good old times

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Ian Price

Once Raspberry Pi hits the floor, hopefully schools will push coding a bit further than they do now.
I came. I saw. I played.

quangdx

Program anywhere with a web browser and an internet connection.
HTML5 Spectrum emulator
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MrTAToad

Quote from: Ian Price on 2012-Mar-16
Once Raspberry Pi hits the floor, hopefully schools will push coding a bit further than they do now.
Hope so - trouble is, do the children have the ability to code, or will they find it boring and won't be able to concentrate ?

Ian Price

Quote from: MrTAToad on 2012-Mar-17
Quote from: Ian Price on 2012-Mar-16
Once Raspberry Pi hits the floor, hopefully schools will push coding a bit further than they do now.
Hope so - trouble is, do the children have the ability to code, or will they find it boring and won't be able to concentrate ?
The only way to find out is to try...
I came. I saw. I played.

fuzzy70

Out of interest what language/languages do you think schools would use?. When I was at school the choice was rather limited, Basic was the main one with fortran etc touched upon but was deemed a bit to specialised.

Lee
"Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?"
- "These go to eleven."

This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

MrTAToad

#65
I don't know - my college did Turbo Pascal, Turbo C and Turbo Basic - three proper languages.

I suspect they might have moved to Visual Basic, Java and C# nowadays.  The problem with the latter two is you need to do some much work for so little...

fuzzy70

Turbo C did not exist when i was at school  :D, I think we had turbo pascal on CP/M. PC's (as in intel dos ones) had not long been out & carried a very large price tag so they was not in my school. I think we got BBC Micros around 1982-83 & that was when pascal was overtaken by BASIC as they had the option of either buying another 1-2 BBC's or equipping the ones they bought with the pascal roms/software.

It was not a choice they enjoyed but the extra machines won simply because it allowed more people access at the same time during lessons.

Lee
"Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?"
- "These go to eleven."

This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

ampos

When I was at 2gr High, 15 y.o., computers come to school: 3 Spectrum and 2 MSXs. I remember being there being the very best at it, as I was programing for almost 2 years.

I was so ahead of the rest of the class that the teacher (he was the math teacher, and was just learning with the rest of the class) had to put the exams "acording to our knowledge", being my exams more dificult than the rest of the class.

I remember that a exam was "ask the user for his born year and calculate his age" (more or less), and the mine being "print any number with just 2 decimals".

I started converting number to string, finding the ".", and using right$ and left$ or something like that. When the teacher saw it, he said "you can not use functions we have not teach in class". SO I said "them Im lost". I can remember his smile for being "superior" than me at least one time. "Just multiply by 100, remove decimals and divide by 100 again". As far as I saw it, it was just a matter of seconds to have it done. This has been very useful to me in my programing life, similar to switch=1-switch.

Another day, he was explaining how to make a bingo game: create a matrix of 90 elements, fill it with numbers from 1 to 90, then un-sort them, choose a random "ball" to display the number, remove the ball, move the bottom balls one position up and keep a pointer with the total number of remaining balls. It was sooo dificult to understand (for the rest of the class). He was trying to imitate the real thing, and not thinking in computer terms. So I raised my arm, and said: why not create a matrix of 90 elements. Choose any random number and check if it is 0 or 1. Repeat until it is 0. Display this ball and mark it as 1 so it is not displayed again.

He didnt understand this so I have to write the program on the blackboard (yes, all of this was done on blackboards). The class ended before he gets it; the next day he comes saying "your method is easier than mine, but has a problem. When only a few ball are left, he can take a bit long to find a "0" ball". My answer was: we are talking about computers, isnt it? they are fast!"


Also we have many homework, to write programs in basic. On paper. I remember he just read the other students, but mines were written (by him I suppouse) on real computers, as my exercices come back with notes as "this gives syntax error" and things like this. He always wanted to ...er... pick-up me (not sure about the english word). In the end, I am sure he learned more from me than me from him, but I remember this good-old times as one of the more happier.

BTW, I had at home a Commodore Vic-20, with 3583 bytes free for programming :D

Also I remember doign a karate game for the vic, that loaded in 2 parts (the first was graphic loading). After loading...:

Code (glbasic) Select
print free(0)
2 bytes free


Amazing, just 2 bytes free of memory. Those were the times...
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mentalthink

I think the kids, now don´t want programming, or simply they don´t have interest about this...

I rebenmber when I was a child, I go crazy for touch a computer... but to much expensive , after a pair of years I have my CPC 464 whit 6 years old, and whit 10 my Amiga 500...

I think this time was another time... in Spain in the retroScene, we speaking about Romantic time, this time was abosulutely awesome creativity, and the Spaninsh soft, was one of the betters in the World, Spain was the 2 producer in all the world, in games, after UK...

I think was a Boom!!! Computer, like in 90, was the PC Boom!!! and now I think it´s internet and all mobile devices... but the kids, I think they are growing whit a lot of consoles, and not computers, a lot of Magazines, on you can learn to programming, now don´t exist, in my country don´t have any one magazine about programming your PC, yes internet have a lot of things, but not it´s the same, I rebenmber Micrihobby, an Magazine, pay you, if you make a good game... I speak about 60.000 ptas in those times... about 360€, now not it´s too much, but in those time, can be more of the win of you father.

I only say always a thing... I give thanks to good, for live the principle of the computing... not exactly, before have the IBM and all the mainframes... but of course, this it´s was imposible for a standard family... the 80´s was the better decade of all the times... and the music, I rebenmber communards, Depeche mode... and all this awesome music, now it´s all the same, the good look and pretty girl o boy, singing some lazy things... and winning huge amounts of money...

80´s forever  :-*