The thing that stands out in many of these stories are these three points:
* Accessible price point,
* Instantly usable to write code,
* a place to go when the capabilities ran out.
It is very challenging to reliably buy this today. When my daughter wanted a computer a gave her a VAX 4000/VLC, it had BASIC, C, FORTRAN, and COBOL installed and could run adventure. I got it for free from a junk pile.
I'm going to try and fix that.
[edited for formatting]
This, I think is crucial. Given a Linux machine with a rich GUI or an iPad, kids focus on the eye candy and start playing with those things. A (relatively) limited environment at the same time focuses them and makes them creative.
A friend wants to get a "computer" for her 10 year old daughter and I'm having trouble with what to recommend. The alternatives are a "netbook/mini" with Windows, same but repartitioned to also have a Linux partition or an Android tablet. They live half way around the world from me which makes support and interaction hard (timezone issues, hard to troubleshoot when you can't see the screen).
All 3 solutions run Skype, let you create and manipulate documents and play games. Windows requires by far the most system administration (virus checkers, frequent updates, driver issues, crapware etc) but has the largest software library. Android has the least amount of system administration (essentially none) but is the least flexible (eg document creation typically requires being online) and Android Market isn't available in their country making acquiring new software hard. Linux has the most flexibility but is also the hardest to use (remember the target is a 10 year old whose parents can't even spell Linux, not you). Netbooks also have the worst hardware support under Linux due to proprietary hardware.
An Android tablet would seem to be the best solution when coupled with App Inventor. Sadly App Inventor doesn't run on Android itself so you have to have a non-Android computer to do your development work.
I could of course setup emulators so she gets a Sinclair Spectrum and Apple //e and can learn just how I did, but things have moved on.
You could probably easily buy a computer with Linux on it today from Ebay for around $100. Installing Linux means you have a wealth of ways to instantly write code (gcc, g++, ruby, python, php, perl, and a browser where you can write Javascript) and there are plenty of places to go when it's capabilities run out.
I think it's even easier to buy all of this today.
Or, have I totally misunderstood what you've said?
For me, many years ago, and living as I was in the UK at the time, the BBC Micro met those requirements and started me on a long and happy career/life in IT.
I believe this niche is one that the developers of the $35 Raspberry Pi intend to fill. Good luck to them.
I'm not sure if I can see the correlation between the story being told and the fact that the author is female. It seems to be briefly mentioned in the first and last paragraphs.
> I'm not sure if I can see the correlation between the story being told and the fact that the author is female.
I saw a quip the other day that was along the lines of "Hacker News posters consistently make the mistake of assuming that, because a post shows up on Hacker News, the author is somehow 'making a big deal out of it'".
The "correlation" is that the author, after a spate of sexism stories regarding women in tech, got to thinking about how she got started as a woman in tech, and wrote a blog post sharing the story.
It's a slice of a story of someone's life, nothing more, nothing less. Don't try to read too much into it looking for larger correlations and grand overarching Big Deal Points.
The argument of the article is that when computers were new, they were new to everyone of either genders whereas at present gender-based expectations can take over in expectations and decisions about who would play or work with computers.
"In some ways, it is like the very ubiquity of technology has led us back to a world where socially normative gender roles take hold all over again"
It's a woman's story. The fact that gender isn't relevant is the point. So many people in "the software/start up/tech community" continue to make it relevant by shoehorning human sexuality onto things that should be about the joy of technology, of making things happen, of being real live sorcerers.
A lot of the responses here seeking a modern alternative to this experience seem to be focusing on hardware. In a way that's not surprising but I think it's a bit of a shame. That's because I think we have a platform today that can rival the ease and immediate feedback of those early computers: the web browser. There are probably a couple things needed to complete the picture.
1) A nice basic library that can serve as an immediate stepping stone to the UI. There's probably some out there already that are very beginner friendly.
2) Some kind of REPL/IDE like browser extension to make it easy to dive in right away. Something a bit easier for kids to wrap their head around than the developer tools of today, but also incorporating a basic editor so they can edit in place, save files etc.
I'm not really sure about the form of (2) or how vital it is, but it certainly wouldn't hurt.
I'd second this suggestion. Another great 'feature' of this platform is that it's trivially easy for the learner to share his/her creations with friends.
I doubt it will be possible to recapture the golden age of early PC's and their ability to get kids programming. The computing landscape has changed, and educational practices must change with it. We have to assume kids will have ipads as their first computer and treat them accordingly.
Kids these days are web users first and foremost. You have to let them cross the gap between visiting sites and creating sites. There's plenty of opportunity for sites that let kids create stuff in javascript and share it with their friends. What's so different from animating a canvas using javascript and animating a tv screen using basic?
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|14 years ago|reply
I'm going to try and fix that. [edited for formatting]
[+] [-] Jun8|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rogerbinns|14 years ago|reply
All 3 solutions run Skype, let you create and manipulate documents and play games. Windows requires by far the most system administration (virus checkers, frequent updates, driver issues, crapware etc) but has the largest software library. Android has the least amount of system administration (essentially none) but is the least flexible (eg document creation typically requires being online) and Android Market isn't available in their country making acquiring new software hard. Linux has the most flexibility but is also the hardest to use (remember the target is a 10 year old whose parents can't even spell Linux, not you). Netbooks also have the worst hardware support under Linux due to proprietary hardware.
An Android tablet would seem to be the best solution when coupled with App Inventor. Sadly App Inventor doesn't run on Android itself so you have to have a non-Android computer to do your development work.
I could of course setup emulators so she gets a Sinclair Spectrum and Apple //e and can learn just how I did, but things have moved on.
[+] [-] leftnode|14 years ago|reply
I think it's even easier to buy all of this today.
Or, have I totally misunderstood what you've said?
[+] [-] inopinatus|14 years ago|reply
I believe this niche is one that the developers of the $35 Raspberry Pi intend to fill. Good luck to them.
[+] [-] mariuolo|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mml|14 years ago|reply
Though on second thought, it's not at all surprising.
[+] [-] roguecoder|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hzy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msbarnett|14 years ago|reply
I saw a quip the other day that was along the lines of "Hacker News posters consistently make the mistake of assuming that, because a post shows up on Hacker News, the author is somehow 'making a big deal out of it'".
The "correlation" is that the author, after a spate of sexism stories regarding women in tech, got to thinking about how she got started as a woman in tech, and wrote a blog post sharing the story.
It's a slice of a story of someone's life, nothing more, nothing less. Don't try to read too much into it looking for larger correlations and grand overarching Big Deal Points.
[+] [-] joe_the_user|14 years ago|reply
"In some ways, it is like the very ubiquity of technology has led us back to a world where socially normative gender roles take hold all over again"
[+] [-] kmm|14 years ago|reply
But you're right, it probably isn't the most descriptive title.
[+] [-] roguecoder|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tichy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] novalis|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hetman|14 years ago|reply
1) A nice basic library that can serve as an immediate stepping stone to the UI. There's probably some out there already that are very beginner friendly.
2) Some kind of REPL/IDE like browser extension to make it easy to dive in right away. Something a bit easier for kids to wrap their head around than the developer tools of today, but also incorporating a basic editor so they can edit in place, save files etc.
I'm not really sure about the form of (2) or how vital it is, but it certainly wouldn't hurt.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jbattle|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Joeri|14 years ago|reply
Kids these days are web users first and foremost. You have to let them cross the gap between visiting sites and creating sites. There's plenty of opportunity for sites that let kids create stuff in javascript and share it with their friends. What's so different from animating a canvas using javascript and animating a tv screen using basic?
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Akram|14 years ago|reply