| ▲ | autoexec 2 hours ago |
| I think you were the exception. Most kids never even knew what BASIC was. If there was a game already on the computer, they'd be happy to play it. If they really liked the game they might learn how to start the game if it wasn't already running, but they didn't care about doing anything else. Kids who were into computers looked at a computer and saw endless possibility. Everybody else played sports outside, watched TV, or hung out with their friends. |
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| ▲ | musicale a minute ago | parent | next [-] |
| > Most kids never even knew what BASIC was It's the format of those game program listings that were published in computer magazines and books of that era. |
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| ▲ | 3 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | mitxela 39 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Why would you get a computer in that era if you didn't want to learn BASIC? |
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| ▲ | musicale 2 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | To play the games that were included in books and magazines as BASIC program listings that you could type in and play. | |
| ▲ | mcmcmc 18 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Kids weren’t getting computers, their parents were. |
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| ▲ | popalchemist 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| It was probably a function of not just personality type but education. For whatever reason I was taught basic in elementary school as a millennial and it left an impression. |
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| ▲ | autoexec 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Education has to help demystify computers and give people an idea of what they could do with one. Basic seems like a weird choice for a millennial, but at least it had you actually write code instead of abstracting it away into pushing around icons like some of the systems I've seen for teaching young kids about software or even just giving directions to turtles. | | |
| ▲ | wild_egg 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Why is BASIC a weird choice? It wasn't really a choice at all. All the computers in my school ran it until I was 8 or 9 and the school board could afford to upgrade to Windows machines. | | |
| ▲ | autoexec 23 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Depending on where you draw the line for millennials the school computers could have been running anything from Windows 95 to Windows XP. BASIC wouldn't have been included in XP or 2000, and depending on what exactly they were using, it may have been easier to use something with more features. QBasic for example wouldn't have syntax highlighting. Simple programs in languages like python or perl can be used to teach the same concepts, with fairly similar syntax, and would have been more applicable to software people were actually writing at the time. |
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| ▲ | milesvp 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 10 print "hello" 20 goto 10 | | | |
| ▲ | an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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