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Melinda Gates Was Encouraged To Use an Apple and BASIC. Her Daughters Were Not. (huffingtonpost.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: In August, Melinda Gates penned Computers Are For Girls, Too, in which she lamented that her daughters "are half as likely to major in computer science as I was 30 years ago." So, what's changed in the last 30 years? Well, at last week's DreamForce Conference, Gates credited access to Apple computers at school and home for sparking her own interest in computer science [YouTube], leading to a career at Microsoft.
So, as she seeks ways to encourage more women to get into tech, Melinda may want to consider the effects of denying her own children access to Apple products [2010 interview] and of Microsoft [in 1984] stopping computers from shipping with a beginner's programming language (a 14-year-old Melinda reportedly cut her coding teeth on BASIC).
Melinda can raise her kids however she wants -- maybe her kids will just start programming with the Ubuntu that's shipping with Windows 10. But is it a problem that there's no beginner's programming language currently shipping with Macs? Over the years Macs have shipped with Perl, Python, Ruby, tcl, and a Unix shell. Do you think Apple could encourage young programmers more by also shipping their Macs with BASIC?
So, as she seeks ways to encourage more women to get into tech, Melinda may want to consider the effects of denying her own children access to Apple products [2010 interview] and of Microsoft [in 1984] stopping computers from shipping with a beginner's programming language (a 14-year-old Melinda reportedly cut her coding teeth on BASIC).
Melinda can raise her kids however she wants -- maybe her kids will just start programming with the Ubuntu that's shipping with Windows 10. But is it a problem that there's no beginner's programming language currently shipping with Macs? Over the years Macs have shipped with Perl, Python, Ruby, tcl, and a Unix shell. Do you think Apple could encourage young programmers more by also shipping their Macs with BASIC?
It's just like what I say about calculus: it's important to understand the basic concepts of integration and differentiation, but you are NEVER going to solve integral or differential equations in real life (any sane person would use numerical methods). Computers will soon be capable of programming themselves, so while it is useful to have a basic understanding of how computers work just like it is useful to have a basic understanding of how electricity works, trying to teach EVERYONE to program is pretty much solving a non-problem. Also, the fewer people that know how to program, the more I can charge for my services...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
If you want your child to learn computing, Linux and Windows are much better choices than any Apple or Android product. She made the right choice.
Granted I did some BASIC before I jumped into Perl but I have taught Perl to novices before and they've done just fine with it. I would think it would be just fine for a beginner.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Unlike the 1980s, nowadays it's trivially easy to get BASIC (or most any other computer language) onto your computer, regardless of platform - usually for free.
And if you want to stay in the walled garden and something which has ostensibly been vetted, there's a $4.99 version of BASIC available for OS X / MacOS in the App Store.
#DeleteChrome
.
The bigger problem to be solved occurs down the road when females start encountering artificial barriers and discrimination against their participation in the field.
Best course of action --- ask female computer science people (and I don't mean a person who brought Microsoft Bob to an unsuspecting world, but real female computer science people) what obstacles they faced and what would they do to remove them.
There is a language called JavaScript that is perfectly suited for learning how to program. Much better suited than BASIC I'd say.
It's called JavaScript, and every computer comes with an interpreter (web browser) pre-installed.
Every Mac comes with Python, Ruby and Perl (not that I'd recommend the last one, but some people are masochists), just like Linux.
You can click a button in the app store and get Swift, C, C++, Objective-C and there are other buttons for pretty much anything else you could ever want.
Somebody seems to think that BASIC is a beginners language more so than others because the B happens to stand for BASIC. Nothing about BASIC makes it more suited to beginners than many other languages out there, including but not limited to Python. I would go so far as to say that BASIC was a good language for beginners in the early 1980s, but would be a very bad place for someone to start in in 2016.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Python & Ruby are not suitable for beginners? But somehow BASIC is magically unique???
Macs are pre installed with AppleScript, obviously.
Python, Perl, several Shells, AWK - actually one of my favourite beginner languages.
However having a simple language which is already displayed as an icon on the Dock would probably rock.
Still waiting for a viable successor of Hypercard ... (and please don't post links to that company that is changing its name every 2 years and claims it RealCoder or LifeCoder or however it is called now is a Hypercard successor, it is not, it is rubbish)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Companies and governments are pouring rivers of money into encouraging girls into IT. Is it really worth it? Do they really make so much better programmers to justify huge investment needed?
