Yes, it was common back in 80's to do some basic basic. Maybe HTML and JS could replace that now.
Sadly, it can not. Neither for children or adults. The amount you need to learn before you can do something interesting is just too much.
I have had much more success starting students off in small basic before moving on to HTML and JS. It's windows only, but I've yet to find anything half as good for beginners.
I'd prefer an interactive mode to start beginners off, though the best environment right now seems to be Python. I'd rather not cripple their minds with that abomination. It's sure to cause more harm than good.
That's about when I started programming (ok, I was 8). So I'd say yes, a few might get the idea.
Well, I was 9 -- I think in 3rd or 4th grade when I taught myself BASIC on an Apple ][ (This seems par for the course on slashdot)
Of course, computers were a whole different thing back then. There were lots of games that were just text or simple graphics. Making simple games or games that looked like some commercial titles was something that was well within the reach of the average kid at that age. You could do a good bit with little more than a basic understanding of variables and the if, print, input, and goto commands.
I remember writing a dragon-fighting math game, for example. On each turn, you'd get a pair of coordinates for the dragons 'weak point' which you'd multiply together to successfully attack. Now, while that was exciting for a few of my classmates, with the added novelty of having a kid they knew make it, if a kid showed such a program to his friends today, they'd have a MUCH lower opinion of their efforts.
I don't know that an environment could be developed today that inspired the same level of control and capability as BASIC on those old micros. Any environment you could put together on a modern system would be just that -- a different environment. You're not really in control of the computer, but you can make this program do interesting things. It's not really the same experience at all.
Worse, there is little today for the 13 crowd. Scratch is too complicated for that age group and I don't know of a modern Logo that is as engaging as those early micro versions. Small Basic is pretty good, but you need to generate the interest yourself -- the mystery of the machine and it's inviting blinking cursor aren't there to draw their interest and attention.
Just as an example, the BBC did a program called 'Electric Dreams' where they took a modern family and transported them through time, one day a year (from a technology perspective) through the 70's, 80's and 90's. In the 80's decade, the kids picked out a micro from a staged 'computer fair' They were sold on the BBC micro over the ZX Spectrum because... they could write their own programs! The 'BBC salesman' showed the boy how to write a simple program that flashed his name on the screen and the kid was hooked -- he even invited a friend over to play at writing programs on that antique. The kids sat totally engaged in the task, digging through the manual and trying out various commands.
Short of taking away all their modern technology and giving them an old micro, I don't know how you could reproduce that experience.
The question why isn't it selling in droves to all the slashdot crowd who claimed they'd buy a spec-comparable-iPad-killer for $100 less?
I suspect that the real market for tablets is much smaller than is generally believed.
I personally had no interest in the things until the PlayBook came out -- and even then I didn't buy what I considered to be the best tablet for me as I still couldn't justify the cost for my expected use cases which would be equally well-served by my phone and laptop in those instances. Really, I'd just be lugging around another device for no good reason.
It turns out, after a bit of reflection, that I really just wanted to play with one, but didn't really have a need for one. I suspect that once the hype dies down, we'll have a better sense of what the market for tablets really looks like.
He thinks that it's not *Android* that's at fault here, but Richard_at_work for not trying hard enough.
If you recall, ScrewMaster acknowledged that the stock android UI wasn't all that great, saying "You have a G2 with the stock firmware, probably using the stock Android launcher. Yeah, it works, but it's not the best, I agree."
Call me crazy, but that seems to me like he's placing the blame squarely on Android there.
Now, knowing that Richard_at_work was dissatisfied, and wasn't planning to upgrade his phone for some time, he offered him a way to improve his experience.
Sure, he took the opportunity to promote some of the features of Android over iOS, but you can hardly fault him for that, people promote what they like. Of course, the core of his post was to share a few hints that may make Richard_at_work's experience better prior to his planned iOS upgrade.
Still, I don't see how ScrewMaster was placing any blame on Richard_at_work for his poor experience. His posts, to me, seemed more informative than anything else. If I were in a similar position, and didn't know about the feature at the heart of this discussion, I'd be thrilled at the chance to improve my experience while I waited to upgrade.
If it were possible to make something to "beat" the iPad for less than the iPad sells for (and still be profitable), someone would have done it by now.
