Hacker News Reader

Comment by franze | Hacker News Reader

Learned coding on a c64 as a 6y old.

it broke when it was 14.

parents were happy that I do not waste so much time anymore on the computer. so no computers for me any more. I think they never understood what I was actually doing. Coded some nice games and also a "use your joystick as a music instrument".

also party and girls became much more interesting at that point in my life.

with 19 I needed a job - as I became a father myself.

Applied for a dot come job. Started coding again. Found out that not much has changed. Code was still code and with enough trial and error, lots of reading and thinking about a problem you could figure everything out.

So thx C64, you thought me a lot.

View on HN

> parents were happy that I do not waste so much time anymore on the computer. so no computers for me any more. I think they never understood what I was actually doing.

As a parent I now wonder about the ways that I might do something similar to my kid.

Or perhaps more importantly, what is the c64 of my kid's generation that I can buy for her?

Try THEC64 from RetroGames.biz: https://retrogames.biz/products/thec64/

Yes, it's "retrocomputing on easy mode": an ARM Linux computer running VICE and preloaded with a carousel of C64 games. But it can be set to boot into BASIC just like a real C64, and it gets you about 80% of the way to the experience of the real thing without needing to recap mainboards or track down a missing pulled SID on eBay. And it hooks straight into modern TVs and uses modern peripherals (game pads, etc.). It can be programmed in BASIC or any other language/environment for the C64 that's sideloaded onto it.

If she wants to mess with more modern paradigms of computing, get her a Raspberry Pi 400 or something also. Old laptops with Linux are good for this use case also -- a used ThinkPad will work wonderfully. With modern tools, she can even more easily write 6502 programs to sideload onto her THEC64!

>Or perhaps more importantly, what is the c64 of my kid's generation that I can buy for her?

This may not be what you mean, but there are a couple of modern devices that function pretty much the same way, just with faster CPUs and better graphics:

https://geoffg.net/maximite.html

https://www.olimex.com/Products/Duino/Duinomite/DUINOMITE-MI... (a cheaper knock-off of the above)

Similar, but doesn't boot to basic, and requires more skill to deal with. Cheap though...

https://www.tindie.com/products/lilygo/lilygo-ttgo-vga-v14-c...

It's basically a ready-to-run platform for the awesome fabgl library: http://www.fabglib.org/

> Or perhaps more importantly, what is the c64 of my kid's generation that I can buy for her?

Raspberry Pi. The Pi 400 is especially close, with the same keyboard form factor and all.

It’s not as immediately programmable as the 8-bit micros were (hard to beat booting up right into a BASIC prompt for that), but Linux is still more tinkerable than most other devices you’ll encounter and the default Pi distro has a bunch of educational stuff preinstalled.

Using an old desktop that my dad had installed Linux onto had a huge impact on me in my formative years. I credit that for at least part of my career success.

My son recently showed me something he was creating for Minecraft, turns out he's using MongoDB and Redis...

I appreciate this is a 3-day-old comment now, but consider MISTer - https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/wiki - which allow access to all of these older systems rather than being locked down to one of them. You could then also move through time, from an original Apple I, through Commodore 64, Amiga, etc. Also permitting your child to learn about FPGA, hardware, etc. at any point.

I could've written the first 4 lines of this comment myself :)

Are you me? Similar experience - Commodore 64 was my first computer (albeit a hand-me-down). Folks kept yelling about spending too much time on the computer while I was trying to get stuff to run lol.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com