Oh for god's sake - who gives a darn what their kids have on their computer - they have a computer, so they'll be fine. This is all clickbait. Not to mention invading what little privacy Gates' kids might have left. Is there not some place the media would have the discretion to stay out of?
Don't step on the baby.
You mean skinny jeans, riding boots, infinity scarf, and pumpkin spice latte.
Pumpkin spice ALL THE THINGS!
It's their choice. Trying to force them to go into a field that *you* want them in will likely either sour them on it altogether or, even worse, send them into a field that they don't have any real aptitude for.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
my daughter just hit college and I pushed her toward medicine. C.S. is a dead end. Math isn't, but that's not exactly C.S.. Outsourcing + H1-Bs means you'd have to be crazy to go into computer science right now. Most places I see are 80/20 H1-Bs for the onshore and 95/5 if you include offshore. Bring back the jobs and us parents will bring back our students.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Limited job prospects, and social skills and physical appearance are worthless in computer programming.
There is good pay for good computer programmers. More than half of the population would make for bad computer programmers. A moderate percentage can be ok computer programmers, (people writing Java internal applications). A small percentage can be good computer programmers, (writing in C++ at Microsoft, Google, Facebook). However, a moderate part of the population can be sexy, which pays relatively well, and is applicable to many jobs ranging from pure application (strippers) to being one of multiple skills (trophy wife, actor, pop singer, pharma salesmen). Furthermore, women tend to be more social, and valued than men: things which computers don't care about, hence the good use of asocial, ugly, hard working men.
Perl is a great contemporary replacement for Applesoft BASIC: it is easy to get started in, links easily with other parts of the operating system, and is infinitely expandable.
Yes, as ShanghaiBill writes, some Perl programmers enjoy writing obfuscated code, but "some" is not equal to "all." The best Perl programmers write code that is as readable as Java, with less reliance on cramming everything into regular expressions.
The main problem for kids is a lack of code written to be read, so that they can organically absorb how it works and get started on their own projects quickly, because in my experience, all the good programmers learned their craft by getting passionate about creating something and driving themselves toward that goal.
Alternative Right.
For students or families who favour Apple products, Swift is the obvious choice. Very modern and yet easy to learn. But powerful enough to make real apps.
Start with the Swift Playgrounds app on an iPad. Teaches by setting challenges:
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/ap...
Then download XCode for Mac when ready to take it further.
XCode has Playgrounds for your own experimenting.
Do you think Apple could encourage young programmers more by also shipping their Macs with BASIC?
no.
Most coders know only one method of learning to code: excruciating brute force trial and error
There's no *rational* reason for learning to code to be annoying at all, but we do this to ourselves because it reinforces difficulties we overcame in the past.
One example, this code.org Star Wars Javascript tutorial: https://studio.code.org/s/star...
It's perfect...also there are a few great "getting started with programming Python/Javascript" books by No Starch Press I would recommend.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Python is the new BASIC. My kids are being taught in Python. Their schools have Python posters up, and they do their work in it. No need to go back to the 80s and learn BASIC as I did, the school community is all about Python - at least here in the UK, not sure about elsewhere.
You can code a LOT of cool stuff with just BASH, which mimics how BASIC used to run on the Apple ][ computers of the 80's. I mean any command you can run within a bash script, you can also type in the CLI.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...
No, because BASIC is an awful language that's hard to use. Meanwhile, languages intended for everyday use have got much more accessible, like Swift, which Apple uses in their free learn-to-program iPad app, Swift Playgrounds: http://www.apple.com/swift/pla...
Macs have Python out-of-box. What's the problem? Python is most definitely a "beginner's language".
AppleScript, Python and Perl are all installed on your shiny new Mac - you've clearly never opened a Terminal window to see the latter two. Would it be helpful to ship with BASIC as well? Not in my opinion.
Get every kid a basic Arduino and let them learn on something as basic as 1980's computers but that can also interact with the outside world via I/O pins.
What Melinda Gates points out in the TFA is amazingly simple yet profoundly insightful and yet the slashjocks can't wrap their big heads around it.
BASIC blew any and or all other "beginners languages", developed since then, out of the water. The reasons are fairly simple to understand, but you have to grasp how they were interconnected.
