Comment by musicale
21 hours ago
> Most kids never even knew what BASIC was
Yet magazines and books commonly published program listings for games in BASIC which many kids somehow managed to type in and run.
21 hours ago
> Most kids never even knew what BASIC was
Yet magazines and books commonly published program listings for games in BASIC which many kids somehow managed to type in and run.
The kids who loved computers were the ones plugging in line after line of BASIC. Well, them and the ones who just really loved games. Games were a gateway drug for a lot of kids because for so long games could really make you work for it. Games had kids making changes to config.sys and setting BLASTER environment variables, connecting to a BBS or FTP sites for downloads, and troubleshooting network issues to get LAN games running with friends. You could get pretty good at computers just getting your fix. That took a pretty strong commitment though because if all you cared about were games, and if you had them, consoles made gaming very simple. Too simple if you valued the sense of learning and accomplishment that came from winning a wrestling match with an unforgiving computer keeping you from the game you wanted to play.
I was one of the kids who didn't have a computer at home but had friends with those, and would read the BASIC listings in the magazines many times over to figure exactly what they did and think about what I could change before I visited my friends and started typing it all on their computer.
I would like to point out that you were playing a bit of goal post moving.
>Most kids felt awe.
then
>which many kids somehow managed to type in and run.
The number of kids that had computers that typed in BASIC programs was absolutely tiny, unless they were doing it as part of a school as a grade. The number of kids at home that had computers in around 93 was less than 1/5th of all households and those tended to be the most wealthy. Even then they were so expensive most parents were telling them to stay away and not letting them edit random files.
Yeah, I did that too. That's what you did with these machines. Deeply unsatisfying! Like: a real lesson in how gnarly real computers actually were. This is my point. You got one of these thingies and thought you could do anything, but it turns out "anything" took on values ranging from "hours to many hours of typing in BASIC listings and then working through inscrutable errors until something showed up on the screen but then crashed". Computers sucked ass!
Until like a year ago.
Different strokes, I guess. FWIW, I also started at 8 -- with a Commodore 64 and a Commodore Vic-20, both connected to a television -- and I found the process of trail-and-error learning my way through BASIC to be absolutely awesome.
I would start with a completely blank slate and then, gradually, be able to create something out of nothing. If I was clever enough, it could do whatever I wanted (as long as my wants were modest). It was magical and I have nothing but fond memories of the time I spent doing that.
Did you end up writing a word processor? :)
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> Computers sucked ass! Until like a year ago.
They can't have sucked that much if you saw fit to build a career around them.
Sure they can. Of course they can. "Computers suck" is practically the motto of the entire field of software security. That doesn't mean they're not fun to work with! Just that they suck.
I did the same thing writing sample code from DirectDraw APIs to make windows games. There was a huge gap between copying tutorials and writing my own game. I never got there. LLMs could bridge the divide. Tutorials can give me the nuts and bolts and feel of whats possible. LLMs can bring into reality the bigger ideas from my mind.
Aside from the Spectrum, the Amstrad CPC (CP/M!), at various times a secondhand BBC Model B and then later the family PC, I wrote complex programs for a Sharp PC-1246 (because I had the cassette interface).
https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/1421/sharp-pc-1246/
This was the very opposite of unsatisfying. I don’t recognise this idea that computers sucked.
AI-assisted coding is, to me, way more soul-destroying than hitting the limits of a simple home computer. In most regards I feel like I have reached the end of my interest in computing, and the pivot I had in mind — teaching - looks like it has been joy-deadened too. Nobody is going to want to learn how anything that is not AI actually works, tech people insist that AI will replace (they say augment, they mean replace) teachers and trainers, politicians seem to be listening, and non-tech people now increasingly resent technology.
I barely recognise the industry I spent my life in; I do not recognise the evident enthusiasm for a world that is abandoning a whole, transformative pedagogy in favour of the programming equivalent of games consoles: button pushing vibes.
I am not at all of the opinion that AI has no value, though it does not have anywhere close to the value people insist it must have for me. I am learning, trying to find an ethical angle on it that doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable and exhausted by the hype.
But it is the final nail in the coffin of the joy of tech work for me, and as a single middle-aged man I perceive this as life changing and very likely life-shortening, in the way that psychologically unhealthy things are a health risk for older adults: unless I find something that gives my work life a sense of connected purpose again, I figure I will be gone before the Spectrum makes it to fifty.
So yeah, no. No.
> Nobody is going to want to learn how anything that is not AI actually works, tech people insist that AI will replace teachers and trainers, politicians seem to be listening, and non-tech people now resent technology
I disagree with most of your post, but this one the most.
Non-tech people already resent technology... Try and sit next to a non tech person use a desktop pc. It wasn't until the smart phone that the average person started to use technology like you or I recognise. And that's only because it's been simplified to the extreme for them. (I don't blame them btw).
AI is such a step change for learning and teaching... For anyone who is inquisitive. Ask it endless questions, explore ideas, get it to generate images to help you...
> I don’t recognise this idea that computers sucked..
Same here. I can understand indifference, but this I don't get.
FFS I even loved playing with calculators!
That is some next-level motivated reasoning
>You got one of these thingies and thought you could do anything..
Why did you think that? Did you see people use it like that? anything? really?
For me, computers became intriguing after I started programming in BASIC. Not before that. Before that I was just curious about what the big deal about these things are...
In the literature, there would be passages that describe how computer followed "instructions", but I never could make sense of that or understood what an "instruction" was. So it didn't really sway me either way. I just tried hard and remained curious to understand what this "instruction" was and how I could give it to computers...
May be your falling the same way for LLMs now..
I don't know probably because I was eight years old.
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Figuring out inscrutable errors seems highly educational. I guess I don't have enough data to determine whether your bad experience was more or less common (probably less common on HN though). I imagine some (like yourself at 8) found computers frustrating and bad, while others (some peer posters on HN, who might also have been a bit older when they started) found them frustrating and good!
I did come to appreciate that. I was a professional C programmer for a lot of years! A hand tool woodworker, so to speak. It's great. But it's not the same as what I had thought computers were when I was a little kid.