Well, the Asus Transformer has better specs, more features, and costs less. That's just one example, but the point is that it apparently IS possible "to 'beat' the iPad for less than iPad sells for (and still be profitable)"
What Asus lacks, of course, is good marketing. It's probably why you haven't heard of it.
Nah, the linked item is "JUNK" Resistive, 256M memory. Do not want.
Resistive does not mean "worse than capacitive". There are numerous advantages to a resistive touch screen, that many users would prefer over a capacitive screen. I'd gladly give up multi-touch and the ability to use my finger in exchange for a stylus with more precision than the fat-fake-finger monstrosities you need for a capacitive touchscreen.
As for 256mb, well, it was good enough for the "revolutionary" iPad -- hell, the iPad2 only has 512. What more do you want?
270 dpi is "retina" now? Well, shoot, I didn't realize they lowered the standard for "retina". Does that mean all those other phones, prior to the iPhone 4 with their >270ppi screens were also "retinal displays" (e.g. HTC Touch Diamond, Samsung Wave, Samsung Jet, XPERIA X1, etc. etc. etc.)?
Here's an idea. Let's stop using the term "retinal display" as it's nothing more than meaningless marketing drivel.
What features are you talking about? OS6 brought their web-browser up to parity. The new OS7 devices are more than comparable in terms of hardware specs. They've had an app store since OS5. They've also revamped their development tools, offering developers more ways to create applications for their platform. All the while offering best-in-class security.
What, exactly, do you think they're missing?
I certainly haven't felt left-out as a BB user. Even my wife made the switch from Android (2.2) to BB (OS5) when she wanted more productivity -- and she was a huge android fanatic.
See, I don't believe for a minute that you actually read anyone's posts. Had you taken the time to read Richard_at_work's first post, you'd know that he is currently using an Android phone and is dissatisfied with the UI.
ScrewMaster offered pretty good advice, as far as I can see; suggesting that he change the UI to something different or more Apple like, if he prefers.
Would you rather Richard_at_work continue to suffer with a poor user experience until he upgrades his phone when he could potentially improve his experience significantly with a few simple clicks?
Honestly, I have no idea where you got this bizarre idea that ScrewMaster thinks other people share the same preferences he does. If anything, his posts make it clear that he understands that different people have different preferences, even going so far as to offer Richard_at_work a few options that may better suit his stated tastes!
If it's possible for non-technical users to be Phished to a web site where they can download "free angry birds" then your platform is less secure, period.
Well, that IS possible on iOS. Just visiting a website is all it takes to jailbreak and install an application.
Now, for REAL security, you need to forget about Android and iOS. BlackBerry OS is leagues ahead of both, yet still allows you to install anything you want. Pretty cool, eh?
Apple has a long history of ridiculously poor input devices. The hockey-puck mouse being the first that comes to mind, though we're talking keyboards here.
I can't answer specifically to a macbook english-french/french-canadian bilingual keyboard -- I couldn't find a picture. Though their English keyboard seems to have an unbelievably tiny left-shift key, if that helps at all.
If you want a slide-out keyboard, you can't go wrong with the new Blackberry Torch 2 (9810). Though if you plan on typing a good bit, the Bold 9900 has the best smartphone keyboard on the market today.
If you're lugging a tablet around already, which works perfectly fine for eBooks, are the E-Ink advantages really worth carrying around a whole additional device?
Who wants an e-reader without an e-ink display? The display is such a vital part of the experience!
I get that you can "do more" with traditional display, but I don't *want* to do more. A big part of the appeal, for me at least, is that it's a very quiet piece of technology. It doesn't encourage me to check my email or browse the web; the display just isn't well suited for that task.
It does encourage me to read, however, as the display is so easy on the eyes. As a bonus, the thing has amazing battery life. So much so, that it can go weeks without a charge. It's not even something I think about. I don't worry about charging, or running out of juice in the middle of a chapter. In short, I don't have to manage it the same way I'd need to manage a tablet. It stays out of the way, letting me read in peace.
If I wanted to stare at a light bulb, I'd just read on the computer. Here's hoping Amazon doesn't abandon the tried-and-true e-ink display.
