You have to go downtown, fetch some libraries, visit their documentation stores, check facebook, take a look at your stackoverflow pending events, polish your IDE to work with whatever you've just downloaded, copy-paste some code, refurniture until it works, then refactor until you are satisfied. Repeat forever. Before, all my turbo pascal adventures were solo missions. Batteries were included. I did not leave the IDE and did not need another book. I did not download additional manuals. It was all there.
  - FiddlyPack 8y ago
    Highly recommend you check out PICO-8
  - phtrivier 8y ago
    I share the overal nostalgia here (I learned BASIC on an Amstrad 6128 with nothing but a book and some teenage summer nights to waste.) I also agree that I don't know which took I would point out to a kid wanting to start today, that would not involve a probably complicated setup. That being said, I also remember being pretty frustrated that the best I was able to do - lacking resources, books, Internet, etc... - was put a couple of pixels around, and pretend it was a game (and be ashamed of it, even if it was in 1993 or something.) A kid starting Unity3D today, on the other hand, would probably, (after a few hours lost installing stuff), create a decent-looking game in a few weeks of following Youtube tutorials and stealing art assets all over the internet. Or is it not even possible ? Anyway, my questions would be: what kind missions where you doing, entirely solo ? Do you think the language itself had anything to do with the ease of starting ? Do you think it would be satisfying to someone to start with something that lets them draw stuff, bounce a ball, etc... in a "limited" language, in a "fake" environment, before diving into the "hard" part, trying to do it by hand, etc...
    - nurettin 8y ago
      Had the exact same experience with C= 64 and the guidebook that came with it. Never thought I was doing something silly peek/poke'ing memory and using data segments to represent sprites on screen. I was adding numbers to represent pixels on a 16 bit row as soon as I learned how addition worked at school. Later on, I was using sin/cos to represent motion as soon as I learned how trigonometry worked at school. Along with some bresenham algorithms book I found at a university to draw lines and circles more correctly and effectively. Some time later, I was visualizing prime numbers and geometric primitives in ways I could only imagine. Later, I was using derivatives to represent optimal solutions to targeting problems as soon as I learned how differential equations worked. Later, I was using field equations to represent gravitational pull in n-body simulations as soon as I learned about them. Then things became more abstract, like visualizing finite automata and abstracting logic circuits. Until that time, I did not need to leave the editor or download someone's libraries. It was all there. My age of discovery was a continuous experience that spanned over 10-13 years and defined my abilities as a programmer today. I was never ashamed of "putting two pixels together" or envious of kids that "could make a game in two weeks using stolen assets and unity" - a program that places sprites on screen using easing algorithms and accelerated graphics. More power to them.
hutzlibu 8y ago
open devtools in your browser. (f12 in chrome) type: console.log ("hello world") pretty simple
- ModernMech 8y ago
  Do people actually use devtools to write code?
  - projectramo 8y ago
    To be fair, s/he was responding to "Today you have to download and understand a stack of tools and languages before you get anything printing on the screen." It is true that people don't generally ship code written in devtools, but then most of the programs shipped on the Commodore 64 were not written in basic. (Unless you count hundreds of peeks and pokes as basic.) I do miss the immediacy of the programming experience, but I also think the correct modern day analog of that is the browser.
    - ModernMech 8y ago
      > but I also think the correct modern day analog of that is the browser. The browser is exactly what I had in mind when I said "you have to learn a stack of languages". Sure, okay, console.log() gets you "hello world", but so does "echo" so maybe I placed the bar too low. Still, getting into the modern web experience requires you to learn HTML + CSS + Javascript and how they relate and interop. Fast forward a little bit from the BASIC days to Visual Basic. Back then you could write a desktop application with a GUI, controls, a window, and needed one language and one environment. I don't see how the browser world is easier or more approachable than that.
      - hutzlibu 8y ago
        Well," Back then you could write a desktop application with a GUI, controls, a window, and needed one language and one environment. " you still had to learn the different gui frameworks and how they work. Also, if you want, you can write GUI in the browser without html/css, with the canvas element. There are frameworks for that, not sure how mature they are, though.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
simonh 8y ago
Windows comes with vbscript built in. MacOS has Applescript, Python and a bunch more out of the box. Plus incredibly high quality languages, libraries and IDEs are just a few clicks away. My daughters are learning VB.NET at school here in the UK, using Visual Studio for Mac and more recently Windows Visual Studio on a laptop. My eldest is setting break points, inspecting variables, etc like a pro. She loves it. They both started learning with Scratch. Plus there are a slew of virtual consoles out there very much like the home computers of old except faster and far more convenient, plus very affordable kits such as Raspberry Pi. It's never been better.
cr0sh 8y ago
> In the past you fired up an editor and the tools were built in and ready to use. 1. Turn on the TV and the computer. 2. Welcome to BASIC. 3. Code. No editor to fire up - just instantly available.

Vanderson 8y ago

Because when I was a kid, and I turned on my Apple computer, I found I could start coding right now... I mean right now. Write and run. No apps, no compile, no editor, nothing. It was just a bizarre and wonderful thing. In 3rd grade I had a logo class, but I didn't get it right away because I didn't have logo at home. When I learned the "break" command from a friend, and some other command to show the code, I started printing every program I could. I didn't understand it, but it was like I found a secret world. I tried to show my son how to program something, and it took so many things to even get started in every environment we worked in. By the time you got some code out, a lot of effort was expended on non-productive things. Things that he stumbled over just to get to the code. With the Apple, there was literally nothing in between you and the code. I found out about lo-res graphics from a friend and made my own animations by drawing the screen (I used graph paper to map out my drawings) and I was able to draw black over parts of it and then draw something else. I figured this out on my own from experimenting. You can't experiment and "guess" through coding today, it's too complicated. Oh well, rant is over.