If you weren't using computers and programming between 1976 and 1984, you probably can't intuitively grasp how things actually were, and what is stated below was true for millions of children around the world, in dozens of different real languages. One of more negative aspects of the "good ole days" is that personal computer were not available for everyone, they were reserved for privileged children from families with incomes sufficient to be able to afford such and these costs were not insignificant, costing families upwards of a $1,000.00.
BASIC as a programming language is dead. It will never come back. But that does not mean that there is no absence. Our expectations have changed radically, what we demand from computers today was far beyond anything anyone could do with BASIC. Truly replacing BASIC is a herculean task, not something easy, and it is an open question whether there will ever be an equivalent again. The problem set solved by BASIC was many orders of magnitude smaller than what anyone could reasonably content themselves with nowadays. There were no videos(cameras capable of capturing pictures or videos), mp3s(computer generated audio was positively primitive compared to today), text and hi-res graphics were frequently completely separated, you could have one or the other, rarely both. The complexities of GUI programming rendered BASIC obsolete and still form the most fundamental hurdle to the development of something truly functionally equivalent. But if you still contend that Python or Javascript could in anyway inherit the mantle from BASIC you simply do not get it.
Oh, I don't know. I'd have chosen a beginner language that didn't get for loops wrong. 3 times. (range -> xrange -> range again).
When I was 20, I felt the same way about BASIC. Why the hell did we start with such a crapful brain-damaging language? And, of course, BASIC was never one language, either; every micro had its own incompatible implementation, and that's not even going into the incompatible hardware that you couldn't work around.
I'm older and wiser now. BASIC was a great start to the education of a whole generation of programmers. I think of three reasons:
First off, in the days of 8-bit micros, you could understand the whole computer, and in a sense you had to. Printing stuff on the screen was great, but as soon as you wanted to do anything nontrivial, you had to POKE around, which meant you needed to learn about chips and registers and so on.
Secondly, the act of typing in listings from books and magazines taught you a lot about the programs that good programmers gave you. Cut-and-paste just isn't the same, and "read these snippets then download the whole working program" is just wrong.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, when you made it to university or the software industry, you weren't using BASIC any more. Your first "real" programming language was your second programming language (third, if you managed to get an assembler for your micro), which forced you to unlearn all the bad habits which BASIC got you into.
So I wouldn't mind people using Python as a beginner language, if we all agreed, as a software industry, never to use Python in production. Not only would we all be more productive programmers and our software would be of far higher quality, it would give the kids of today the education they need. You can start today by referring to Python exclusively as a "beginner language" every chance you get.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
I think Javascript is a great language to learn to program. It ships with *every* computer, tablet, phone on the planet.
You need not only the interpreter but also a text editor so that you can make the HTML and CSS and JS files. Notepad is fine to start with on a PC, but does a text editor ship with every iPhone and iPad? I thought iOS was designed to hide the concept of a "file".
If you have to have a custom editor just to make a language usable its a fail in my books.
Then I'd say the same about something like Lisp or Scheme, which needs parenthesis matching in the editor to be usable.
there's no beginner's programming language currently shipping with Macs
You have the Unix shell, wha else do you need, you insensitive clod?
I remember messing w/ SuperCard when it first came out. (if I remember correctly, it was like Hypercard, but with support for color).
Based on the wikipedia page on it, they added MacOS X support in 2002, and it now runs natively on Intel macs.
There's also a note that there's a windows runtime for it. (but not an editor).
Of course, the basic version is $179, and the one w/ extra stuff is $279 ... but if you have any HyperCard materials lying about (box, manual, install disk, etc.), they'll knock it down to $129/$199.
And it looks like you can grab the beta or 30 day demo to try it out.
The only thing that I can't figure out is how you get people the player -- do you have to distribute it w/ your stack, or is there somewhere people can download it from once and be done w/ it?
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Medicine hey? She might be just in time, or she might graduate just in time to see physicians replaced by computers. And good riddance.
Sure, the terminal a.k.a. the tty is great for doing terminal things like running Unix-like programs.
But, as the 'tty' name indicate, it's a one-dimensional interface. It's made of 1D text, whereas BASIC supported 2D text. i.e. you may take control of the screen and get characters drawn wherever you like, with something like LOCATE 20,12 : PRINT "HELLO"
This would print HELLO in the center of the screen, if your screen is 40x25
Isn't that nice?