I was sad to discover that some code I'd recently written was perfectly readable and maintainable. I thought to myself "If people can easily understand and maintain this code, they'll think I'm some kind of n00b."
Thanks to judicious use of libraries like jquery and prototype.js, I'm happy to report that my code is both impossible to understand, difficult to extend, and an absolute nightmare to maintain. That's right, I'm now officially a "rock star" level programmer.
"The Toolkit" as us rock stars call it, now offers me the perfect opportunity to do away with those nasty simple library functions I've collected over the years. Things like string manipulation, for example, that were handled quickly and efficiently by a few simple easy-to-understand functions are now garbled up in yet another over-sized and bug ridden JS library.
My pages take longer to load and run slower than ever before! This is enterprise level code I'm pushing out here folks.
Here's a few hints to help you achieve the same level of greatness:
1) RAM is cheap, use as much as you can.
2) Forget about performance, if your code is too slow, upgrade. Computers get faster every year.
3) Arrays are for idiots who can't code. Import a collections framework for even the simplest of tasks. Need 10 integers to be manipulated by one function and then discarded? You can't go wrong with a thread safe hash table!
4) Load the library that has the function you want, even if you've already loaded a library with similar functionality. Like jquery's trim() function better than underscore.js? Import them both! Never mind that you only needed to use one function from each library or that any first-year CS student could write them in 10 minutes, you're a rock star. You use what you want.
5) Don't be afraid to re-invent the wheel. Other people are idiots, so assume that whatever you can hack together is automatically better. This especially applies to date and time functions.
So fellow rock stars (and future rock stars) ignore all of the negative comments in this discussion about "The Toolkit". Just because these n00b's can't comprehend its awesomeness dos not mean that it's not the perfect hammer for driving screws.
Sample quantities? For multiple, popular, retail products?
It seems that you're delusional. Not that it matters to me. Enjoy believing that the next mundane refresh of the iPhone will "change everything again".
Perhaps this time they'll have a notification system that works half as well as a 5 year old blackberry. It'll be revolutionary!
I assume you think that adding a newer display somehow made it no longer a mundane update? I would expect a newer version to have a newer display!
I know that Steve told you it was "revolutionary", but it really was just another minor update. Take a look at the specs. Somewhat less awesome now, eh?
Sorry, what part of my post do you think I "made up"?
The iPad2 was rumored to have a retinal display, and every new generation of iPhone and iPad has been a fairly minor upgrade in terms of specifications and features.
Do you think that millions won't buy the next incremental upgrade?
Yes, I know iPods don't work in disk mode, that's one of many many reasons I didn't buy one.
As for iTunes wiping the iPod on it's own, I've repeatedly pointed out that the mysterious warning dialog does not appear for all users affected (it appears only under one specific set of circumstances).
It's a very common problem -- and ridiculously bad design on Apples part.
I'm sorry that you bought a iPod instead of a good mp3 player, but you don't need to get so defensive!
From your description, moving music from CD's to your computer is super-simple, yet you think it's a major task?
Please. Besides, as I've already pointed out, this is NOT and advantage Apple has over the competition. There are numerous programs with similar / better functionality.
Moreover, the fact that there are third-party programs for moving music from CD's to your iPod suggests that Apples was isn't as simple as you describe.
Again, Apple offer the user no advantage what-so-ever. My original point, of course, still stands. Not only are there no advantages to Apple, there are several disadvantages.
Slashdot Mirror
Aho and Ullman's classic Principles of Compiler Design and the followup they did with Sethi Compilers: Principles Techniques and Tools
My wife bought me a first printing as gift one year.
Yes, it was common back in 80's to do some basic basic. Maybe HTML and JS could replace that now.
Sadly, it can not. Neither for children or adults. The amount you need to learn before you can do something interesting is just too much.
I have had much more success starting students off in small basic before moving on to HTML and JS. It's windows only, but I've yet to find anything half as good for beginners.
I'd prefer an interactive mode to start beginners off, though the best environment right now seems to be Python. I'd rather not cripple their minds with that abomination. It's sure to cause more harm than good.
That's about when I started programming (ok, I was 8). So I'd say yes, a few might get the idea.
