On 9/15/06, Dan Shafer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I found this piece <http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2006/09/14/basic/> on today's Salon.com by David Brin interesting, if a bit misguided. There seem to be some potential implications for Revolution and Transcript but not as a direct replacement for what he's missing. Still, he makes some interesting strategic points.
Since I am one who started out just that way - teaching myself to program using the built-in Basic in my first computer, Commodore Vic-20 - I have a lot of sympathy for his view. In those days, there just wasn't the enormous amount of software available, so it seemed to be expected that you would create your own. However I think his car anaolgy is valid - people used to be able to maintain their own engines, but now they are so complex that it's not possible anymore. My sons' text books still have Basic listings in them, but the son who is interested in programming uses Visual Basic & Rev and applies the same logic. Not having a line-by-line editor doesn't worry him. So my conclusion would not be that a line-by-line Basic editor should be included with every computer, but that some easy programming environment should be included, as it used to be with Apple & HyperCard. Cheers, Sarah _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
