[Coco] Thoughts on modern computers (sort of off topic)

[Rich Carreiro]

On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 13:57, Aaron Wolfe <aawolfe at gmail.com> wrote:
> If somebody wanted to learn programming today, I think the the CoCo is
> just as good a tool as it ever was, in no small part because it is a
> simple machine.  I doubt you'd lure many kids into the world of code
> with one today though.  Making your name appear on a TV screen just
> isn't as magical as it used to be.  For someone young or old who is
> truly interested to learn programming though, I'd think a CoCo would
> serve nicely.

I'm a "get off my lawn, you damned kids!" type too :), so I lean towards
you in this.  Certainly 8-bit stuff like the CoCo make it a lot easier to
truly understand the machine from top to bottom.

On the other hand, stuff like Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu) is pretty
neat and makes it easy for beginners to learn programming concepts
(even multithreading!) and have fun on the screen.

-- 
Rich Carreiro             rlcarr at gmail.com