Hacker News Reader

Comment by vjeux | Hacker News Reader

"Today there are fewer and fewer kids getting into programming because consumer devices are locked down and don't come with a way to program them."

I honestly doubt this is the case, I would expect more and more kids are getting into programming because it has become so widespread and easy.

View on HN

On absolute terms I'd think so, considering how many more kids have access to technology today. But if you compare the percentage of kids who get into technology's guts, out of all kids with access to it, I think that number has been decreasing. In other words, our market may be expanding but our conversion rate is in free fall.

I agree with that statement in a way.

Linus Torvalds wrote a kernel because he bought a PC: hardware which allowed him to do anything he wanted.

Today, smartphones and mobile devices are much more popular among the youth. Could you imagine if Torvalds had been born in 1993? By this point, I'm sure he would have made something much less spectacular than Linux. Maybe he would make some pretty cool Facebook or smartphone games, and maybe a few cool web apps, but the freedom to tinker with hardware directly had been slowly slipping away over the past ~10 years. Since that avenue was becoming less available, there's a chance it wouldn't have grabbed his attention in the first place.

We still have laptops/desktops which aren't locked down. Hopefully that's what the young/future version of Torvalds would have gotten interested in. But how long until you buy a laptop only to find out that it doesn't grant you root access?

To be fair, it's easier these days to afford both a smartphone AND a piece of much more hackable hardware. At least as far as prices go.

One of the main real reasons for Linus's success (other than say his talent) is that there wasn't a good alternative to Linux so even version 0.2 which could barely do anything by today's standards got interest and community involvement.

I'm not a Linus worshipper, but I don't think you're giving him enough credit. Even given a locked down platform, I don't think Young Torvalds would have been satisfied with a "pretty cool Facebook app". Granted, there aren't a lot of people who can just go write a kernel under any circumstances.

There are still things like the Raspberry Pi, and all the things you can wire into it, which obviate the need to spend a few hundred quid on a full on desktop PC.

Agreed. In fact, I'd like to see anything resembling evidence that a) "fewer and fewer kids [are] getting into programming" and b) if so, that it's caused by some devices being locked down.

I can only judge on what I've seen personally and what I've heard from industry leaders and both line up.

Wherever I'm living I go around to schools and groups looking for kids to teach programming to. They all have computers of some sort (mostly iPhones and some tablets), but don't know how in the world they can develop on them. The only way to write native apps for iOS is to buy an apple laptop, get a developer license and learn an advanced programming language. That's beyond the reach of most kids.

Now suppose that new websites popped up using my library and all the kid needed was a device with a modern browser and optionally a bluetooth keyboard? They could learn JavaScript and write webapps. There is huge demand for new programmers in our economy and most kids only see electronics as consumption devices.

Speaking of, my Chromebook just arrived via UPS, now for some fun!

> They all have computers of some sort (mostly iPhones and some tablets), but don't know how in the world they can develop on them. The only way to write native apps for iOS is to buy an apple laptop, get a developer license and learn an advanced programming language. That's beyond the reach of most kids.

It is pretty burdensome that you do need to have an Apple computer (or hackintosh, or complicated unofficial toolchain) in order to developer for iOS, you actually don't need a developer license to start developing apps. You just open the Mac App Store and grab Xcode these days. You do need the $99 subscription in order to test on a device (very unfortunately), and to publish in the App Store. But in spite of these things, if you're a new developer with access to OSX, iOS development is quite accessible and easy to get started with.

But that's exactly my point. Where I live in the poor south, most kids have iPhones because they are "free" and their parents can't do the math to realize that the monthly fees make it incredibly expensive. But I have yet to see a single local kid who owns or even has access to a mac laptop. (not to mention the $100 for the developer license is a month's rent for some of them.) So as far as they are concerned, it's impossible to develop on their phone.

That's a very weird statement. As if in 2005 it was easier program for your so open phone, or your not existant tablet.

The development environments have certainly improved. Now we don't have to deal with Java's MIDP, and we can instead deal with Android Java, a much nicer flavour.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com