Well, I was 9 -- I think in 3rd or 4th grade when I taught myself BASIC on an Apple ][ (This seems par for the course on slashdot)
Of course, computers were a whole different thing back then. There were lots of games that were just text or simple graphics. Making simple games or games that looked like some commercial titles was something that was well within the reach of the average kid at that age. You could do a good bit with little more than a basic understanding of variables and the if, print, input, and goto commands.
I remember writing a dragon-fighting math game, for example. On each turn, you'd get a pair of coordinates for the dragons 'weak point' which you'd multiply together to successfully attack. Now, while that was exciting for a few of my classmates, with the added novelty of having a kid they knew make it, if a kid showed such a program to his friends today, they'd have a MUCH lower opinion of their efforts.
I don't know that an environment could be developed today that inspired the same level of control and capability as BASIC on those old micros. Any environment you could put together on a modern system would be just that -- a different environment. You're not really in control of the computer, but you can make this program do interesting things. It's not really the same experience at all.
Worse, there is little today for the 13 crowd. Scratch is too complicated for that age group and I don't know of a modern Logo that is as engaging as those early micro versions. Small Basic is pretty good, but you need to generate the interest yourself -- the mystery of the machine and it's inviting blinking cursor aren't there to draw their interest and attention.
Just as an example, the BBC did a program called 'Electric Dreams' where they took a modern family and transported them through time, one day a year (from a technology perspective) through the 70's, 80's and 90's. In the 80's decade, the kids picked out a micro from a staged 'computer fair' They were sold on the BBC micro over the ZX Spectrum because ... they could write their own programs! The 'BBC salesman' showed the boy how to write a simple program that flashed his name on the screen and the kid was hooked -- he even invited a friend over to play at writing programs on that antique. The kids sat totally engaged in the task, digging through the manual and trying out various commands.
Short of taking away all their modern technology and giving them an old micro, I don't know how you could reproduce that experience.
The question why isn't it selling in droves to all the slashdot crowd who claimed they'd buy a spec-comparable-iPad-killer for $100 less?
I suspect that the real market for tablets is much smaller than is generally believed.
I personally had no interest in the things until the PlayBook came out -- and even then I didn't buy what I considered to be the best tablet for me as I still couldn't justify the cost for my expected use cases which would be equally well-served by my phone and laptop in those instances. Really, I'd just be lugging around another device for no good reason.
It turns out, after a bit of reflection, that I really just wanted to play with one, but didn't really have a need for one. I suspect that once the hype dies down, we'll have a better sense of what the market for tablets really looks like.
He thinks that it's not *Android* that's at fault here, but Richard_at_work for not trying hard enough.
If you recall, ScrewMaster acknowledged that the stock android UI wasn't all that great, saying "You have a G2 with the stock firmware, probably using the stock Android launcher. Yeah, it works, but it's not the best, I agree."
Call me crazy, but that seems to me like he's placing the blame squarely on Android there.
Now, knowing that Richard_at_work was dissatisfied, and wasn't planning to upgrade his phone for some time, he offered him a way to improve his experience.
Sure, he took the opportunity to promote some of the features of Android over iOS, but you can hardly fault him for that, people promote what they like. Of course, the core of his post was to share a few hints that may make Richard_at_work's experience better prior to his planned iOS upgrade.
Still, I don't see how ScrewMaster was placing any blame on Richard_at_work for his poor experience. His posts, to me, seemed more informative than anything else. If I were in a similar position, and didn't know about the feature at the heart of this discussion, I'd be thrilled at the chance to improve my experience while I waited to upgrade.
If it were possible to make something to "beat" the iPad for less than the iPad sells for (and still be profitable), someone would have done it by now.
Well, the Asus Transformer has better specs, more features, and costs less. That's just one example, but the point is that it apparently IS possible "to 'beat' the iPad for less than iPad sells for (and still be profitable)"
What Asus lacks, of course, is good marketing. It's probably why you haven't heard of it.
Nah, the linked item is "JUNK" Resistive, 256M memory. Do not want.
Resistive does not mean "worse than capacitive". There are numerous advantages to a resistive touch screen, that many users would prefer over a capacitive screen. I'd gladly give up multi-touch and the ability to use my finger in exchange for a stylus with more precision than the fat-fake-finger monstrosities you need for a capacitive touchscreen.