Sure, just use a library like curses but now you've made it a lot more complicated.
Want graphics? Most CS students will probably find it hard. In BASIC you'll have some sort of PLOT or LINE command. Done.
Compliment should be complement. Somehow, saying nice things about other people is not a plan for accomplishing things.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
One of the very first programming languages I ever used when I was in primary school was HyperTalk. I later learned C, but I make money using LabView!
Medicine isn't what it used to be. Between insurance companies, hospital corporations, medicaid / medicare and Obamacare the medical career has lost much of it's luster in recent years, at least it has here in the United States. The salaries are way down and the cost of medical school, like most higher education in America, has never been higher. She'll be in debt up to her eyeballs before she ever sees her first patients and she will spend the better part of her career paying off that debt. Adding insult to injury, the health care business is not immune from cost pressures and foreign competition. Ever heard of medical tourism? Yeah that's a thing now in American healthcare because the prices here are so insane. Finally, even though the prices are high the money isn't going to the doctors or even the insurance companies but rather into the pockets of the drug companies and the hospital corporations. That $600 EpiPen is funding multi-million dollar paydays for drug company fatcats, not the employee doctors working for the hospital corps. You say that getting a C.S. degree is crazy, but going to medical school isn't exactly the pinnacle of wisdom anymore either.
"Melinda Gates was encouraged to use what is now a nearly 40-year-old computer and the best language that was available back then in 1980. Her kids have been exposed to much more modern stuff."
And seriously...why does this turn into a discussion over why "there's no beginner's programming language currently shipping with Macs"? The OP seems to have no opinion on what SHOULD be but certainly seems to think it's a shame that Melinda Gates doesn't do something about Apple's policies on programming languages.
Never mind that it's incredibly easy to install the dev tools needed to start working with Swift...or that many kids that I know have started experimenting with that, even going so far as to put apps on the App Store, which even generate a bit of revenue and expose them to the full end-to-end system of software development. It's not "included" as a "beginner's programming language," so let's call out Melinda Gates over it.
I know Microsoft isn't exactly considered saintly here at Slashdot, but seriously?
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Just let basic die already. It's already comatose and on life support, please just resist any temptation to bring out the defibrillator. Kids today can type javascript straight into a browser and get useful results to impress their friends right away. The transition from there to a properly structured language isn't too hard. Or master javascript and parlay that into a summer job implementing automagic web pages.
The problem with basic is, it basically teaches negative programming skill.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
If you weren't using computers and programming between 1976 and 1984, you probably can't intuitively grasp how things actually were,
Nobody was advertising computers on prime-time TV much, and they certainly weren't advertising big-budget games and online services targeted at the mass market. The kids buying (or pestering their parents into buying) those early "home" computers were the nerds who'd seen them in electronics magazines etc. and read the reviews (which, at the time, used half of their column-inches to discuss how good they were for programming). Sure, there were kids who couldn't have a home computer because their family couldn't afford one, or because the Commodore PET at the orphanage had been stolen to pay for drugs... but at the time there were many, many kids who could have had a computer, if they'd made it a priority, but didn't because they weren't remotely interested in computers and Facebook hadn't been invented yet.
I got one mainly because I'd been hooked on programmable calculators and wanted to take the next step. To afford it, I flogged virtually every half-decent, non-essential possession I had (not claiming too much hardship here - at least I had the stuff to sell - point is it didn't just magically appear after a hint to Mum & Dad). Oh, and as for that "BASIC programming book" it was missing from the set of photocopied manuals I got with my Superboard II so I had to suss it out from a couple of examples, a list of keywords and a couple of pages of "Illustrating BASIC" serialised in a magazine that I had a couple of copies of (I did eventually find a copy of Kenemy & Kurtz in the school library - god knows how it got there - and that was a brilliant book). When you wrote programs you saved them to cassette tape and crossed your fingers. "Editing" code mainly consisted of completely re-typing the line you wanted to change - maybe your system had some sort of kludgey "line editor" to help. Later on, you got to save up money for things like an assembler, decent text editor, FORTH, Pascal and eventually C - the latter two being complete non-starters unless you had a floppy drive (which, at the time, cost more than the rest of the computer).
