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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.
By David Brin

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  • Wednesday, September 13, 2006 11:10 PM

    Nostalgia and the Job Market

    "According to the masters of IT, line coding is not a deep-fabric topic worth studying. Not a layer that lies beneath, holding up the world of object-oriented programming. Rather, it is obsolete!"

    In 2000, I wrote an assembler in a Comp. Sci. class at Berkeley. By the end of it, I could code in MIPS. At the end of my last semester, in spring of 2002, I wrote a C++ compiler. After I graduated with a Bachelor's in Computer Engineering, I got a part-time job as a valet.

    It's easy to get nostalgic about obsolete langauges when you can pay the rent.

    —einnocent Read einnocent's other letters

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