Old Computers - A Valuable Experience?

[Ze_ro]

I was born in 1980. My first computer was a VIC-20, and I later got a C-64. I also used Apple II's at school for a number of years. Back then, every computer from an Aquarius to an IBM PC had BASIC on it in some form or another, and owners of these machines were generally encouraged to explore the possibilities and learn how to program for themselves. Heck, the manuals even showed you exactly what you could do with what you had, going as far as to tell you how to use the expansion port in case you ever wanted to wire up your own hardware. Later on, I "graduated" to using MS-DOS, and I had to learn for myself things like IRQ's, batch files, and memory handling. Even in the DOS days, we still had BASIC at our disposal, if we wanted to use it. In a way, I think dealing with "difficult computers" like these really taught me a lot about how computers work, not just the hardware, but the software too.

However, kids these days don't have to deal with BASIC or MS-DOS. They've never had to use a command line, and they rarely have to worry about how their hardware is being used. Windows doesn't come with a BASIC interpreter, and neither do Macs. If you even want to try to learn how to program, your only real option is to buy an expensive compiler like Visual C++ or CodeWarrior. Loading up regedit to alter registry keys would be considered black magic to most people these days. But what effect do you think this will have on the kids that grow up using these computers? It's often accepted that kids will learn computers as they use them, but do you think that they'll learn them the same way us 20/30-somethings did, or will their knowledge be somehow lessened because they were never encouraged to learn how to program, or forced to do things the hard way? Do you think their experiences will be better than ours in other ways? After all, I sure didn't learn anything about TCP/IP networking while I was using the Apple II's at school!

I'd like to think that knowing BASIC programming is a valuable skill, even though I never actually use it anymore. Is this an obsolete notion?

--Zero

[Dave Farquhar]

Working backwards, Zero, yes, I believe Basic is a valuable skill, if only because it taught logic. Knowing how to break a process down into simple steps (in the case of Basic, usually a lot of simple steps) is a valuable skill, even if the tool that taught it is obsolete.

I could do some really mean stuff with a C-64 or 128 back in the 1988-1990 time frame, and the frightening thing is, I can't write a lick of VB today. But I learned a lot about computer hardware by having to bang chip registers around with PEEK and POKE statements in Basic, and loads and stores in 6502 assembly. I know more about how a computer operates than some of my coworkers and former coworkers who have computer science degrees. That's not to say their work isn't valuable (well, I can think of a few who aren't, but there always are a few), but when the computer breaks, you're much better off calling on me than on them.

But you're right, an awful lot of the stuff you and I did in school is obsolete today, where the stuff kids today are doing in school will be around a long time (such as TCP/IP).

But I'll tell you what: While I don't use Basic on any kind of a regular basis anymore--though the KiXtart scripting language is awfully similar to the built-in Basics of old--I use batch files almost every day. You know when Patch Tuesday comes out every month? I have to deploy those to a network of a couple hundred computers, and my company is too cheap to get the proper deployment tools. So I wrote deployment tools in batch. They're crude and awkward but they let me get the job done in a reasonable amount of time. There are a lot of other jobs that I can get done in half or 1/3 the time with batch files as opposed to doing them manually.

So yeah, I'm glad for those days I spent banging away on Commodore 64s and PC/XTs.

[ubikuberalles]

Yes, I think BASIC is important to learn for the reasons given by Dave Farquhar. It's also a great start for anyone wanting to learn about programming. No, Ze_ro, your notions are not obsolete.

Are the kids today less exposed to BASIC programming than before? Well, yes and no. Sure BASIC does't come free with the OS anymore but you can download BASIC for free (Just BASIC (http://www.justbasic.com/) for example) along with other languages (DevC++, Processing, Python etc. etc.). So if anyone wants to learn programming without paying the big bucks, they can do so. And don't forget Java scripting which may supplant BASIC (if it hasn't already) as an introduction to programming. So, for those who are interested in programming, they have far more access to resources than their counterparts from 20 years ago.

Back in the Atari 800/C64/Apple ][ days anyone who had a computer was inclined to write or at least run BASIC programs (in other words: Nerds). Now, computers are used by the great unwashed masses and not everyone needs to (or even should) learn programming. Even if a very small fraction of computer users today learn programming, that's still a lot more potential programmers then what existed twenty years ago.

[swlovinist]

Any programming tool that can allow you to make something by YOURSELF is valuable, no matter how obsolete it is. Now that proframming has become commercial and very complicated, it is very difficult to make a finished product to sell. Long live BASIC!

[Flack]

I think BASIC programming taught me to be able to think logically, in order. I see a general lack of this skill with the younger people on the entry help desk that I work with. Occasionally I'll get called from them stating things like, "this person can't print and it must be the DHCP server is offline," and when you press them for details all they can come up with is, well, the last time the DHCP server went offline no one could print, so that must be today's problem too!

