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Comment by Double_a_92 | Hacker News Reader

> The myth that kids that age are all digital natives and hence much more adept at learning CS amd programming is wrong.

This is unfortunately very true. It's kinda sad seing my nephews and nieces struggling when using a desktop computer. I guess scrolling down on instagram and watching netflix doesn't teach you anything about computers.

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If anything, I would think that modern computers make it _harder_ to understand what's actually going on. I learned programming on a Commodore 64 - if you wanted to print a character on the screen, you wrote ("poked") a byte into a fixed memory address. If you wanted to read a character from the keyboard, you read ("peeked") a byte from a different fixed memory address. Being so close to the machine helped build an intuition about what was going on behind the scenes, so concepts like garbage collection and virtual memory made a lot more sense when I got around to learning them.

> struggling when using a desktop computer

They're not native with the desktop computer metaphor, but so what? Why does that matter? Why is desktop computing the true computing that identifies whether you're native or not?

And of course, none of this has anything to do with computer science, does it? You can do good computer science with a desktop, a tablet, or a pen and paper.

Because doing real work requires using a desktop computer.

I did my entire PhD and five years of a career without using a desktop computer whatsoever, using a laptop instead, so this isn't true is it.

Well yeah, sure. Laptops and desktops are largely convergent. Smartphones and most tablets are considerably more gimped.

In this context a laptop and desktop are the same.

I think he meant instead of an ipad.

I counted laptops as desktops here...

Well ok then how about running MATLAB on your iPad - you could do a lot of productive work using just that.

https://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab-mobile.html

How many children have the money to buy a Matlab license ?

It does now. But will that be the case in the future? History seems to indicate that the interfaces and paradigms will continue to change. There will be an awkward period (now?) where you need to know both types of interfaces, but there may be a period where touch, voice, or other interfaces replace the now-archaic file cabinet metaphor that the desktop uses today. Look at Windows and all the metaphors that a child today has no context with which to relate: a manila folder, a file cabinet, a floppy disk, an address book, a wall calendar. It seems likely that this will change, and with it the need to understand today's (and that of the last 20-30 years) desktop computer.

"You can do good computer science with a desktop, a tablet, or a pen and paper. "

What development environments run well on a tablet?

I haven't tried it, but people say nice things about Swift Playground. If you add a keyboard and an internet connection you can also use any of the web based IDEs and programming notebooks out there.

Why would you do this over a setup with real keyboards and a big screen? I couldn't imagine myself staring a tablet the whole day.

If you attach a Bluetooth keyboard and use a larger tablet what is the effective difference between that and a small laptop?

Nothing, but that's disingenuous, because kids aren't hanging out with keyboards and >11inch screens.

Once we have 24" tablets maybe this would work for me.

Why would you do this over a setup with real keyboards and a big screen

Given the choice I wouldn't, my point was more that only having access to an iPad is no reason to not be able to learn how to program.

Just one example is https://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab-mobile.html

> Why is desktop computing the true computing that identifies whether you're native or not?

It's the one platform that allows you to be really productive (at least in an office context).

I personally already struggle when trying to write some proper longer text on a smartphone or table. I don't think I could comfortably write some nice Word letter with maybe some custom design on such a device.

It maybe works out if you are some artist... Idk.

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