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Comment by f00zz | Hacker News Reader

I can't even imagine how painful it must be for a curious kid to get started in programming these days. I feel so lucky to have started with a little 8-bit computer with a built-in BASIC interpreter. You turned it on and could start typing your program right away.

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It’s about a million times easier today. Open a browser, open dev tools, open console tab, console.log(“hello world”).

It’s even easier than that though.

Open chrome, type “how to write computer programs” and go from there.

Not sure how that's easier than: Turn computer (which boots close to instantly), print "hello world".

It is certainly true that there are more informational resources available, but honestly, there was plenty of good info available at most decent libraries, and the manuals that came with computers were typically troves of information back in the 8-bit days.

Yeah, people forget (or just never experienced) how easy it was to learn something like Delphi pre-Internet: the software box had good manuals and you just hit F1 for context-sensitive help that was actually useful.

computers don't need to boot "close to instantly" because nobody ever turns them off now. The "open browser" step in the previous comment is probably a noop because who even closes their browsers?

A ton easier!

Sure, reading the two inch thick book on programming your TI-83+ was informative, but God help you if you got stuck.

Now we've got Scratch (visual programming), Arduino (push button C compilation!), and StackOverflow full of the answer to most any problem of stacktrace you encounter.

I don't have to read a tome for hours or wait a day or two for a response on a creeky BBS. Much easier.

I’d be surprised if someone hasn’t emulated or otherwise cloned whatever 8-bit computer and BASIC interpreter you used as a JavaScript web app that can we loaded in a few seconds in any modern web browser.

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