- 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.