In short, not many kids in the late 70s or early 80s stumbled into programming because they stumbled onto something called BASIC on this box that they'd been given to play games on (not that you'd get a 1980 personal computer purely on the strength of a game of "Star Trek", "Hunt The Wampus" or a Scott Adams text adventure). Later, maybe, when the first generation of kids had written some games for them to play, but not then.
I remember, circa 1981, "acquiring" a copy of a new game that had (for the time) a massive advertising campaign consisting of quarter page adverts in colour in a computing magazine... it was a huge inspiration on the grounds that, (a) it was pretty crap, and (b) if they were prepared to publish that crap, they might publish my crap. So I threw together my own crappy game in a weekend and, sure enough, a few weeks later I was published and slightly richer: Never got to join the ranks of those teenage computer game millionaires who learned to drive in Ferraris, but I did stretch to a 70cc scooter. There were plenty of opportunities for anybody who could do simple programming at the time, and even those of us who didn't join the lucky few who hit the jackpot could, with a bit of application, make useful money. Certainly, my first computer was the last time I had to rely on the Bank of Mum & Dad for stuff I wanted.
Fast forward to today: if you care to look that "basic-free" Mac actually comes with Python, Perl, PHP, Ruby and bash scripting as standard. The browser has Javascript built-in. For a free download you can get XCode with C, C++, Objective C and Swift, along with a complete IDE - including the "Swift Playgrounds" that Apple have been working on specifically to provide an "instant gratification" tool f
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
You can Power Shell right out of the box in Windows. .NET framework has a free IDE or you can text it, or at least did not long ago... Then there are literally dozens open source interpreters you can install and code on. So I'm not sure what she's lamenting. Perhaps motivation?
I got my first TRS-80 Model I (Level II) back in 1980, when I was 13.
When you turned the computer on, it presented you with a prompt where you could just start entering BASIC.
Many of us would carefully enter BASIC code printed in the pages of 80 Micro magazine. You couldn't help but learn coding...
I learned a lot more about programming something useful from HyperCard than I did from BASIC on the Apple II.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
When I was a kid I was exposed to BASIC (I owned a ZX81 and a C64) at home and Pascal at school, but what really hooked me was what could I do with them that was mostly entertaining, and just minimally useful. With the Commodore, it was a hacking a couple of games typed from a magazine. With Pascal was generating relatively nice graphics with for-loops.
Programming is a tool, and it should be thought as such: teach them how to tackle a problem with an algorithmic approach, e.g., how we can enumerate all possible combinations of who-seats-next-to-who in the classroom, using some constraints (Joe wants to sit next to Eddy)... whatever.
Teach a lazy kid how to make a computer work for him, and you've created a programmer. [Insert Bill Gates' quote here]
You may want to avoid clearly obsolete-wrong patterns ("GOTO is Evil"), but other than that, any language is good. Eventually, they'll find their language of choice, but they would likely keep the basic set of skills that built back when they learned.
"I think of the company advertising "Thought Processors" or the college pretending that learning BASIC suffices or at least helps, whereas the teaching of BASIC should be rated as a criminal offence: it mutilates the mind beyond recovery." -- Dijkstra
I would prefer if some version of LISP was "the beginner language", because even just bemoaning its shortcomings in comments on /. 20 years later will be a variety of torture.
Funny, my son majored in Applied Physics, which required math up the wazoo. I gently urged him to take a programming course which he enjoyed and took a couple more courses. When it came time to find a job, the only thing he could find was programming jobs. Which has now turned into a career. But yeah, sure C.S. is a dead end. I guess you must be right.
Funny, I see all sorts of high paying jobs where H1Bs and offshoring are NEVER an option. To make either one work, you need well thought out and detailed requirements and time. You also need some cultural understanding to work within a "team". I see less and less of both as time goes on.
Basic was my first programming language when I was about 6 years old. I spent about 5 minutes using it before I thought it was utter crap.##### I'm just wondering how a six year old (who I presume had no prior programming experience whatsoever) would be able to determine that "Basic was utter crap" after just 5 minutes of using it, and even know to research other languages that could do better, supposedly. And how many 6 year olds, even geeky ones, would have this kind of additude. Sorry, but this sounds so far off the wall to me, it's looks rediculous. I started programming in 1986, at 10 years old, with Basic, and enjoyed every single moment of it, even when it was just stupid programs that made irritating noises and drew little sprites on the screen.
