On Jan 16, 2008 1:47 PM, Andrew Lentvorski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > SJS wrote: > >> When I was in Jr High I had an Apple IIc and learned BASIC. Not sure > > > > Heh. You had a head start on me there. I was in high school when my > > family got a Vic20... I checked out computer magazines from the library > > and laboriously transcribed the BASIC programs so I could run them for > > so long as the computer was powered up. > > I guess I was fortunate. I started on a TRS-80 Color Computer. > > That computer had an unusually good community. It also had a single > author (an Electrical Engineer from LA) who wrote stuff for it named > William Barden, Jr. who really stands out: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Barden%2C_Jr. > > He wrote lots of assembly language stuff for it (including two assembly > language books). Of course, the computer also had with a *ROM* > cartridge which housed an editor/assembler. That meant that the Reset > switch could be used as an interrupt button and sometimes showed you > where your program bombed out. > > I learned assembly language at the age of 12 (From Barden's "TRS-80 > Color Computer Assembly Language Programming" and from Lance Leventhal's > "6809 Assembly Language Programming") and stumbled on and learned Lisp > at the age of 13 (From "The Little Lisper" now named "The Little > Schemer"). I've been warped ever since. > > Since I was stuck in Western Pennsylvania, I had no one to turn to for > help, so I never learned what I *couldn't* do on a computer. > > > I wonder if this isn't the root of the problem... how many kids these > > days ever *see* a computer as a box that follows instructions, rather > > than as a box one "has an experience with"? (Wow, almost on topic!) > > Very few. My best student from CS370 (Computer Architecture--but is > really basic digital logic and state machines) said: "But your class was > interesting. Nobody ever *told* us that's how computers worked." > > > They'll develop their own set of prejudices. We'll see how it works out. > > Oh, I'm sure they'll learn to hate computers just as much as we do. > > -a
This subject comes up every so often. I find it endlessly fascinating. Here is the start of an old thread http://www.copilotconsulting.com/mail-archives/kplug.2005/msg04343.html <quote> History, of a recent sort. But from the early days of computing, the late 50's early 60's. I was an undergraduate EE at Rice where I finally, after years of working construction every summer, got a great summer job working on the Rice University Research Computer, R1. </quote> The Rice University Computer R1. http://www.princeton.edu/~adam/R1/r1rpt.html Working on that old tube based machine was like walking around inside a small microprocessor ... BobLQ BTW. I searched Tracy's mail archive with Google(site:copilotconsulting.com Rice) and did _not_ find this message. I knew it was there so I searched agin with Lycos and found it. I must admit this surprised me. -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
