Back in the day,
putt-putt...
Computer magazines used to have code listings for you to type in, tape replication was damn expensive, heck you'd pay £15 sometimes for a spectrum game when they first came out, it was a good while before games became pocket-money affordable. Anyhoo, these listings would be typed in and you ended up with a pac-man game, or ET, but my point is that by typing out these listings, you learned a lot - not because 500 data statements tells you anything about coding, more that those data statements hold graphics and room descriptions and potions and that's what's fascinating. Microcosm I think you'd call it, but mankind is fascinated by things smaller than they should be, especially blokes - coding is really Airfix, Mechano, LEGO, ant-farms... for the noughties.
I don't think I've ever been asked to buy my son an Airfix kit, but damn he's into Oblivion, Oblivion is like the biggest ever LEGOland with spacehoppers and monster trucks and LOTR - how's a £2 plastic plane that you have to build yourself ever gonna compete!
I loved Airfix and mechano, still do, if not for coding I'd probably have a train set in the attic, possibly some minor social disorders too and drive a Volvo. Roy Carnell saved my life.
I think it's just a case that as these gamer kids get older they start to develop their own ideas, creative people need to expunge these, and it follows on from there.
It makes me laugh when I hear the term bedroom coder, because it's taken 2 decades to get my own PC in my bedroom for me to code on - did anyone actually have a spectrum to themselves?, that they didn't have to share?. Did anyone else have parents who were addicted to Manic Miner?.
Damn anyone who was a kid in the 80's feels old now!
''Stick that in your text and scroll it!.''