If someone can't print to a network printer, there are certain things that need to happen. The person needs to be on the network. The printer needs to be on the network. The person needs to be able to see the printer. The person needs to have rights to the printer. Etc. I think this is where being familiar with batch files and BASIC come into play. I (and most of the "older" people I work with) seem to have no problem breaking down problems into little pieces and walking through them a bit at a time, while the newer guys just can't seem to be able to convert a problem to a linear issue and follow the path.

On a side note, Dave, check out Batch-0-Matic (http://www.robohara.com/software/b0m.rar). It's a program I wrote which allows you to run a batch file on a bunch of servers (stored in a list). It's what I use to patch servers -- maybe you will find it useful! Like you, I had to write it when I couldn't get anyone here to buy what I wanted/needed.

[idrougge]

I'd like to think that knowing BASIC programming is a valuable skill, even though I never actually use it anymore. Is this an obsolete notion?

I think that having at least some experience with a programming is very good. It gives you an understanding of how any computer "thinks", and will make you less lone to lose patience or view it as black magic. Once you've experienced the computer doing exactly what you told it, you become aware of that it operates in that way and not out of malice.

[Pantechnicon]

Lots of good reasons have been cited already why it's good to have a handle on simple programming concepts. All I can add is a personal anecdote.

My pre-1988 computer experience was largely writing, debugging, and running on my own programs written in good ol BASIC. During my years in the military (1988-1992) I was in a sort of no-computer limbo. This timeframe also happened to coincide more or less with the period in which 8 and 16-bit microcomputers faded out of popular use and were supplanted by x86's running MS-DOS. Whenever I did run across a newer computer during this period I was generally put off by the thing. Why? Ironically, I considered them to difficult to use precisely because they weren't readily programmable. This "applications bought in a store" stuff literally made no sense to me. If you wanted programs you were supposed to write them yourself.

Mind you, this isn't to say I was all that great at BASIC programming, but I managed to come up with a few useful things for homework, text games etc. All I'm saying is that I came into all of it at time when the computer was pretty much what you made of it yourself. Nowadays kids seem to think that means nothing more than changing their desktop wallpaper once a month.

[Ze_ro]

Apparently, Salon agrees with me (http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2006/09/14/basic/index_np.html). Does David Brin read these forums or something?

--Zero

[Pantechnicon]

That was a great article! Hit the nail right on the head. Thanks for linking it I'm posting the link to that in the discussion thread for the Java class I'm taking at UNM right now. Maybe some of my whiny young'un classmates will be inspired to look at things differently.

/me runs off to install a C64 emu on the PC in my son's room.

[Kid Ice]

It's often accepted that kids will learn computers as they use them, but do you think that they'll learn them the same way us 20/30-somethings did, or will their knowledge be somehow lessened because they were never encouraged to learn how to program, or forced to do things the hard way? Do you think their experiences will be better than ours in other ways? --Zero

I was into BASIC as a kid and now I'm taking a graduate web design course. I can say without a shred of doubt that my early experiences with BASIC, writing programs, and learning about stuff like variables and parameters is still helping me to this day.

But it's hard for me to generalize about "the kids today", because I don't consider my experience typical. I was doing all this crap with my Commodore while my friends were outside riding their bikes, getting in trouble, socializing, etc. Back then most kids were NOT into computers, and I doubt that has changed much...by "into computers" I mean nuts and bolts stuff, not downloading music or chatting on AIM.

However...a kid today who IS into the nuts and bolts stuff is, IMO, at a huge advantage over those of us who were 20+ years ago. Back in 1982 when I was getting my Vic 20 groove on, you hardly ever saw a computer in someone's house, and I didn't encounter a computer at school until I was in high school. Now there are computers all over the place. And they're cheap. And you can take them apart and mess around with them (something I never even thought about doing with my Commodores). You can go on the web and download all the documentation you need (it took me two years to find a decent joystick subroutine for my C64). You can download free software at will.

Yeah, I learned more by having to figure so much stuff out...but it takes a lot of time to figure stuff out (and just imagine if I could regain the hours of my life I wasted typing in machine language code from magazines).

[Jorpho]

Apparently, Salon agrees with me (http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2006/09/14/basic/index_np.html). Does David Brin read these forums or something?

I was just going to link to that. (David Brin is a great writer.)

However, if you read the comments for that article, you will find that the general consensus (which I do agree with to some extent) is that BASIC... sucks. As Edsger W. Dijkstra is cited in the Jargon File (http://catb.org/jargon/html/B/BASIC.html), "It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."

And that says nothing about how pretty much every implementation of BASIC back in the day was just a little bit different from every other implementation of BASIC, meaning that even typing in programs from a book could give you problems.

