4 ms·

I feel fortunate that, as a child of the early 80s, by the time I started programming (age 8 or so), it was the late 80s and these personal computers were avail

I feel fortunate that, as a child of the early 80s, by the time I started programming (age 8 or so), it was the late 80s and these personal computers were available for cheap at yard sales. One of the first I owned was a VIC20, which I think I bought (or convinced my parents to buy) with all the peripherals at a garage sale for $30. I got a C64 soon after in a similar way. A few years later, my dad would bring home IBM PC XTs and ATs they were throwing out at his work. The rest is, as they say, history. I loved these books, and I'm pretty sure I had almost the complete library. A few of these books, a curious kid, and a simple computer that boots directly into BASIC, with no distractions.

enneff 4y ago
Basically describes my experience too. One thing that was amazing about this time is that even a 10yo (as I was) could understand almost everything that was going on in those machines (in a functional way, if not the finer details). Then as we grew up the programming world became more complex, and we were able to track that complexity as it happened. I don’t envy new programmers today who have to contend with vast complexity even to do the simplest of things.
- davb 4y ago
  I, too, miss the days where it was possible to understand every component, every bit, every abstraction inside a computer. It’s virtually impossible now, not least because there are so many microcontrollers and microprocessors running proprietary firmware in any given PC or smartphone. I’ve thought about this a lot recently, and understand that a lot of this complexity comes from the security landscape today (we run far more programs concurrently, and don’t want them spying on each other while we use our computers for sensitive operations like banking and communications); I wonder if we’re on the cusp of a solution to the complexity of learning to code with modern sandboxing/containerisation - rather than target the underlying hardware or even the host OS, the 99% will target a common, inherently secure sandboxed VM of sorts (with first class support on the host OS, sort of what Sun hoped to achieve with Java’s “write once, run everywhere” idea). Sure, there would always be software that would have to run on the underlying platform but I theorise that 99% of software could target the sandbox. The pieces are all there - containerisation, immutable operating systems, etc. I would happily trade all the complexity I have to deal with daily, if there was a common, cross platform, secure, open and well integrated sandboxing solution.

enneff 4y ago

Basically describes my experience too. One thing that was amazing about this time is that even a 10yo (as I was) could understand almost everything that was going on in those machines (in a functional way, if not the finer details). Then as we grew up the programming world became more complex, and we were able to track that complexity as it happened. I don’t envy new programmers today who have to contend with vast complexity even to do the simplest of things.

davb 4y ago
I, too, miss the days where it was possible to understand every component, every bit, every abstraction inside a computer. It’s virtually impossible now, not least because there are so many microcontrollers and microprocessors running proprietary firmware in any given PC or smartphone. I’ve thought about this a lot recently, and understand that a lot of this complexity comes from the security landscape today (we run far more programs concurrently, and don’t want them spying on each other while we use our computers for sensitive operations like banking and communications); I wonder if we’re on the cusp of a solution to the complexity of learning to code with modern sandboxing/containerisation - rather than target the underlying hardware or even the host OS, the 99% will target a common, inherently secure sandboxed VM of sorts (with first class support on the host OS, sort of what Sun hoped to achieve with Java’s “write once, run everywhere” idea). Sure, there would always be software that would have to run on the underlying platform but I theorise that 99% of software could target the sandbox. The pieces are all there - containerisation, immutable operating systems, etc. I would happily trade all the complexity I have to deal with daily, if there was a common, cross platform, secure, open and well integrated sandboxing solution.