5 ms·

I agree with the article. The differences between 10 year old me on my Commodore 64 and my currently 10 year old son on his Windows 7 computer are astronomical

by 300bps 12y ago

I agree with the article. The differences between 10 year old me on my Commodore 64 and my currently 10 year old son on his Windows 7 computer are astronomical. When I turned my 64 on it was "READY" for me to make it do something. I spent days typing in BASIC and 6502 Assembly source code into it just to play a game. My son has a seemingly infinite supply of videos on YouTube to entertain him. Near infinite supply of free-to-play ready made games (with in-app purchases). There is no natural incentive for him to learn how to produce anything on computers.

baldfat 12y ago
I also agree. Today we need people who can miss the forest for the trees! I can't believe the lack of basic computer skills that people have coming into the workforce and someone that can use Word is considered a computer person. Even the new IT people only know GUI and Microsoft with no experience with Mac OS or Linux, and no idea about anything but the silo they are working in. I was one of those kids who had to program games at 7 on a Sol20 in 1977 and than de-bug since every basic was different. When I found out if I could learn Assembly I could play more game I learned that. The day I got the 300 baud modem was life changing and I had to pay for a second line due to everyone else in the house being mad they couldn't use the phone.
- sthreet 12y ago
  Time to complain about my school. Our "computer" classes consisted of learning to: type, format word, type in a spreadsheet, format powerpoint (in a way that I think powerpoint is unnecessary for), one week total of messing around in garage band, one week of typing out the exact lines of html, copying instructions for dreamweaver. EDIT: And then we do 'job' stuff in that class. Including making resumes that include our ability to use basic microsoft/adobe programs. I could have learned to do that without a manual or internet before the class. I can learn way more with internet just messing around in photoshop/gimp every once in a while.
  - baldfat 12y ago
    It is time to put the science back into Computer Science and have it in Middle School and High School. My school district computer classes are business classes and the teachers need business degrees.
prof_hobart 12y ago
There are many more distractions these days, but I'm not sure that it's as clear cut as you suggest. It's really not that hard to get kids into some form of coding today. I've run a Scratch[1] club for 8-10 year olds at my daughter's school and every single one of the kids there loved it. By the end of the first hour, they were all producing some form of animation that they could control and all were desperate to come back for the following week. Compare that with the steep learning curve of BASIC on an 80s 8-bit machine. It would take days to get anything more exciting than "Hello World!" out of it. Most of the people I know who had Spectrums (I'm British) as kids never went near programming. Their entire use of the command line was LOAD "". [1] https://scratch.mit.edu/ https://scratch.mit.edu/ - just in case anyone's never seen it.
- 300bps 12y ago
  Your point is solid, but your experience with Scratch is different than mine. My 10 year old son had very little interest in Scratch. I'm not entirely sure of the reason for this but I think it is related to: 1) It was hard to distribute his creations 2) Lack of natural aptitude / ability 3) Too easy to consume without producing We had a little more success with Construct 2. The main difference being that the games could be distributed to an iPad or any other HTML 5 web browser effortlessly. Maybe Scratch addressed that already in the 18 months since we've used it?
  - klez 12y ago
    May I suggest that you're starting from the premise that your kid is willing/able to learn programming and that programming is for everyone? As your parent suggested, not everyone who had computers back than had or felt the need to program them.
    - scoggs 12y ago
      Right. I think the next step would be to try and find a programming exercise that his son could make his own. Something that would self motivate him to solve a problem. I think this is one of the hardest parts of diving into any high level thinking skill or hobby: finding the motivation to take the first step on a years long journey.
donatj 12y ago
I think about this a lot, there are a lot of distractions now days but when I am actually being productive I'm working on distractions for others. Sometimes I wonder if that's all computers are is a massive distraction?

by 300bps 12y ago

baldfat 12y ago

I also agree. Today we need people who can miss the forest for the trees! I can't believe the lack of basic computer skills that people have coming into the workforce and someone that can use Word is considered a computer person. Even the new IT people only know GUI and Microsoft with no experience with Mac OS or Linux, and no idea about anything but the silo they are working in. I was one of those kids who had to program games at 7 on a Sol20 in 1977 and than de-bug since every basic was different. When I found out if I could learn Assembly I could play more game I learned that. The day I got the 300 baud modem was life changing and I had to pay for a second line due to everyone else in the house being mad they couldn't use the phone.

sthreet 12y ago
Time to complain about my school. Our "computer" classes consisted of learning to: type, format word, type in a spreadsheet, format powerpoint (in a way that I think powerpoint is unnecessary for), one week total of messing around in garage band, one week of typing out the exact lines of html, copying instructions for dreamweaver. EDIT: And then we do 'job' stuff in that class. Including making resumes that include our ability to use basic microsoft/adobe programs. I could have learned to do that without a manual or internet before the class. I can learn way more with internet just messing around in photoshop/gimp every once in a while.
- baldfat 12y ago
  It is time to put the science back into Computer Science and have it in Middle School and High School. My school district computer classes are business classes and the teachers need business degrees.

prof_hobart 12y ago

There are many more distractions these days, but I'm not sure that it's as clear cut as you suggest. It's really not that hard to get kids into some form of coding today. I've run a Scratch[1] club for 8-10 year olds at my daughter's school and every single one of the kids there loved it. By the end of the first hour, they were all producing some form of animation that they could control and all were desperate to come back for the following week. Compare that with the steep learning curve of BASIC on an 80s 8-bit machine. It would take days to get anything more exciting than "Hello World!" out of it. Most of the people I know who had Spectrums (I'm British) as kids never went near programming. Their entire use of the command line was LOAD "". [1] https://scratch.mit.edu/ https://scratch.mit.edu/ - just in case anyone's never seen it.

300bps 12y ago
Your point is solid, but your experience with Scratch is different than mine. My 10 year old son had very little interest in Scratch. I'm not entirely sure of the reason for this but I think it is related to: 1) It was hard to distribute his creations 2) Lack of natural aptitude / ability 3) Too easy to consume without producing We had a little more success with Construct 2. The main difference being that the games could be distributed to an iPad or any other HTML 5 web browser effortlessly. Maybe Scratch addressed that already in the 18 months since we've used it?
- klez 12y ago
  May I suggest that you're starting from the premise that your kid is willing/able to learn programming and that programming is for everyone? As your parent suggested, not everyone who had computers back than had or felt the need to program them.
  - scoggs 12y ago
    Right. I think the next step would be to try and find a programming exercise that his son could make his own. Something that would self motivate him to solve a problem. I think this is one of the hardest parts of diving into any high level thinking skill or hobby: finding the motivation to take the first step on a years long journey.

donatj 12y ago

I think about this a lot, there are a lot of distractions now days but when I am actually being productive I'm working on distractions for others. Sometimes I wonder if that's all computers are is a massive distraction?