Many of the comments suggest looking into something like Python. I'd be inclined to suggest LabVIEW myself, but there's no free implementation of that.

As for my early experiences with BASIC, the crying and screaming I did when dealing with bugs and typos prepared me well for the swearing and violent rage that now fills my days. :D

[idrougge]

The point I was trying to make is not that BASIC is a good language, but it is an easy language. Not everyone is destined to become a programmer, and it might even be possible that BASIC gets in the way of that, but for most people, I think the programming experience is important, for the understanding of computers that it gives, and not whether they will write the new Linux kernel or not.

[Ze_ro]

Well, BASIC certainly isn't something you want to actually write anything important with, and it does have it's flaws... but it was never meant to be that serious in the first place. BASIC programming is meant to teach you things like variables, sequential execution, program flow and other fundamental concepts. Trying to dive right in with assembly can be very difficult for someone who doesn't understand these kinds of things, and I don't think C would have worked very nicely on a 5k VIC-20.

I remember when I took a year of Pascal programming in high school, and it was really strange to NOT be using line numbers and GOTO commands... and having routines outside the main body of code also took a little getting used to. By the time I moved on to C the next year, I had pretty much given up all the bad habits of BASIC.

--Zero

[Jorpho]

Well, BASIC certainly isn't something you want to actually write anything important with, and it does have it's flaws... but it was never meant to be that serious in the first place. BASIC programming is meant to teach you things like variables, sequential execution, program flow and other fundamental concepts. Trying to dive right in with assembly can be very difficult for someone who doesn't understand these kinds of things, and I don't think C would have worked very nicely on a 5k VIC-20.

I remember when I took a year of Pascal programming in high school, and it was really strange to NOT be using line numbers and GOTO commands... and having routines outside the main body of code also took a little getting used to. By the time I moved on to C the next year, I had pretty much given up all the bad habits of BASIC.

So why shouldn't people start with something that doesn't teach you bad habits like BASIC does? It might teach you things like variables and sequential execution (though it was years before I quite figured out what an array was), but BASIC's idea of program flow is a very poor idea indeed. Surely one can have somthing easier than assembler that is less awkward than BASIC?

Anyone here try Python before? Is it really something you can just pick up and use?

[boatofcar]

Well, BASIC certainly isn't something you want to actually write anything important with, and it does have it's flaws... but it was never meant to be that serious in the first place. BASIC programming is meant to teach you things like variables, sequential execution, program flow and other fundamental concepts. Trying to dive right in with assembly can be very difficult for someone who doesn't understand these kinds of things, and I don't think C would have worked very nicely on a 5k VIC-20.

I remember when I took a year of Pascal programming in high school, and it was really strange to NOT be using line numbers and GOTO commands... and having routines outside the main body of code also took a little getting used to. By the time I moved on to C the next year, I had pretty much given up all the bad habits of BASIC.

So why shouldn't people start with something that doesn't teach you bad habits like BASIC does? It might teach you things like variables and sequential execution (though it was years before I quite figured out what an array was), but BASIC's idea of program flow is a very poor idea indeed. Surely one can have somthing easier than assembler that is less awkward than BASIC?


I think the point he's trying to make is that "back in the day," BASIC, a programming language, was touted as one of the reasons of owning a computer. Most of the time when you booted up, you were greeted with a READY with a flashing cursor beneath it. Programming languages aren't nearly as "up front" now, and that discourages your average user from messing around with it.

Now of course, the argument that computer owners in the early 80s were much more likely to want to mess with programming is a valid one as well. Less users, more hobbyists.

This is a great thread, with a bunch of great responses!

[ubikuberalles]

(Long post - and rant - warning! :))


OK. I read the article and spent a lot of time reading the Editor's choice letters. I agree with a lot of what David Brin had to say. Some observations:

A lot of the professional programmers used this article as a opportunity to vent on BASIC. They talked about how it encouraged beginning programmers to write bad code. That it teaches them spaghetti code and so on.

I've been programming, as a professional and amateur, for thirty years. One thing I've learned: programming languages dont write bad code, bad programmers write bad code. Some of the worst code I've ever seen was written in C, Pascal and other languages that are supposed to encourage structured programming. Some of the best code I've ever seen was written in non-structured languages, like BASIC and even assembler.* It wasn't the programming classes that taught me how to design a program and effect a readable coding style: it was the teachers and the books that did that. The programming language (Pascal) was simply the canvas for me to paint my new found skills.

