When Dartmouth College launched the Basic language 50 years ago, it enabled ordinary users to write code. Millions did. But we've gone backwards since then, and most users now seem unable or unwilling to create so much as a simple macro
When I was a kid in the 90s I had a PC that came with Windows 3.1 and it had QBasic. I messed around with it a lot. I spent a lot of time reading the built-in documentation.
I remember making a random password generator, a text-based blackjack game, and some “screensavers” that were basically just drawing a bunch of stuff on the screen and then scrolling it off the top by printing blank lines.
It took quite a bit of time to do that pretty basic stuff, so it’s really not a surprise to me that most people aren’t making computer programs today. Most of anything an average person could hope to program has already been done and made available for free.
I did basically all those things, or very similar things, in TI-BASIC back in high school. I didn’t care that they had already been done countless times; I had a blast figuring out how to make them work.
I dearly wish more people would try making basic programs that are 100% their own creation, even if it’s some random string generator. It’s more rewarding than they might think!
Same here. I missed the lecture of many math classes figuring out basic on my ti84+. I mostly wrote simple games. The calculator made it easy to experiment since all the functionality could be found in menus or a button somewhere.
Yep, same! It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t know the first thing about Z80 assembly or I’d have flunked hard 😂 I would have loved to make my own clone of Phoenix!
When I was a kid in the 90s I had a PC that came with Windows 3.1 and it had QBasic. I messed around with it a lot. I spent a lot of time reading the built-in documentation.
I remember making a random password generator, a text-based blackjack game, and some “screensavers” that were basically just drawing a bunch of stuff on the screen and then scrolling it off the top by printing blank lines.
It took quite a bit of time to do that pretty basic stuff, so it’s really not a surprise to me that most people aren’t making computer programs today. Most of anything an average person could hope to program has already been done and made available for free.
nibbles.bas, a classic. I wonder if you can pay it online.I did basically all those things, or very similar things, in TI-BASIC back in high school. I didn’t care that they had already been done countless times; I had a blast figuring out how to make them work.
I dearly wish more people would try making basic programs that are 100% their own creation, even if it’s some random string generator. It’s more rewarding than they might think!
Same here. I missed the lecture of many math classes figuring out basic on my ti84+. I mostly wrote simple games. The calculator made it easy to experiment since all the functionality could be found in menus or a button somewhere.
Yep, same! It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t know the first thing about Z80 assembly or I’d have flunked hard 😂 I would have loved to make my own clone of Phoenix!