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Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

After the first paragraph I thought this article was going to say how learning "80's style programming" isn't a good thing in the 2010s, rather than support that Python fits pretty well into it ;-) There's something to be said for 80's style educational style, but I'm not sure we should hang on to the same style of programming.

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I keep seeing articles that worry about not being able to do this, and I just wanted to show that you pretty much could if you wanted to (no need to buy a C64 as the Salon article author did).

I think if someone asked me how to get started hacking around, I'd suggest HTML/Javascript or Processing. They both have the advantage of being very easy to deploy the output if you want (for sharing). They also have progressive enhancement (meaning you can start knowing only a few simple things and learn more as you need it)

I totally agree. I think you alluded to a certain amount of romanticism in those of us who learned to code in the 80s and I agree with that too. It takes a real effort to see beyond that and to come up with better, more relevant things.

I agree that Javascript is the true heir to BASIC. It's available on pretty much every computer out-of-the-box, much in the same way that BASIC was in the 80s. It's also a lot easier to deploy and share, as you said.

I thought the article was going to be about doing 80's style development in 2010 (i.e. using Turbo Pascal in DOSbox/Open Watcom etc).

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