I'm all for anything that gets kids to start thinking in a logical fashion. Sure BASIC has it's problems but if it gets them to program, I'm all for it. It's like getting kids to read by giving them comic books. It's no Melville or Dickens but it gets them to read. That's good! :)

Frankly, what these professional programmers said smacked of elitism. They've forgotten their roots and the joy they felt when they wrote their first program (in BASIC). What they are complaining about is akin to literacy advocates complaining about kids reading comic books. HEY! THEY'RE READING! THAT'S GOOD! They made the first step. Don't bitch about what they're reading, instead try to encourage them to take the next step: reading better quality books.

The same goes with BASIC programming. HEY! THEY'RE PROGRAMMING! THAT'S GOOD! They made the first step. Instead of bitching about what a lousy language BASIC is (and making the kids feel lousy), tell them they're doing good and encourage them to write more programs in different languages. The professional programmers are missing the point of the article and instead are pushing their personal agenda.

Some of the letter writers recommended using other readily available languages like Python, Haskell and Alice. The idea of the article is about a language that kids would be easily attracted to because it is fun and easy to learn. Would they be strongly attracted to these alternatives? A little bit attracted, maybe, but based on my experience, I don't think so. I'm not against it, mind you, I just don't think they're as effective as a teaching tool as BASIC on a C64 was.

Other observations:

David's son was much better at solving the problem then his dad. His son found a C64 on Ebay and they quickly got it up and running. Not a bad solution but they could have downloaded Vice or atari800win and got BASIC running in only a few minutes. I'm not knocking their solution but I did find it amusing (a few - very few - letter writers recommended that Brin run a Commodore or Atari emulator).

A number of readers accused Brin of being nostalgic. I guess that's true but, nevertheless, his article hit upon a number of valid points. I think, among the vast majority of those using computers, there is a tragic gap between the people who know how computers work and those who have no frigging clue. I've attended a number of college classes in the past year; classes like Photoshop, HTML script writing, Flash and so on. Invariably at least two or three students in each class were unable to do a simple "Save As..." command. Simple knowledge of how their work is saved to disk is lost to them. It baffles me that they can even function in class.

Learning BASIC on a "toy" computer like a C64 eliminated that gap in the 80's. I would applaud any effort to reintroduce these computers (or emulations of these computers) to today's kids in order to eliminate that gap again.

One final note: The biggest impression this article had on me was the close personal relationship David Brin had with his son. I thought that was touching and inspiring.

(I actually have a lot more to say but I think I'll quit for now. :D)

*I remember, at an Atari club meeting back in the 80's, looking at code written by a club member. It was for a Missile command knockoff he designed. The code was well structured, lots of well designed data structures and the alogorithm was easy to figure out. I asked him what C compiler he used and he told me it wasn't written in C but in assembler. I did a double take and looked again. He was right, it WAS written in assembler. He indented the code and wrote his comments in such a way that the assembly coode looked more like a C program than an assembler program. It was some of the finest code I've ever seen and it wasn't even in a structured language.

[cyberfluxor]

Keep in mind: I'm 21 so consider me a big kid. :)

Assembly isn't that difficult if you understand how fundamental a processor really is. Of course I've taken computer design courses and learned through them how to design a core with flip/flop gates and all the pretty transistors then the assembly code to operate it. We did this with the x86 chips so it's not up to date, but most of the older stuff are ROMs to simulate it faster than wasting processing time fetching and interpreting. Lets not go into that dirty stuff though, lets keep it clean with BASIC and kids learning to program. :D

First off, I've been writting software since around '98 when a friend introduced me to programming on those nifty TI calculators, before that though all I did was configure games to work with my computer and write command batch files since my first P486.

So, my first language was BASIC and it was a very enjoyable experience to get me broken into. The ease of how it flowed, the ability to alter states of the system and make the hardware perform operations you wanted to do but faster or just to play a personal game was just great. There were times when I wrote games and people would pay me lunch money to get copies on their calculators (ahhh, the good days of middle school). By the time I entered high school I was writting pacman, drug wars, galaxian, maze craze, casino slots/cards/tables, minesweeper, connect4, and just so many many other things. They were all made up in my head and on the fly. If something came to me during class I'd bust out the calculator and write it up, usually done before class was out. It just kinda grew on me and when I was introduced to CPP through a computer math course in my junior year I was stoked. The only problem was by this time my skills were so good with BASIC that introduction CPP courses were push-overs. I aced everything and the AP exam was a joke.

This is where college now comes into play. All of my programming classes have felt like a joke to me. They ask me a question or give a problem that's a "project" for the semester, I have all the code in my head right then and am already perfecting it and making it more efficient. I can look at software on the computer and break down mentally how it can be constructed and how objects interact with one another. It just goes on.

I won't rant any farther unless anyone wants to talk about a subject in programming or how things work and what have you. I'll add damn, it's important to teach your kids a programming language period. Get them started with BASIC or higher level languages, then work their way down. There's plenty of things to be learned and ways to expand their way of thinking and solving problems both technical and in real life. Of course you do have the potential to seclude them from others and not be as popular, but the skills they'll learn will place them higher in society when they're getting certified at things and graduating. There are plenty of organizations out there they can join like ACM, IEEE, ect to meet others.

