I don't know how that got sent half-done!
Problaby becuase you are using some modern device....
To a child born in the developed world this
century, the Web is part
of life, always there at megabit speeds, as ubiq
... as ubiquitous as air. Computers have GUIs, windows, taskbars etc,
and come with a web browser, as does even a cheap basic old phone or
pocket music player. Games are real-time 3D, even ones on a cheap 2-
or 3- generation old games console such as might be given to
preschoolers to play with.
Don;t you fidn it odd that 99.9% of such people don;'t ahve a clue as to
what they are doing, and necer will. And yet people who grew up o nthe
old 80-bitters often did learn something about the machine, or
programming, or...?
No, a BBC Micro or anything from the 1980s is not a suitable teaching
tool. It is a flint axe when the kids grew up with sliced bread. It is
a dugout canoe when grandad and grandma go yachting at the weekend.
I completely disgree with you. If you understnad the concepts of
programming and hardware on the Beeb, then you can adapt them to more
modern machiens very easily.
The mere idea is laughably unrealistic.
If you are teaching a kid to drive, you don't teach them how to build
the car first.
If you're teaching them to maintain a car, you don't teach them how to
design and construct an engine first.
No, but I most certianly would teach them how an engine operates. The 4
stroke cycle, spark igniton, fuel-air mixture that sort of thing. And not
jsut hte level or 'remove this plug and all the oil runs out, then put
the plgu back in and pour new oil in here'.
So, no, actually, tools like BASIC and assembly code
have no
relevance today, not really. Because the days when a BBC Micro was a
The concepts of programming -- things like subroutes (functions,
procedures), lops, variables, etc are much the same in any procdural
language. Learn one properly, and you can pick up the otehrs in a very
short time. Note that BBC BASIC is a particularly good tool for this
sicne it has named procedures, local variables, even pointers to some
extent.
computer are so long ago that these kid's
*parents* don't even really
remember them.
A BBC Micro is not a computer any more, because it is 2013 now. People
That is one of the most stupid thigns i have ever seen. I would ilke you
to give me one defintion of 'computer' that excludes the Beeb.
Assembly code is equivalent to how to chip a sharp
arrowhead from a
piece of flint.
BASIC is equivalent to learning how to smelt iron.
Consideirng that _somebody_ still has to make cutting tools and extract
iron from its ore, don't you think it's reasonable to learn about such
thigns?
Even if you write i na high level language, the CPU on whatever machien
stil lexecuts machine instructions. So whoever wrote the compiler has to
understnd the machien language of the processor.. Now maybe you're happy
wity nobody being able to write ocmpilers any more, but I certainly am not.
-tony