> "But it booted straight into BASIC. That’s all it did. I was, like, 8 years old. I wasn’t about to learn BASIC. What I learned instead: computers were not as awesome as I’d imagined."
You were the exception. Most kids felt awe. We started learning BASIC and creating "dumb games". That's the origin story of most people my age who ended up in this doomed industry.
Your priors are all out of whack. Most people never learned BASIC, let alone at 8. Programming is much more accessible now than then, but the overwhelming majority of people still don’t know any JavaScript or python or anything else.
meredithbloom · · focus · HN ↗
You were the exception. Most kids felt awe. We started learning BASIC and creating "dumb games". That's the origin story of most people my age who ended up in this doomed industry.
thfuran · · focus · HN ↗
ninjalanternshk · · focus · HN ↗
My Apple //e came with one language, BASIC, it was built in, nothing to buy, and came with a book on how to get started writing it.
But yeah I didn’t start at 8.
We didn’t get that Apple until I was 10, so that’s then I started.