Comment by amasad | Hacker News Reader

Comment by amasad | Hacker News Reader

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I think it comes down to a question of measurement. Now, of course you're going to find a lot more programmers now because computers are ubiquitous and CS is a hot major. But one way to think about it is what is the ratio of users that can program their computers to the ratio of pure end-users. I think its orders of magnitude lower now. You could argue that because we have all these fancy apps now and we don't need to program our computers but I believe people don't get a fraction of the computing power they can or need from their devices. This is evident by the recent trend in bots and "workflow" applications (e.g. Microsoft Flow, IFTT, etc). People want a lot more from their machines. And apps are a single-purpose, crude way of doing computing. The way you get the most out of your computer is that you program it.

Looking at it from this lens -- I don't the barriers are lower. Most kids' first interaction with computers now are through smartphones and tablets. And the separation between using these things and actually programming them can't be further away.

When thinking about if we've improved or not, I like to point out stuff like this, from 1976:

"My name is Marian Goldeen. I'm an eight grade student at Jordan Junior High School in Palo Alto, California, and I would like to tell you about how I got started working with computers at Xerox, and the class I taught.

It all started in Dcember, 1973, when I was in the seventh grade. (...)"

(My emphasis) http://www.atariarchives.org/bcc1/showpage.php?page=61

Now, after reading that, are you proud at how far we've come in 40 years? I think we're doing rather poorly, and I believe the VPRI folks (and now this new project) is part of how we might do better.

I just wish these people would/could be more generous with throwing code out there for people to run and play with. I'm not sure if it's a culture thing, a funding thing, or a bit of both -- I understand that a presenting a coherent whole can be more powerful than small ideas, but whenever I read the VPRI articles, I always feel there's too little code to play with. I want more! :-)

By the way, there's lots of interesting stuff in that archive[a], like:

"Is Breaking Into A Timesharing System A Crime?" http://www.atariarchives.org/bcc1/showpage.php?page=4

And in fairness, we have seen some improvements:

http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue1/3159_1_THREE_WO...

[a] http://www.atarimagazines.com/

> ... but whenever I read the VPRI articles, I always feel there's too little code to play with.

That's the whole point of the STEPS project: Less code to play with ;)

Your last point, that kids are being introduced to apps through devices that don't have easily accessible dev tools, is something I hadn't considered. That could certainly push the bar back up, especially if they don't have a PC at home or at school as well. That's something to think about.

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