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Why Johnny Can't Code

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the back-in-my-day dept.

GoCanes writes "Salon has an article named 'Why Johnny Can't Code,' an interesting examination of the dearth of line programming languages available today. At first I wanted to read this and say aha, here's a simple line oriented language that's available through open source, but after reading the article I couldn't find any. And being an old fart, I remember the days spent with edlin and basic."

5 of 686 comments (clear)

  1. Absolute nonsense by realnowhereman · · Score: 4, Informative

    What a load of rubbish.

    apt-get install \
          bash \
          python \
          gambas2 \
          kturtle \
          fp-compiler fp-units-base \
          php5-cli


    The reason children don't code (if that is even true, as it's a completely unsubstantiated assertion) is because they don't want to.

    I started programming when I was ten, and I did it by hand-converting Z80 assembly language to machine code and then used BASIC poke commands to write them into memory. I had to work hard to scrape a C compiler from somewhere and that was heaven.

    Today it is a million times easier to write a program if you wanted to. Blame ease-of-use culture; blame video games; blame stupid parents; but blaming the lack of access to programming languages is ridiculous to say the least.

    --
    Carpe Daemon
    1. Re:Absolute nonsense by helifex · · Score: 4, Informative

      On Windows... Right click on the desktop and create a new text file. Rename the text file to hello.vbs, then right click and choose edit. Enter the text 'msgbox "Hello world!"' and save it. Double click on the icon. The only thing that could make it easier was if they had added "vbs file" as a new document template. I don't think it's lack of availability that's the problem...

  2. Re:passworded article by Mprx · · Score: 5, Informative

    Visit http://www.salon.com/news/cookie756.html to get the cookie first.

  3. FreeBASIC... by kerashi · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you really want to play with BASIC, you still can. There is Freebasic, at http://www.freebasic.net/, a GPL'ed open source BASIC compiler.

  4. BTW: The article is by SF writer David Brin by haplo21112 · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Original Post didn't mention that I thought it might be of interest to some people to know that ahead of time. Perhaps influencing the descion about reading it or not.

    --
    Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.