Hacker News Reader

I think it's great that the author found something that worked for him and his daughter, but this particular example seens a little complex. The first code I ever wrote was something like

10 PRINT "HELLO"

20 GOTO 10

That's 3 or 4 steps. No IDE, no GUI, no variables. A program I could re-create completely on my own the next day.

View on HN

Hey I hear you. When I started coding I was 9 and I did something like that in BASIC. It was awesome. I was actually considering what to start out with and I just went for iOS off the bat to see what happens. I also think kids these days pick up stuff way faster than 20-30 years ago. It's insane how fast they pick up things like touch interfaces, smartphones, tablets, etc for example.

Same here. I have a one year old now, and was just thinking how sad it is that there isn't an equivalent of a C-64 any more. Turn it on, bam, a BASIC REPL in less than a second. Give the kid the language manual (all of 10-20 pages) and off they go.

Today, there is all this cruft they have to be shown (Cmd-R, XCode, etc.). If they screw up they can't just reboot.

There are benefits of course. Knocking out the power cord doesn't destroy the work in progress. There are non-volatile media. Screens have colors :-)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com