As for 256mb, well, it was good enough for the "revolutionary" iPad -- hell, the iPad2 only has 512. What more do you want?
270 dpi is "retina" now? Well, shoot, I didn't realize they lowered the standard for "retina". Does that mean all those other phones, prior to the iPhone 4 with their >270ppi screens were also "retinal displays" (e.g. HTC Touch Diamond, Samsung Wave, Samsung Jet, XPERIA X1, etc. etc. etc.)?
Here's an idea. Let's stop using the term "retinal display" as it's nothing more than meaningless marketing drivel.
What features are you talking about? OS6 brought their web-browser up to parity. The new OS7 devices are more than comparable in terms of hardware specs. They've had an app store since OS5. They've also revamped their development tools, offering developers more ways to create applications for their platform. All the while offering best-in-class security.
What, exactly, do you think they're missing?
I certainly haven't felt left-out as a BB user. Even my wife made the switch from Android (2.2) to BB (OS5) when she wanted more productivity -- and she was a huge android fanatic.
T-mobile has no flashship phone worth a darn.
Well, T-Mobile was sold-out of the BlackBerry Bold 9900 in less than 24 hours. It's a flagship phone, and pretty darn amazing.
Yes, I've read your posts. And I've read this one
See, I don't believe for a minute that you actually read anyone's posts. Had you taken the time to read Richard_at_work's first post, you'd know that he is currently using an Android phone and is dissatisfied with the UI.
ScrewMaster offered pretty good advice, as far as I can see; suggesting that he change the UI to something different or more Apple like, if he prefers.
Would you rather Richard_at_work continue to suffer with a poor user experience until he upgrades his phone when he could potentially improve his experience significantly with a few simple clicks?
Honestly, I have no idea where you got this bizarre idea that ScrewMaster thinks other people share the same preferences he does. If anything, his posts make it clear that he understands that different people have different preferences, even going so far as to offer Richard_at_work a few options that may better suit his stated tastes!
If it's possible for non-technical users to be Phished to a web site where they can download "free angry birds" then your platform is less secure, period.
Well, that IS possible on iOS. Just visiting a website is all it takes to jailbreak and install an application.
Now, for REAL security, you need to forget about Android and iOS. BlackBerry OS is leagues ahead of both, yet still allows you to install anything you want. Pretty cool, eh?
(possibly apple excluded)
Apple has a long history of ridiculously poor input devices. The hockey-puck mouse being the first that comes to mind, though we're talking keyboards here.
I give you these abominations:
Apple Wireless Keyboard
Apple Aluminum Keyboard
I can't answer specifically to a macbook english-french/french-canadian bilingual keyboard -- I couldn't find a picture. Though their English keyboard seems to have an unbelievably tiny left-shift key, if that helps at all.
If you want a slide-out keyboard, you can't go wrong with the new Blackberry Torch 2 (9810). Though if you plan on typing a good bit, the Bold 9900 has the best smartphone keyboard on the market today.
The future is here now, no need to wait :)
If you're lugging a tablet around already, which works perfectly fine for eBooks, are the E-Ink advantages really worth carrying around a whole additional device?
Yes, it's undoubtedly worth it.
Who wants an e-reader without an e-ink display? The display is such a vital part of the experience!
I get that you can "do more" with traditional display, but I don't *want* to do more. A big part of the appeal, for me at least, is that it's a very quiet piece of technology. It doesn't encourage me to check my email or browse the web; the display just isn't well suited for that task.
It does encourage me to read, however, as the display is so easy on the eyes. As a bonus, the thing has amazing battery life. So much so, that it can go weeks without a charge. It's not even something I think about. I don't worry about charging, or running out of juice in the middle of a chapter. In short, I don't have to manage it the same way I'd need to manage a tablet. It stays out of the way, letting me read in peace.
If I wanted to stare at a light bulb, I'd just read on the computer. Here's hoping Amazon doesn't abandon the tried-and-true e-ink display.
I was sad to discover that some code I'd recently written was perfectly readable and maintainable. I thought to myself "If people can easily understand and maintain this code, they'll think I'm some kind of n00b."
