[Coco] Kids don't learn anything from modern computers Was: CoCo Rom pak

[Joel Ewy]

Donald Person wrote:
> ...
>    I have had the chance to talk with a few kids who are attending 
> college for computer programming, and it's sad to say but many of them 
> just don't have any knowledge at all before they start school; no 
> "base" to start from. It really is sad because some of the most 
> interesting things I learned as a kid was at the keyboard of a CoCo! I 
> think it's *partly* do to how well the user manuals were written. I've 
> looked at all the "Sam's" and "Dummies" books for different languages 
> and none of them can compare with the simplicity of the old Radio 
> Shack books.
>

Simplicity is a virtue.  The reason we learned so much from the CoCo was 
that:
1.  We had to learn how to add stuff to it because it was so useless 
straight out of the box.  It needed more memory, mass storage, and a 
printer, not to mention a TV, to be able to do anything.  We learned a 
lot adding those things.
2.  It was simple enough to understand, and even to hack on yourself.
3.  It was assumed in those times, that ordinary users would actually 
learn to write programs [gasp], since there wasn't always a program 
ready-made to do every job.  That's why the "Getting Started..." books 
were so accessible.  They were actually meant to be used to teach people 
how to use the computer.

JCE

> *sigh*  I got off track, didn't I?  Always happens when I'm talking 
> about the early 80's  hehehe :-P
>
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