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Thursday, September 14, 2006 12:00 AM

Why Johnny can't code

BASIC used to be on every computer a child touched -- but today there's no easy way for kids to get hooked on programming.

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  • Thursday, September 14, 2006 07:04 PM

    Maybe it was a terrible language but...

    BASIC is the language that hooked me. I was the little girl in Fairbanks AK who ran around programming display computers to tell the world how great I was or to flash pretty colors in between naughty words. I was, perhaps, the only computer tagger in Fairbanks to ever exit.

    Yes, it taught me bad habits. Yes, it isn't the most elegant thing to have ever been invented. But I am fond of it all the same. It did teach me how computers, well, compute. It introduced me to a world and a profession that I am still in.

    Nostalgia isn't necessarily a bad thing. Thanks to the wonders of GameTap I am now able to show my children the games that started me on the path to being the world's oldest living female gamer. BASIC is much the same...they won't learn the habits I had to unlearn because the children (I have more than a few) that are interested in such things have already learned better habits and languages. But what fun to show them where I started.

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