9 ms·

I'm only 25 yet I taught myself how to program on an Apple //e in elementary and middle schools. Furthermore, today's computing environments are arguably less

I'm only 25 yet I taught myself how to program on an Apple //e in elementary and middle schools. Furthermore, today's computing environments are arguably less conducive to autodidactism. When the Apple II booted it dropped you at a BASIC prompt.

rbanffy 16y ago
> today's computing environments are arguably less conducive to autodidactism I believe this fact cannot be overestimated.
- zoul 16y ago
  When I was learning to program there was no Internet and there were preciously few technical books on the market. Often I had to resort to trial and error, where error could easily mean watching my machine rebooting, since there was little memory protection. Obviously I now see the world with different eyes, but it seems to me that today's computing world is much more suited to self-learning.
  - iqster 16y ago
    You're right in that there are more learning resources - ebooks and lectures galore! However, the complexity of software systems has increased quite a bit too. This complexity, and the ensuing layers of abstraction are enemies to learning IMHO. Here's a personal anecdote ... I remember having a vague understanding of MFC for a number of years, until one day I came across a manual of MFC 1.0. For whatever reason, I went through the old book and came out with a strong understanding of main class structure and motivation behind the framework. I was a bit surprised that the tomes on the subject (and I had many of the latest at that time) were thick but lack some of the essential ideas.
    - kenjackson 16y ago
      But web development, while very abstract, is very simple. Sure there are tons of frameworks, but you can still do great stuff with just css/html/jquery/server. And the amount of stuff on the web makes it that much easier.
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        Still, you have to understand a lot of very abstract stuff to get what _ means in Jquery. There is a world of difference between that and 8-bit BASIC. While learning 8-bit BASIC may not be the optimal path between a neophyte and a computer scientist, it strikes a nice balance between high and low level.
      - dedward 16y ago
        Just for debate sake (because I tend to feel as you do) letm e take the other side (although we could be arguing semantics around the world simple.... so leaving that aside) Is making a web page simple? Yes. Is making a web page do cool stuff simple? Yes. And it's way cooler than the logo and basic (and worse) of my youth. IS "web development" simple? Not in the slightest, as a generalization. The web is the UI component of an application. That application could be as complex as any other - but instead of a simple visual toolkit for our GUI, we have to understand a bundle of technologies that is constantly changing (HTML, CSS, JS), plus the end user platform (browser) and all it's quirks.... now throw mobile in,now throw in that some understanding of the network itself is required. Thing are more open now, information is more readily available, and there is certainly a lot to choose from. Further, there's the audience - you can now publish your apps to the world immediately, you don't need to get recognized and published on paper or through a publisher. So a simple, silly little game hacked up in javascript/html5 by a kid (yay kid! You did more than I did at you age, keep it up!) has more impact and visibility than did similar feats by similar kids back in the 8-bit days when they figured out how to make my CRT do things God didn't intend it to do all for my amusement.
        kenjackson 16y ago
        Web development as a full blown software engineering profession is not simple. But what I meant is that I think I'd find it just as easy, if not easier, to teach a 12 year old basic web development; and produce something they'd find interesting, while being educational, as it would be to do this with 8bit BASIC. And the tools now are so much better. I remember as a kid using graph paper to draw sprites, and the converting the images to hex streams by hand. Not mentally challenging, but tedious and error prone.
- mturmon 16y ago
  I think the web browser is the new place where you can teach yourself with immediate feedback. (I also learned from the Apple BASIC prompt, and simultaneously from the HP-41 command language.)
agentultra 16y ago
I don't think I can agree. I'm 29 and learned BASIC on an Apple II. While remembering what it was like makes me nostalgic for simpler times, I don't kid myself. It sucked. I had to read out of scrappy library copies of Byte and Compute magazine. There were hours of trial and error. And worst of all, it all went away when you turned off the machine unless you had one of those notoriously unreliable tape machines. Contrast that to my first experiences with Linux nearly a decade later. I had man pages, Usenet, IRC, and the web; better hardware, an operating system, developer tools, and free compilers! I learned about Perl and dynamic languages (I was into C at the time). I slowly started learning about how operating systems worked. It was a far more conducive environment for learning. All of this information was right there on the computer. No more trudging down to the library or throwing away my money on thick technical manuals and trial-version compilers. I'd say modern FOSS computing environments are the most conducive to learning. The Apple II was a toy compared to what we have now.
- apgwoz 16y ago
  And, when you booted into GNU/Linux, you also had a web browser, chat programs, games, etc. The possibilities for distractions are numerous. Contrast that to a BASIC prompt. If you go to your computer to learn BASIC, as long as you are sitting in front of the computer and actively staring at it, you're either going to: a) get bored as hell by doing nothing b) type some stuff in from your magazine and execute (thereby learning "something" along the way because of typos, pattern recognition, etc. (of course you'll /then/ get distracted, but you had to work a bit) c) write a program from scratch by exploration, or need.
  - reedlaw 16y ago
    If anyone wants to try something that approximates a computer that boots into a BASIC prompt, try AVR programming or Arduino. It's either C or assembler and you've got to use mainly reference manuals. Arduino has more resources and thus may be more prone to distraction.
    - enduser 16y ago
adbge 16y ago
> Furthermore, today's computing environments are arguably less conducive to autodidactism. You might be interested in this if you haven't seen it before: http://viewsourcecode.org/why/hacking/theLittleCodersPredicament.html http://viewsourcecode.org/why/hacking/theLittleCodersPredica...
didip 16y ago
To rekindle the nostalgia, headless linux gives you bash prompt.
gersh 16y ago
I think compilers today have much better error messages, and you can always turn to sites like Stack Overflow and Google. Back then, if it wasn't in some undecipherable manual, you had to figure it out by trial and error. When I first learned to program, I recall struggling with run-on loops. I'm not sure if that is even really an issue with modern compilers. There wer things that it was just hard to figure out. Today, I can just go to Google.