[Jorpho]

I won't rant any farther unless anyone wants to talk about a subject in programming or how things work and what have you. I'll add damn, it's important to teach your kids a programming language period. Get them started with BASIC or higher level languages, then work their way down. There's plenty of things to be learned and ways to expand their way of thinking and solving problems both technical and in real life. Of course you do have the potential to seclude them from others and not be as popular, but the skills they'll learn will place them higher in society when they're getting certified at things and graduating. There are plenty of organizations out there they can join like ACM, IEEE, ect to meet others.

"Higher in society"? "Getting certified at things"? I don't mean to be contentious, but that seems a bit lofty.

Of course it can be argued that learning to program teaches important organizational and conceptual skills. I suddenly have this image of an older person arguing that Latin did that far better than BASIC did.

[cyberfluxor]

"Higher in society"? "Getting certified at things"? I don't mean to be contentious, but that seems a bit lofty.


Don't look too far into what I'm saying. I personally believe that all kids have the right to the best education and be able to go where they want in life. It's up to the parents though to help them get there and giving them the opertunity to do things that open their minds and simplify other things out in the world it does open more windows. You can debate Latin if you want but we're talking about BASIC here and other older high level languages and their effects.

[YoshiM]

BASIC was a great way to learn. It showed you a general framework on how programs work. My Dad still uses a type of BASIC-stuff he learned on his CoCo back in like 1981 is essential for his C&C routing he does in his sign business.

I've seen some pretty amazing things written in BASIC. If I'm not mistaken, some dude wrote a home CAD program in BASIC on the CoCo (could have been some actual machine language or some serious PEEKS and POKEs but I can't recall but the bulk was BASIC).

[Ze_ro]

So why shouldn't people start with something that doesn't teach you bad habits like BASIC does? It might teach you things like variables and sequential execution (though it was years before I quite figured out what an array was), but BASIC's idea of program flow is a very poor idea indeed. Surely one can have somthing easier than assembler that is less awkward than BASIC?

Anyone here try Python before? Is it really something you can just pick up and use?
Well, my wish here isn't that BASIC be included on computers these days, but more that ANY programming language be available by default and be well represented. There are plenty of free compilers available, but I don't think any of them will see as much use as BASIC did in the 80's.


Some of the letter writers recommended using other readily available languages like Python, Haskell and Alice. The idea of the article is about a language that kids would be easily attracted to because it is fun and easy to learn.
I think I used BASIC more because I had to, rather than because I wanted to. I had no choice but to load and run games using BASIC commands. Even if Windows had a fully-featured Python interpreter with a full host of libraries, it would never be essential for users to learn it, and therefor I think it would not be used as much.

Don't get me wrong... I didn't hate BASIC... it's more of a "necessity is the mother of invention" kind of thing.


Assembly isn't that difficult if you understand how fundamental a processor really is. Of course I've taken computer design courses and learned through them how to design a core with flip/flop gates and all the pretty transistors then the assembly code to operate it.
I didn't find assembly very difficult either, but of course, by the time I actually tried it, I already had about 3 years of experience with C, and this was about 18 years after I started learning BASIC... so my idea of "not difficult" is very much biased.

BASIC was nice is that it was generally quite portable. POKE's and PEEK's were obviously machine dependant, but if you started programming on a VIC-20 and then moved to a Apple II, you generally didn't miss a beat, whereas assembly on one processor can be completely different from another. In university, I did assembly on the 6800, 68000 and a RISC processor called the PIC16F866... I couldn't stand the small instruction set of the PIC, and it's bizarre (by 6800(0) standards) branching commands.

--Zero

[crazyjackcsa]

You guys all sound like a bunch of old men! "Well back in MY DAY!! WAH WAH WAH" LOL "Kids these days, just don't get how rough we had it!" It's only an important skill if it's required today, and for the most part it isn't. Sure, it's neat, and could come in handy one day, but it isn't important.

[Kid Ice]

You guys all sound like a bunch of old men! "Well back in MY DAY!! WAH WAH WAH" LOL "Kids these days, just don't get how rough we had it!" It's only an important skill if it's required today, and for the most part it isn't. Sure, it's neat, and could come in handy one day, but it isn't important.

Wow way to not read just about anything that was written. Nice going.

[Ze_ro]

He may have missed the point, but I have to wonder if there are a bunch of 30-year olds hanging around thinking the same thing about phreaking... by the time I was old enough to even know what phreaking was, all the phones around here were pretty much hack-proof, so I never really learned anything about it.

