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What a great article! I was in my 30s back in the early 1980s when I got my first computer, a second hand Tabasco or something, and it was cool because it had TWO floppy disks rather than just one, and an amber screen rather than the ubiquitous green. I well remember the thrill of labouriously typing in line after line of code and then making the program run. And although I wouldn't swap my gorgeous laptop for that long-gone beige box, I do agree that children would benefit from learning the BASICs.
And it's not just programming! People marvel that I make my own jam, for example - sugar, water and fruit boiled together, how much easier could it be? Teachers are discovering that a lot of city kids have no clue where milk comes from, or what a carrot looks like. Doing just about anything "from scratch" in the urban West is increasingly regarded as niche or just plain eccentric.
Looks like a marketing opportunity for someone - dinky retro computers for boomers to teach their kids the joys of pong!
