Software is generally much more polished now, and it requires much more time and work to get it so polished (assuming it's at all complex).
I'm not saying I agree with this. But the situation is definitely different from 10 years ago by quite a bit.
It's a cultural shift. Kids these days are consumers, not producers.
not as easy as qbasic.exe, then typing in some code in, then hitting 'run' and seeing what happens.
speaking from experience here, i have 8 and 10 yo, and tried this with both of them. my friend tried with his 9 yo. they seem to get the idea of assignments, loops etc, but it just doesn't excite them. can't generalise on a test sample of 3, so just my 2p.
- Start -> Run -> notepad
- <html>Hello, World!</html>, Save As "hello.htm" on desktop
- double-click it and watch it appear in a browser
Someone totally new won't know what notepad is, won't know what html is, and won't know how to make the browser show it, and the manual that came with his computer will say nothing about it.
You start a browser, there's no hint what to do. You start searching for "how to make a web page" and you get a bewildering array of information, some of which are totally over-engineered.
On the other hand hooked up a VIC-20 or C-64, opened the manual, and what stared you in the face in the first chapter was your first program.
I think the commonality between us here is that having access to the source itself provides the best learning environment.
What about 10 print "HELLO" 20 GOTO 10
Or something like that? If I wanted hello world on the screen I'd get a piece of damn paper. The beauty of quick basic was it got you into procedural code, where the computer does stuff. You can get someone going with Python relatively easily but not as easy as QBasic was on a Mac II in the school computer lab.
You can say there's been a cultural shift but every generation's been saying "kids these days", back to at least Socrates. I'd say that not having QBasic be one of 6 icons you can click is a bigger change, it's not the kids.
friend of mine ('owner' of the 9yo), tried some sort of python environment which was supposed to do just that (i think it's this: http://rur-ple.sourceforge.net/en/rur.htm, but not sure), but failed - quite limited in what it does, or get way too complicated if you want to tweak something.
so the whole experiment was a flop really...
"You are about to meet friendly computer! Friendly in price, friendly in size, to use and learn on experience. Most important you don't have to be computer programmer, or even typist, to use it!
If you're first time computerist, this manual will provide an excellent introduction to computing. Unlike most instruction manuals, you don't have to read through this whole book to get to the "good stuff." After reading Chapter (GETTING STARTED), you can go directly to chapter that interests you and start reading. If you're interested in animation turn to Chapter 4. If you like music, try Chapter 5.
The first page of each chapter has sample program to start you off. Just type the program exactly as shown ("Try Typing This Program") and see what happens. The rest of the chapter explains what you did, and shows how to do more. Chapter summarizes some important programming concepts, and explains the techniques used in sample programs."
(The manual was the baby of Michael S. Tomczyk, who wanted to strongly focus on the "user friendly" aspect of the VIC, including for programming)
Then you'd turn to chapter one, and start typing in the first example program:
1 PRINT "VIC20"
2 GOTO 1
That's a large part of the difference: If you bought most home computers back then, and _especially_ Commodore machines, you got programming showed in your face - User was equated with programmer. And though a lot of people learnt how to load games and didn't bother with programming, the threshold to actually finding something exciting in programming was far lower.
I'm not suggesting we go back to the days where people get a BASIC prompt on starting a machine, but surfacing scripting capabilities for automation more, for example, would make a big difference.
Consider even something as trivial as macro recording that displays what it records and give people an easy way of modifying it, instead of hiding it "behind the scenes".
A lot people are programmers today because the plumbing was out in plain view and some of us found it fascinating and started figuring out what it did. But today the plumbing tends to be hidden and people go "magic. got it."
Exactly. That's what I mean by cultural shift.