--Zero

[Pantechnicon]

...It's only an important skill if it's required today, and for the most part it isn't. Sure, it's neat, and could come in handy one day, but it isn't important.

What....you think programs write themselves?

You probably don't think this, but your apparent wilingness to take program development for granted is exactly the point we're trying to make. Would you be content in a world where programming is a skill relegated to only a handful of specialists all of whom are bought and paid for by large corporations or the government?

The ability to develop programs apart from an institutional hierarchy is one of the things that seperates Internet contributors from the mere consumers. Google, Firefox, BitTorrent, Linux et al. all had humble beginnings as programs written by individuals who were looking for alternatives to the dreck that the big corporations were dishing out. If from these contributions you can't honestly recognize the current importance of individuals empowered with programming skills, then I don't know what else to say except go watch a YouTube video or something.

[Pantechnicon]

...It's only an important skill if it's required today, and for the most part it isn't. Sure, it's neat, and could come in handy one day, but it isn't important.

What....you think programs write themselves?

You probably don't think this, but your apparent wilingness to take program development for granted is exactly the point we're trying to make. Would you be content in a world where programming is a skill relegated to only a handful of specialists all of whom are bought and paid for by large corporations or the government?

The ability to develop programs apart from an institutional hierarchy is one of the things that seperates Internet contributors from the mere consumers. Google, Firefox, BitTorrent, Linux et al. all had humble beginnings as programs written by individuals who were looking for alternatives to the dreck that the big corporations were dishing out. If from these contributions you can't honestly recognize the current importance of individuals empowered with programming skills, then I don't know what else to say except go watch a YouTube video or something.

[crazyjackcsa]

...It's only an important skill if it's required today, and for the most part it isn't. Sure, it's neat, and could come in handy one day, but it isn't important.

What....you think programs write themselves?

You probably don't think this, but your apparent wilingness to take program development for granted is exactly the point we're trying to make. Would you be content in a world where programming is a skill relegated to only a handful of specialists all of whom are bought and paid for by large corporations or the government?

The ability to develop programs apart from an institutional hierarchy is one of the things that seperates Internet contributors from the mere consumers. Google, Firefox, BitTorrent, Linux et al. all had humble beginnings as programs written by individuals who were looking for alternatives to the dreck that the big corporations were dishing out. If from these contributions you can't honestly recognize the current importance of individuals empowered with programming skills, then I don't know what else to say except go watch a YouTube video or something.

I'm sorry, I didn't know "Google, Firefox, BitTorrent, Linux et al." Were written on C-64's and Vic 20's using obsolete programming languages. Here's the point I'm trying to make, and the guy who mentioned "phreaking" understood me. The general skills you learned on these systems is good. The hard ware and software specific "tricks" you know about them are not generally required. Sure it's neat, and the general knowledge will help, but the need dto build a program to run on a 20 year old computer doesn't arise that often.

[crazyjackcsa]

While I'm thinking about it, this thread was started on a message board that already skews towards old electronics and is further focused onto classic computers, there is a bias towards the positve answer. If you were to ask the general populace the answer would come back largely negative. Does that make the general populace right? No. However, if I were to post a thread asking "Is it important to know power range and Cam characteristis in 71-76 BBB (Big Block Buicks) when running 87 octane" The answer here would come back "Why do you need to know that?" when if I posted it on a Buick message board the answer would be "Yes! you need to know that!"

[cyberfluxor]

crazyjackcsa is making a good point so don't dismiss it entirely. I certainly believe that most everyone should have some basic understanding on the workings of a computer, just like cars, electronics, cooking, and many other things. Going through public schools do teach a little bit of everything with keyboarding, intro electronic courses, cooking classes, even gym to attempt people to understand human health and our bodies. Not everyone can be garanteed to know the minimum of everything out there though these education systems and that's where the parents step in. It's all bias though because parents can only teach fundamental skills on subjects that they understand, so if for say the dad is a brick layer and the wife works as a bookkeeper someplace what's the chance of the child learning more than how to boot a computer and send a message to someone unless they do it on their own through investigating, which is what most of people do to discover what they enjoy.

About the phone phreaking part though, last I recalled Cptn. Crunch was the biggest name in it thanks to his little toy. Those were the days that BBSs were the only big means of communication between hackers. I really hate all these old farts that come out the woodwork claiming how they were so cool and did so much yet they have no proof they ever did it. Then you have the poser new generation of hackers that claim "war driving" is so g0dl1n3ss.

[Flack]

Well I think that's obvious -- there are very few web developers today who need to know how to do Commodore-specific rasters or scrolls, and I don't think that's what anyone was implying. What I was saying (and I think people were agreeing with) was that it wasn't the program specific things but rather the tools (organization, logic, flowcharts, research, etc) that were valuable skills and are things I an many people still use today.


