I second the statement of preference for the Yahoo! vanilla interface. The poor UI responsiveness was really dramatic... to the point that my parental units called me up one evening, after having accidentally enabled the Beta mode for their account, asking what they did to slow down "the internet" so badly.
At least, this was the case a couple months back. I haven't checked since... they've stayed away from any buttons labeled 'Beta', and as the new version isn't compatible with half my machines at home, switching over myself seems a tad counter-productive. (Oh, the joys of much-lambasted-but-runs-perfectly-fine-for-what-I- need-thank-you-very-much Win98SE. ^_^)
I concur that the coolness barrier is certainly a factor... part of what can inspire people to continue working at something like Programming is the positive reinforcement they get from their peers if they do something impressive. As you bring up, the things one used to be able to do had a much greater return-on-investment (in terms of reward for time spent) then they do today... time spent coding minor little screen-savers (the good old bouncing line comes to mind) could get some interested "ooohs" and "aaahs", making it a not entirely wasted expenditure of time. Now, though, doing the same thing simply makes the hypothetical kid's contemporaries say "The Windows one is better".
Game modding fits the bill as a replacement for this sort of thing, indeed. The hard parts... namely, the rendering engine, the mesh, skinning, and animation models, and the control interface is already done. The 'kids' can then simply work on the intersting stuff... new item here, maybe building a new module there, and so on. The work-feedback cycle is kept short enough to reduce the opportunities to give up, or simply lose interest.
Beyond that, I think the area that has the most potential to become the "new Basic" is Flash ActionScript, personally. It is relatively easy to get *something* interesting going on in Flash, and without needing to cross much of a barrier first. Flash handles the drawing of the images on-screen, it lets the users draw new artwork fairly easily, and it handles animation a lot easier then trying to code it one's self. For kids starting out who want to impress their buddies with what they did, this is really all they need to get going.
The major thing that I see keeping this from coming about is the substantial cost involved to acquire a legitimate copy. It is also a bit of a question as to how *good* a programmer reared on ActionScript would be. But in terms of getting kids programming, it seems a reasonable thing to point them towards, assuming their parents are willing to lay down $700 to pick up a copy for little Johnny.
Slashdot Mirror
Syndicate Wars
X-COM: Terror from the Deep
Wing Commander: Privateer 2
Ultima 8 (9 is just a given, of course)
I second the statement of preference for the Yahoo! vanilla interface. The poor UI responsiveness was really dramatic... to the point that my parental units called me up one evening, after having accidentally enabled the Beta mode for their account, asking what they did to slow down "the internet" so badly.
At least, this was the case a couple months back. I haven't checked since... they've stayed away from any buttons labeled 'Beta', and as the new version isn't compatible with half my machines at home, switching over myself seems a tad counter-productive. (Oh, the joys of much-lambasted-but-runs-perfectly-fine-for-what-I- need-thank-you-very-much Win98SE. ^_^)
I concur that the coolness barrier is certainly a factor... part of what can inspire people to continue working at something like Programming is the positive reinforcement they get from their peers if they do something impressive. As you bring up, the things one used to be able to do had a much greater return-on-investment (in terms of reward for time spent) then they do today... time spent coding minor little screen-savers (the good old bouncing line comes to mind) could get some interested "ooohs" and "aaahs", making it a not entirely wasted expenditure of time. Now, though, doing the same thing simply makes the hypothetical kid's contemporaries say "The Windows one is better".
Game modding fits the bill as a replacement for this sort of thing, indeed. The hard parts... namely, the rendering engine, the mesh, skinning, and animation models, and the control interface is already done. The 'kids' can then simply work on the intersting stuff... new item here, maybe building a new module there, and so on. The work-feedback cycle is kept short enough to reduce the opportunities to give up, or simply lose interest.
Beyond that, I think the area that has the most potential to become the "new Basic" is Flash ActionScript, personally. It is relatively easy to get *something* interesting going on in Flash, and without needing to cross much of a barrier first. Flash handles the drawing of the images on-screen, it lets the users draw new artwork fairly easily, and it handles animation a lot easier then trying to code it one's self. For kids starting out who want to impress their buddies with what they did, this is really all they need to get going.
The major thing that I see keeping this from coming about is the substantial cost involved to acquire a legitimate copy. It is also a bit of a question as to how *good* a programmer reared on ActionScript would be. But in terms of getting kids programming, it seems a reasonable thing to point them towards, assuming their parents are willing to lay down $700 to pick up a copy for little Johnny.