I noted the stoppage of shipping operating systems with basic back in the 80286 days. I asked one engineer from a vendor. (I was in computer sales and service way back then.) and was told they quit shipping with BASIC because you could modify the BIOS and erase copy protection from the OS using the PEEK and POKE commands in BASIC.
Back in those days I was enamored with ZBasic. ZBasic was a compiled basic as opposed to the interpretive compilation of vanilla basic. It was lovely to write one set of code and cross compile to run under very different operating systems such as TRSDOS, MS-DOS, C64, Atari, CP/M, or LS-DOS. The cross compiler for Unix was a bit buggy so I never went there. A friend of mine had a set of editor macros to make it compile for Linux.
Yes, chilluns, at one time people were encouraged to experiment with their systems rather than being threatened with lawsuits for modifying their purchased tech. I wonder if you would still get sued for "modding" if you put on the net how to turn an old PS/2 into a home automation server?
NRRPT/RCT
My son took an Introduction to Programming for Engineers class in his first semester, and that was it. He immediately switched to CS and never looked back.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I would prefer if some version of LISP was "the beginner language", because even just bemoaning its shortcomings in comments on /. 20 years later will be a variety of torture.
Now there's an idea! With every copy of Windows, ship a copy of SICP.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
I was born in the 70s. I was never encouraged to get into computers as a hobby or as a career path. It was an unusual choice of hobbies and set me apart from my peers. I am a man.
When I was younger, it was fun. When I was older, I was able to read job listings and salary ranges. There was no gender angle, pro or con.
Reconsider what you're pushing your daughter towards. Medicine is hell. (at least in America).
I'm an MD, married to an MD.
We're not going to push our child towards medicine. We've half-jokingly said we're actually gonna encourage her to be a plumber. Why would we inflict a possibly massive debt to complete her education, several years (3-7, depending on career path, plus several more if you do a fellowship) of over-work with fairly low pay (making it difficult to pay aforementioned debt, and likely leading to mounting interest from deferred payments), leading most likely to a rapid burn-out due to unending hours of high stress, constant fear of lawsuits, repeated battles to be paid by insurance companies (each of which has it's own special (and often changing) list of criteria they will use to "control costs"), mounting expenses to maintain medical records, constant worry about the continually-growing documentation requirements eventually biting you in the ass... Oh, and, you know, the usual stress of medicine such as angry patients, worried patients, angry relatives, worried relatives, and (again depending on your focus) dying patients.
Medicine (in America) is hell. I'm not saying go C.S; from what I read on /. and elsewhere, you're very right, but if you're gonna inflict medicine on her, make sure she goes into Dermatology or Pathology. At least with Derm she'll make bank and probably not get sued. At least with Path she'll probably not be harassed by patients or insurance companies.
But she'd probably be happier avoiding medicine and C.S. altogether.
Why does it have to be a mac to learn on, could she not learn on a pc or do girls need a pretty mac before they'll sit down in front of it? I don't think that's true though.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
C:\Users\bob>ver
Microsoft Windows [Version 10.3.261]
C:\Users\bob>wmp captain-america-civil-war-1080p.wmv
Please wait. Windows is now rebooting to install your free upgrade to windows 11
(2 hours later)
Error: Device "Realtek Audio Card" not found
(1 week later)
C:\Users\bob>ver
Microsoft Windows [Version 11.6.6.6]
C:\Users\bob>wmp captain-america-civil-war-1080p.wmv
Preparing file hash for "captain-america-civil-war-1080p.wmv". 0... 25 ... 50 ... 75 ... 100% done
Sending hash to partner vendors
Illegal copy detected. Sending your name and current location to anti-piracy@MPAA.org
This PC has been found to be in violation of the DCMA. Shutting down to preserve evidence. Prepare for lawsuits, f***er!
nowadays it's trivially easy to get BASIC (or most any other computer language) onto your computer
Eh? Back in the 80's elementary schools where I was often had computers that had two 2.5" floppy drives, no HDD, and booted directly to BASIC (actually BASIC mind, not QBasic etc) when no boot media was installed. It doesn't get much easier than that.