Thanks to judicious use of libraries like jquery and prototype.js, I'm happy to report that my code is both impossible to understand, difficult to extend, and an absolute nightmare to maintain. That's right, I'm now officially a "rock star" level programmer.
"The Toolkit" as us rock stars call it, now offers me the perfect opportunity to do away with those nasty simple library functions I've collected over the years. Things like string manipulation, for example, that were handled quickly and efficiently by a few simple easy-to-understand functions are now garbled up in yet another over-sized and bug ridden JS library.
My pages take longer to load and run slower than ever before! This is enterprise level code I'm pushing out here folks.
Here's a few hints to help you achieve the same level of greatness:
1) RAM is cheap, use as much as you can.
2) Forget about performance, if your code is too slow, upgrade. Computers get faster every year.
3) Arrays are for idiots who can't code. Import a collections framework for even the simplest of tasks. Need 10 integers to be manipulated by one function and then discarded? You can't go wrong with a thread safe hash table!
4) Load the library that has the function you want, even if you've already loaded a library with similar functionality. Like jquery's trim() function better than underscore.js? Import them both! Never mind that you only needed to use one function from each library or that any first-year CS student could write them in 10 minutes, you're a rock star. You use what you want.
5) Don't be afraid to re-invent the wheel. Other people are idiots, so assume that whatever you can hack together is automatically better. This especially applies to date and time functions.
So fellow rock stars (and future rock stars) ignore all of the negative comments in this discussion about "The Toolkit". Just because these n00b's can't comprehend its awesomeness dos not mean that it's not the perfect hammer for driving screws.
Sample quantities? For multiple, popular, retail products?
It seems that you're delusional. Not that it matters to me. Enjoy believing that the next mundane refresh of the iPhone will "change everything again".
Perhaps this time they'll have a notification system that works half as well as a 5 year old blackberry. It'll be revolutionary!
You're still on this? Okay, let's add some perspective.
Before the iPhone 4, Apple had one of the lowest pixel densities on the market. It's not like they were best-in-class here.
The LG Arena way back in early 2009, had a 311 ppi display.
Even earlier, the Xperia X1 from late 2008 had a 311 ppi display
Apple iPhone 4, in the middle of 2010 had a 326 ppi display.
Sure, it was the highest on the market at the time, but only slightly higher than phones that came out more than a year before.
So, yeah, it was just another mundane refresh.
I assume you think that adding a newer display somehow made it no longer a mundane update? I would expect a newer version to have a newer display!
I know that Steve told you it was "revolutionary", but it really was just another minor update. Take a look at the specs. Somewhat less awesome now, eh?
Sorry, what part of my post do you think I "made up"?
The iPad2 was rumored to have a retinal display, and every new generation of iPhone and iPad has been a fairly minor upgrade in terms of specifications and features.
Do you think that millions won't buy the next incremental upgrade?
If rumours are correct, and iPad3 will have a retina display
That's what the rumors said about the iPad2 ...
If you can trust apple to do anything, it's to provide no more than minor upgrades to their products, as we've seen with every iPhone and iPad so far.
It doesn't really matter what they release, millions will still buy it.
I bet they'll try to patent this "innovation" -- even though they clearly stole the idea.
For goodness sake, Pringles has been stacking chips since the 1960's.
Yes, I know iPods don't work in disk mode, that's one of many many reasons I didn't buy one.
As for iTunes wiping the iPod on it's own, I've repeatedly pointed out that the mysterious warning dialog does not appear for all users affected (it appears only under one specific set of circumstances).
It's a very common problem -- and ridiculously bad design on Apples part.
I'm sorry that you bought a iPod instead of a good mp3 player, but you don't need to get so defensive!
From your description, moving music from CD's to your computer is super-simple, yet you think it's a major task?
Please. Besides, as I've already pointed out, this is NOT and advantage Apple has over the competition. There are numerous programs with similar / better functionality.
Moreover, the fact that there are third-party programs for moving music from CD's to your iPod suggests that Apples was isn't as simple as you describe.
Again, Apple offer the user no advantage what-so-ever. My original point, of course, still stands. Not only are there no advantages to Apple, there are several disadvantages.
Go troll somewhere else.