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Comment by BenFranklin100 | Hacker News Reader

For those of us who grew up before 2000, we somehow managed. I think younger people today will as well.

Also it's important to note the topic is during school hours. There's a wealth of knowledge to learn at school, and there's also a wealth to learn outside of school. Knowledge about the world can, and will, happen in both. Many hours outside of school to 'grow your knowledge' through your phone.

> For those of us who grew up before 2000, we somehow managed

You had TV, newspapers and magazines - and perhaps more importantly, public libraries. The current generation doesn't, not if you take away their phones.

No we didn't. I never learned how to write games for 8-bit computers in assembler, like commercial games. No source of information would tell me about anything other than BASIC. There was no way to find out.

Not sure how having a smartphone in class would have allowed you to do that, though. And regardless, if you're in a physics or language class, you should be focusing on those those topics, not learning how to write computer games.

My high school did offer a computer science class in the 90s, and students who took it got to use the school's computer lab. If your school didn't have something like that, that's a shame, but that doesn't suggest that you should have been able to ignore the presented curriculum and do whatever you wanted.

We definitely did. You should have gone to a library. I got my first Prolog compiler, C++ compiler, and microcontroller programming manual from Salvation Army thrift stores. There were like a million magazines you could buy.

edit: I forgot the Standard ML book, also from some thrift store. All circa late-80s, early-90s. I still have them all.

Yes, but I didn't know the word "assembler". I was completely bewildered about why BASIC produced clunky results and I could barely phrase the question about how proper games were made. Local libraries didn't have relevant books. I didn't know there was help in magazines. The most clued-up adults wouldn't know either, and would be trying to get me interested in programming turtle bots with LOGO. What I needed was to ask the internet (which didn't exist yet).

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