rbanffy 16y ago

> today's computing environments are arguably less conducive to autodidactism I believe this fact cannot be overestimated.

zoul 16y ago
When I was learning to program there was no Internet and there were preciously few technical books on the market. Often I had to resort to trial and error, where error could easily mean watching my machine rebooting, since there was little memory protection. Obviously I now see the world with different eyes, but it seems to me that today's computing world is much more suited to self-learning.
- iqster 16y ago
  You're right in that there are more learning resources - ebooks and lectures galore! However, the complexity of software systems has increased quite a bit too. This complexity, and the ensuing layers of abstraction are enemies to learning IMHO. Here's a personal anecdote ... I remember having a vague understanding of MFC for a number of years, until one day I came across a manual of MFC 1.0. For whatever reason, I went through the old book and came out with a strong understanding of main class structure and motivation behind the framework. I was a bit surprised that the tomes on the subject (and I had many of the latest at that time) were thick but lack some of the essential ideas.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    But web development, while very abstract, is very simple. Sure there are tons of frameworks, but you can still do great stuff with just css/html/jquery/server. And the amount of stuff on the web makes it that much easier.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      Still, you have to understand a lot of very abstract stuff to get what _ means in Jquery. There is a world of difference between that and 8-bit BASIC. While learning 8-bit BASIC may not be the optimal path between a neophyte and a computer scientist, it strikes a nice balance between high and low level.
    - dedward 16y ago
      Just for debate sake (because I tend to feel as you do) letm e take the other side (although we could be arguing semantics around the world simple.... so leaving that aside) Is making a web page simple? Yes. Is making a web page do cool stuff simple? Yes. And it's way cooler than the logo and basic (and worse) of my youth. IS "web development" simple? Not in the slightest, as a generalization. The web is the UI component of an application. That application could be as complex as any other - but instead of a simple visual toolkit for our GUI, we have to understand a bundle of technologies that is constantly changing (HTML, CSS, JS), plus the end user platform (browser) and all it's quirks.... now throw mobile in,now throw in that some understanding of the network itself is required. Thing are more open now, information is more readily available, and there is certainly a lot to choose from. Further, there's the audience - you can now publish your apps to the world immediately, you don't need to get recognized and published on paper or through a publisher. So a simple, silly little game hacked up in javascript/html5 by a kid (yay kid! You did more than I did at you age, keep it up!) has more impact and visibility than did similar feats by similar kids back in the 8-bit days when they figured out how to make my CRT do things God didn't intend it to do all for my amusement.
      - kenjackson 16y ago
        Web development as a full blown software engineering profession is not simple. But what I meant is that I think I'd find it just as easy, if not easier, to teach a 12 year old basic web development; and produce something they'd find interesting, while being educational, as it would be to do this with 8bit BASIC. And the tools now are so much better. I remember as a kid using graph paper to draw sprites, and the converting the images to hex streams by hand. Not mentally challenging, but tedious and error prone.
mturmon 16y ago
I think the web browser is the new place where you can teach yourself with immediate feedback. (I also learned from the Apple BASIC prompt, and simultaneously from the HP-41 command language.)

agentultra 16y ago

I don't think I can agree. I'm 29 and learned BASIC on an Apple II. While remembering what it was like makes me nostalgic for simpler times, I don't kid myself. It sucked. I had to read out of scrappy library copies of Byte and Compute magazine. There were hours of trial and error. And worst of all, it all went away when you turned off the machine unless you had one of those notoriously unreliable tape machines. Contrast that to my first experiences with Linux nearly a decade later. I had man pages, Usenet, IRC, and the web; better hardware, an operating system, developer tools, and free compilers! I learned about Perl and dynamic languages (I was into C at the time). I slowly started learning about how operating systems worked. It was a far more conducive environment for learning. All of this information was right there on the computer. No more trudging down to the library or throwing away my money on thick technical manuals and trial-version compilers. I'd say modern FOSS computing environments are the most conducive to learning. The Apple II was a toy compared to what we have now.

apgwoz 16y ago
And, when you booted into GNU/Linux, you also had a web browser, chat programs, games, etc. The possibilities for distractions are numerous. Contrast that to a BASIC prompt. If you go to your computer to learn BASIC, as long as you are sitting in front of the computer and actively staring at it, you're either going to: a) get bored as hell by doing nothing b) type some stuff in from your magazine and execute (thereby learning "something" along the way because of typos, pattern recognition, etc. (of course you'll /then/ get distracted, but you had to work a bit) c) write a program from scratch by exploration, or need.
- reedlaw 16y ago
  If anyone wants to try something that approximates a computer that boots into a BASIC prompt, try AVR programming or Arduino. It's either C or assembler and you've got to use mainly reference manuals. Arduino has more resources and thus may be more prone to distraction.
  - enduser 16y ago

adbge 16y ago

> Furthermore, today's computing environments are arguably less conducive to autodidactism. You might be interested in this if you haven't seen it before: http://viewsourcecode.org/why/hacking/theLittleCodersPredicament.html http://viewsourcecode.org/why/hacking/theLittleCodersPredica...

didip 16y ago

To rekindle the nostalgia, headless linux gives you bash prompt.

gersh 16y ago

I think compilers today have much better error messages, and you can always turn to sites like Stack Overflow and Google. Back then, if it wasn't in some undecipherable manual, you had to figure it out by trial and error. When I first learned to program, I recall struggling with run-on loops. I'm not sure if that is even really an issue with modern compilers. There wer things that it was just hard to figure out. Today, I can just go to Google.