- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
I'll chime in as one of the dinosaurs. I learned BASIC on an old apple of some description when I was in high school in the mid-80s, and the value to me was in the nested logic of commands. I suck at math, I always have -- my wife remains appalled at my innumeracy and will be fielding all related questions from our children.
Regardless of the merits of BASIC from a coding standpoint, it allowed me to grasp logic that I wasn't absorbing in math class. (I spent most of my time "debugging" equations because I transpose numbers, and to this day remain baffled by anything other than basic arithmetic.)
However, before people feel free to weigh in on what a moron I am, here's the real benefit: while I didn't go down a coding path, having learnt the "soft" skill for structuring in a logical fashion, it has proven to be endlessly useful.
I have spent a lot of the last 10 years working on systems requirements and end-user testing for various consulting gigs, and while it may not be razzle-dazle work, you'd be amazed at the number of people who can't logically lay out a process, explain data relationships, develop Work break down structures, or execute testing plans that actually isolate problems so that they can be fixed.
I'm not going to claim that learning to number BASIC lines in increments of 10 to allow for additions downstream is what made me good at this, but it did far more for me in structuring thought than a lot of other educational experiences.
A number of people have indicated that too many CS students are doing high-end code without understanding the fundamentals. It's difficult - not impossible - to learn how to solve problems the hard way when that wasn't how you approached learning, and yet life's like that. We do a disservice to children and young adults by NOT making them do the difficult fundamentals.
