Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!feeder.erje.net!eu.feeder.erje.net!newsfeed.fsmpi.rwth-aachen.de!news-1.dfn.de!news.dfn.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Sylvia Else Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: Why Johnny can?t code Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 12:26:32 +1000 Lines: 29 Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net 69kjnph7Zps+nH03nvSRrQfJJZcfnjP1SsRAa1aB2I2cXPPmp/ Cancel-Lock: sha1:syHkTH4PHpaAmWZDwNArjZ16Pw8= User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.6.0 In-Reply-To: Xref: csiph.com comp.misc:4677 On 2/09/2014 8:02 PM, Rich wrote: > http://www.salon.com/2006/09/14/basic_2/ > > For three years - ever since my son Ben was in fifth grade - he and I > have engaged in a quixotic but determined quest: We've searched for a > simple and straightforward way to get the introductory programming > language BASIC to run on either my Mac or my PC. > > Why on Earth would we want to do that, in an era of glossy > animation-rendering engines, game-design ogres and sophisticated avatar > worlds? Because if you want to give young students a grounding in how > computers actually work, there's still nothing better than a little > experience at line-by-line programming. > > Only, quietly and without fanfare, or even any comment or notice by > software pundits, we have drifted into a situation where almost none of > the millions of personal computers in America offers a line-programming > language simple enough for kids to pick up fast. Not even the one that > was a software lingua franca on nearly all machines, only a decade or so > ago. And that is not only a problem for Ben and me; it is a problem for > our nation and civilization. > > ... > Let him be. If he never learns to program, he'll go into management, and get paid three times as much. Sylvia.