I really hate all these old farts that come out the woodwork claiming how they were so cool and did so much yet they have no proof they ever did it.
No doubt. Those old farts, going around writing books about the "good old days" ... the nerve!

[Kid Ice]

What I was saying (and I think people were agreeing with) was that it wasn't the program specific things but rather the tools (organization, logic, flowcharts, research, etc) that were valuable skills and are things I an many people still use today.

That's it. And that's why I encounter so many people on a regular basis who still don't understand how a file system works....they didn't get started until Windows XP which spoon feeds you everything.

And don't get me started on games. Remember on the C64 where you actually had to know how to do something to save a game? You know, something intellectually strenuous like "insert a blank disc and press F11" or "save 'character', 8"? . Now every new game that comes out you have to go through this rigamarole of creating a "profile". What a pain in the ass. Just let me play the fucking game! Why should I be penalized because 3/4 of the game-playing population is too idiotic to figure out how to save the right way?

[cyberfluxor]

I really hate all these old farts that come out the woodwork claiming how they were so cool and did so much yet they have no proof they ever did it.
No doubt. Those old farts, going around writing books about the "good old days" ... the nerve!
LOL

I'm mainly pointing out those that clearly didn't help out the phreaking community one bit at the time, have no proof or real background in the field and sound like just crap when they discuss the subject. I've watched streams and read online documents of quite a few older people that just sound so scripted and oblivious, most of what is said are things that can simply be found on wikipedia or after 10 minutes of searching on google, nothing real solid and unique. I'm not dismissing anyone on this discussion whatsoever or the knowledge they may have on the subject. Just it's easy to pluck my nerve on some hacking scenes. :/

If you really want to force someone to gain experience though, always toss them a UNIX based system and have them play with it for several months. Be sure they also have access to sources that can further their development and they'll learn things from scripting, coding, patching, debugging, and many things in between.

[Jorpho]

If you really want to force someone to gain experience though, always toss them a UNIX based system and have them play with it for several months. Be sure they also have access to sources that can further their development and they'll learn things from scripting, coding, patching, debugging, and many things in between.

What!? Most people who do not have considerable experience already will give up in frustration before ever getting that far.

[cyberfluxor]

What!? Most people who do not have considerable experience already will give up in frustration before ever getting that far.
Then they don't have the drive to really care about learning how everything works at the core of a computer. I know quite a few people that took spare computers, installed random operating systems onto them and just kept cracking at it for hours a week to learn how they work. You do the same with Windows, it's just the interface that changes. If you were to start a kid on a command prompt system they won't be as hesitant to shun it away as someone that started on a user interface that looks more "appealing" to the eyes.

[crazyjackcsa]

Well I think that's obvious -- there are very few web developers today who need to know how to do Commodore-specific rasters or scrolls, and I don't think that's what anyone was implying. What I was saying (and I think people were agreeing with) was that it wasn't the program specific things but rather the tools (organization, logic, flowcharts, research, etc) that were valuable skills and are things I an many people still use today.


I really hate all these old farts that come out the woodwork claiming how they were so cool and did so much yet they have no proof they ever did it.
No doubt. Those old farts, going around writing books about the "good old days" ... the nerve!

If that's the case, your making an arguement for what you learned, which I agree with very valuable skills, NOT what you learned on, old computers. My understanding of the what the original poster's intent was that you COULDN'T learn these skills on new equipent and that the kids have lost something by not using these antiquated pieces of technology.

I guess to boil it down: I beleive the origianl equation of Old Computers = Valuable experience to be false.

However;
Valuable Experience on old Computers = Valuable experience on New Computers.

[Jorpho]

Then they don't have the drive to really care about learning how everything works at the core of a computer. I know quite a few people that took spare computers, installed random operating systems onto them and just kept cracking at it for hours a week to learn how they work. You do the same with Windows, it's just the interface that changes. If you were to start a kid on a command prompt system they won't be as hesitant to shun it away as someone that started on a user interface that looks more "appealing" to the eyes.

Looking back on what you wrote, when you said "access to sources that can further their development" I thought you were referring to program source code of components of the system.

[cyberfluxor]

Looking back on what you wrote, when you said "access to sources that can further their development" I thought you were referring to program source code of components of the system.
I was mainly pointing towards the internet, it's trivial why someone wouldn't use it when dealing with electronics. Also if you wonder to a book store with a decent selection of computer books you're bound to find text written by the operating system developers which can be of the best help at times; just need to make sure their guides are avilable online free before dumping too much into a book that goes farther into things than you want to go.

