Comment by Chris_Newton | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Chris_Newton | Hacker News Reader

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Given the availability of tech like the Pi now, I wonder what it would take to build a modern, child-friendly device in the same spirit around it: something that offered a fun and instructive introduction to programming, in a box that was self-contained, safe and practically indestructible. Design a case with a sealed keyboard? Expose standard power and display connectors with robust ports? Write some child-friendly software that might be flashier than what we had but was still in essence a guided programming environment with a simple but effective language? Maybe include some sort of USB connectivity, primarily so that older kids could also control external devices like light boards or robot arms or turtles? I haven’t come across anyone trying to do this that I can recall, but I feel like there’s an entire ecosystem’s worth of startup ideas in this space just waiting to be implemented. Maybe the next Sir Clive is out there somewhere to get it started.

TLDR - Kids who want to learn to program already have access to the tools to do this... It's just that most kids don't want to learn to program.

Wasn't this what the One Laptop Per Child (OTLP) project was trying to achieve? The problem is that when the ZX, C64 etc were around there was no alternative. If you wanted to play games, you could either shell out for more hardware and purchase the games on disk or cartridge, or you could type them in from a magazine (several times) and hopefully save them to a cassette.

These days, if you want to play a game, you reach for your phone and install a free one that is far more capable than anything you could develop yourself.

The real trick would be to create a development environment that will run on a phone. Apple have gone somewhat down this path with their Swift Playgrounds and you could always work with Scratch and similar systems or you could even do something in html/javascript, but none of these really give the same imperative to learning how that the original home computers did. You really need a system that lets you develop a full program, share it with your friends and modify (and break) it.

You know the reality is that we do have these systems, and kids that are interested in doing anything other than just playing games can access them with a minimum of problems. I wonder how many of those ZX Spectrums, C64 etc were given to kids, who on finding that they had to actually do some work to make them do anything useful relegated them to a shoebox under the TV. It is possible that for every positive story about "kid learns programming from ZX Spectrum" you would have a hundred stories of kid calling ZX Spectrum a piece of crap.

> I wonder how many of those ZX Spectrums, C64 etc were given to kids, who on finding that they had to actually do some work to make them do anything useful relegated them to a shoebox under the TV.

In my experience, that tended to happen more with the kids who got the C64s. Those were the ones with color TVs and Betamax at home, too.

I had a Spectrum (couldn't afford a C64), but my friends had C64s. I was the only one I knew who ever did coding though. The C64s were still used lots, but just for games.

> If you wanted to play games, you could either shell out for more hardware and purchase the games on disk or cartridge, or you could type them in from a magazine

There was a third possibility: you could figure out how the game worked and write your own version from scratch. I learned so much about programming by writing a Pac-Man clone on a ZX Spectrum simply because I didn't have the pocket money to keep feeding the arcade machines, or even to buy someone else's knock-off version on a cassette tape. I quickly got bored of typing in other peoples' programs from a magazine, much more fun to write your own.

My memory, it was generally true about the C64/ZX split being about gamers vs coders; however I did know some "Speccy" owners (generally with slightly-better-off parents) who had lots and lots of different games on tapes and did nothing but play games on the machine. Yes, I "borrowed" a lot of games by copying the tapes on an Amstrad dual-cassette stereo system (thank you, Sir Alan!) but I'm really glad that generally, scarcity of an "easy option" forced me into a place where I had to write my own code.

I was like that too. Kids with C64 had plenty of games, and having better sound and graphics they just played games. I always advanced in coding when playing games became unrewarding/boring.

>The problem is that when the ZX, C64 etc were around there was no alternative. If you wanted to play games, you could either shell out for more hardware and purchase the games on disk or cartridge, or you could type them in from a magazine (several times) and hopefully save them to a cassette.

I agree. When there is no shortcut you find much more motivation to go the hard way. I was in that exact position when I was 10, and I kept messing up copying the basic lines from books so I got a book for kids that teached me basic, this way I was making my own code and could debug it. I made simple games completely from scratch that way it was how I got into programing.

I can understand that now with so many shortcuts available for kids the same motivation is not there anymore. It's like once you get access to cheat codes in a game that makes you invincible and gives you infinite money, the challenge is not there and you lose interest.

Ach. I only programmed on the c64. I never enjoyed playing games. Programming sid! Radio shack computers also had a role. Radio shack.

I'd like to see such a device, but unlike the Pi, or specially contrived educational environments, the 8-bit home computers were the centre of a growing market for games and software, seemingly only a few steps away from your first attempts at working through the manual that came with your computer. This was a huge motivation for many of us who started programming in the home computer days.

I remember games that had a note on the back of the box asking for programmers to send their work to the publisher's address for consideration. Magazines advertised commercial software obviously sold by one guy out of his house, and featured interviews with programmers who were only a few years older than me. If you owned a home computer and could program it, you imagined you could access this growing and exciting world, and maybe make some money.

Great points. The gap between the current crop of huge team produced eye candy infused games vs the machine they run on in its bare state is enormous. There are a few exceptions, but unfortunately they only serve to confirm the rule.

The Raspberry Pi 400 is basically this. https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400/

It's a very interesting device in a very Spectrum-like form factor. It also has its limitations, much like the Spectrum itself - you're not going to code comfortably in resource-intensive languages with it.

Then don't!

Bloat is the moat were stuck in.

An unsustainable sin,

a cognitive load,

too heavy to comprehend,

a house of cards,

the opposite of smarts.

That's a feature.

The 400 isn’t quite what I had in mind. I was thinking more of a device usable even by the under-10 group, with a simpler and more robust physical design and, crucially, the kind of instant-on, guided programming environment the early home “PCs” had.

With early Sinclair systems, each key on the keyboard would act like modern auto-complete: you would start typing and keywords would appear almost magically. On the BBC Micro, you powered on and heard the trademark beeeeep-beep and were instantly presented with a prompt where you could start typing a program or other commands. Everything in those systems was geared towards immediate responses and inviting you to start programming them straight away.

I think I know what you are after - I wonder how much a TI-Nspire CX II-T could fill the gap, allowing for on-device python programming since 2020.

OTH... Taking a RPI400, and build a stripped-down linux system which resembles Sinclair BASIC could prove to be a fun exercise.

Edit: I just realized how expensive the ZX81 was here in Germany back in 1981 - it'd set you back 450€ by todays value.

Something between the MicroBit and the Pi would be great.

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