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I don't know how old OP is, but I'm 20 and first computing experience was graphical - with Windows NT 4.0. My elementary school had Macintosh OS 7/8 (don't reme

I don't know how old OP is, but I'm 20 and first computing experience was graphical - with Windows NT 4.0. My elementary school had Macintosh OS 7/8 (don't remember exactly). However all I can remember doing on these computers were playing games - AOL Kids, Math Blaster, JumpStart and Zoombinis. I didn't start programming until I was 13 (out of my own curiosity) and I wasn't offered any sort of programming classes by my junior year in high school. My point is I think for most of us who grew up in the era of graphical interfaces, computers have always been glorified xboxes. When GUIs were introduced and we had options like Math Blaster I don't think many of us actually considered that we could write our own games. In elementary school I think the bar may be a little too high (not to say it can't be done). That said, it didn't matter to us that the machines were directly programmable. We didn't have the resources to create our own MathBlaster and I don't think any of us would have patience to wrestle with gcc. I think Codify is a much better tool for teaching programming than a plain text file would be. Its a lot easier to make a "cool app" from a app that hides all hard parts of making a game (like a graphics library) than to try and convince a kid he should mess around in the console.

matt2000 14y ago
Interesting - do you remember at all how you first got into programming? How did you even find out it was an option? And what was the first thing you tried to make? BTW, I'm the OP and I'm 38, I started with Logo on Apple II's at the Library, but I'm wondering if there's something more we should be doing to help kids get into this stuff.
- nemothekid 14y ago
  My friend and I both got started with Flash. His dad was a graphic designer and we both knew with Flash you could create games, but we didn't know anything about programming. However after his dad showed us how to make a play/replay button, we played with the concept more, and made a Rock Paper Scissors game. (This was done by animating every possible combination, then having a "play button" that would jump to a random frame). We did have to do a lot of Googling (we were only ever shown how to make a play button), but I don't think its very different from what Codify is trying to offer. After we had most of the basic programming control structures down and learned some of Flash's features (ActionScript 1 was very easy to use) we were off making games. In hindsight, you are right. Simply having the programming environment to do whatever we wanted helped us learn. I remember we jumped into networking to create online versions of our games. However I am not sure if there is a way to recreate that push - we simply got into it because we spent so much time on sites like Newgrounds and armor games.

matt2000 14y ago

Interesting - do you remember at all how you first got into programming? How did you even find out it was an option? And what was the first thing you tried to make? BTW, I'm the OP and I'm 38, I started with Logo on Apple II's at the Library, but I'm wondering if there's something more we should be doing to help kids get into this stuff.

nemothekid 14y ago
My friend and I both got started with Flash. His dad was a graphic designer and we both knew with Flash you could create games, but we didn't know anything about programming. However after his dad showed us how to make a play/replay button, we played with the concept more, and made a Rock Paper Scissors game. (This was done by animating every possible combination, then having a "play button" that would jump to a random frame). We did have to do a lot of Googling (we were only ever shown how to make a play button), but I don't think its very different from what Codify is trying to offer. After we had most of the basic programming control structures down and learned some of Flash's features (ActionScript 1 was very easy to use) we were off making games. In hindsight, you are right. Simply having the programming environment to do whatever we wanted helped us learn. I remember we jumped into networking to create online versions of our games. However I am not sure if there is a way to recreate that push - we simply got into it because we spent so much time on sites like Newgrounds and armor games.