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simple steps (in the case of Basic, usually a lot of simple steps) is a valuable skill, even if the tool that taught it is obsolete.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 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. 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. 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. 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, "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.

[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. )

*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.

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).