[Flack]

I'm mainly pointing out those that clearly didn't help out the phreaking community one bit at the time, have no proof or real background in the field and sound like just crap when they discuss the subject.
Of course that applies to phreaking, but it also applies to almost anything else. There were a couple of people who figured out how 2600hz worked, then a bigger group of people who took that information and ran with it, and then millions of people who took the knowledge once it had been neatly bundled up for them and began to use it.

Look at mod chips. I don't know who invented the first mod chip, but it's the same thing. Some genius somewhere created one, then he showed someone, then someone made a few more, then all of a sudden you've got morons at the flea market selling modded Xboxes full of games on a hard drive to kids for $300. And of course some of those people walk around acting like they invented the thing which is a dumb attitude, but it's a power trip they get showing the things off to people who have never seen them before.

It's like the difference between hackers and script kiddies. There's no talent involved in destroying someone's computer using someone else's tools. Anyone with access to Google and no conscience could do it in 10 minutes.

How did we get off on this?

[cyberfluxor]

Look at mod chips. I don't know who invented the first mod chip, but it's the same thing. Some genius somewhere created one, then he showed someone, then someone made a few more, then all of a sudden you've got morons at the flea market selling modded Xboxes full of games on a hard drive to kids for $300. And of course some of those people walk around acting like they invented the thing which is a dumb attitude, but it's a power trip they get showing the things off to people who have never seen them before.
Yes sir! My god I can't stand that. There's a store I rarely buy from now and they have a huge inventory of old video games, like litterally thousands. Their associates are such ass holes and one time I got criticised by an employee because I buy and play SNES games sitting infront of him while he emulates on an Xbox which has "the exact same feel" as an SNES controller. If they were the same then I'd see myself still emulating on the computer 24/7 instead of dumping so much into a collection. What the difference between a keyboard and controller anyhow? Or how about picking up a Logictec or MS game controller at a thrift store for $2.


It's like the difference between hackers and script kiddies. There's no talent involved in destroying someone's computer using someone else's tools. Anyone with access to Google and no conscience could do it in 10 minutes.
Hitting it on the head again. Everyone I've known from the hacking scene don't destroy stuff, it's just not worth it. There's more money to be made in securing unless you're hacking bank accounts, but if you get caught at that boy are you going away for awhile.


How did we get off on this?
I don't know. Maybe some GOTO jumped us onto this subject. :)

I still say BASIC is a good fundamental language to learn in order to understand how a computer and electronics function. It helped me a great deal when building circuits in electronics and logic board classes in high school and college. If you really don't want to learn about then it's just not their cup of tea and shall continue to be just users.

Last semester when taking a course on the impact of computers and society my group was given the assignment to write 10 page essages and a power point presentation on the subject of computer reliability. The other people in my group talked about how spyware, malware, virii, and many other root kits were the blame to users having so many issues with their computers over time. I on the other hand wrote up about how users need good background knowledge on how computers work and what to watch out for to keep themselves safe. It was interesting to see my group claim the companies were to blame while mine was about poor system skills on the user side. Ultimately both are to blame but users most definitely need to know what they are doing before personal information gets leaked because they didn't know what they were clicking on.

[Ze_ro]

My understanding of the what the original poster's intent was that you COULDN'T learn these skills on new equipent and that the kids have lost something by not using these antiquated pieces of technology.
Not at all. In fact, it's probably far easier to learn how to program these days, especially with the internet at our disposal. The vast majority of my C knowledge was gleaned from programming things using Linux.

The difference here is that even though you CAN have this experience on modern system, it's completely optional... and I suspect that the vast majority will simply choose not to have the experience.

--Zero

[idrougge]

Well, BASIC certainly isn't something you want to actually write anything important with, and it does have it's flaws... but it was never meant to be that serious in the first place. BASIC programming is meant to teach you things like variables, sequential execution, program flow and other fundamental concepts. Trying to dive right in with assembly can be very difficult for someone who doesn't understand these kinds of things, and I don't think C would have worked very nicely on a 5k VIC-20.

Learning C helped me understand pointers, but that concept alone is like saying that the effort of learning UNIX is worth it just for understanding the concept of pipes. Everything I needed to know about program execution I learned from BASIC, possibly even more than I could have learned from C because it is more explicit, less abstract. C also has a much higher threshold of initiation, so as a beginner's language, it is worthless, probably for the same reasons that it is good for making proper applications. It's no "hello world" language, that's certain.

OTOH, learning machine code made me understand computers at a deeper level, but that is again something that doesn't really help me in my day-to-day contacts with computers. If I were to build a computer, that knowledge will come in handy. But to me, knowing assembly is like knowing how to build a car engine. It's a bit too involved to help me in my driving.

BASIC teaches you the essentials of how a computer works; how a computer executes commands in order, analyses conditions, branchs and jumps. You have made your own programs and debugged them, and you now know that there is no black magic involved in what goes on behind the screen when Internet Explorer crashes.