Why Jonny Can't Code

[TheGreatAndPowerfulOz]

how zen like...

[Kirk Wood]

Actually, I think the author must be stupid. First, it took me less then 30 seconds to find qbasic.com where you can download guess what: a BASIC interpreter. But beyond that, I never learned Basic. And most of the programmers I know never learned Basic. I don't think it has a place in modern computing. I would say go download the free .NET version of Visual Studio and pick either VB.NET or C#. I was driven from programming from the attitude that you learn by suffering through things like how to get your program into the computer. After one semester of COBOL, I wrote off what is a great profession for me. Eventually I figured out there was no need to suffer with the things that made me hate that class. I will never subject my kids to Basic. They can learn from a usable language. They can go through bad phases in a way that at least will transfer to something useful.

[Richard Jones]

I wrote a nested for loop on the PET, poking all 255 values in every register. I found a tennis-court screen in 2 shades of green, and a backwards screen (text was big and screen was flipped 180).

"The activity of 'debugging', or removing bugs from a program, ends when people get tired of doing it, not when the bugs are removed." - "Datamation", January 15, 1984

[Eric Whitmore]

You could even bring back Microsoft Clippy to help you code!

PlutoX

[Tomz_KV]

I think the modern programming becomes much simpler than the line by line BASIC.

TOMZ_KV

[AdamNThompson]

"The problem with programming today, is that there's so much drag and drop, point and click, write no code stuff going on that people are taking contract work and hitting a wall the moment they find they need to write code after all" Amen to that. If I have to explain to one more stupid f**k how to loop through an collection, or or use a base page class I'm going to go gehad on their drag n' drop a**. 5 years ago I taught myself how to programm by reading books and tutorials online. I started with VB.NET and now do mostly C#. These days I make a good living building enterprise software. So I think .NET is a great place to start. I have tried several other languages and have not been impressed after working with .NET. I feel like nothing truly compairs. If I can become the developer for a software consulting company just by reading books and make the kind of money that good developers make with no colege degree, just by reading books. .NET is a great place to start. If you cant figure it out, maybe you are fresh out of college where they didn't teach you anything practical, or maybe this industry just isn't for you.

-Adam N. Thompson

[Marc Clifton]

Richard Jones wrote:

I wrote a nested for loop on the PET, poking all 255 values in every register. I found a tennis-court screen in 2 shades of green, and a backwards screen (text was big and screen was flipped 180).

Hehe. That could be really dangerous, as you could affect the timing of the video chip and blow up the monitor! ;) Marc

Will work for food. Interacx

I'm not overthinking the problem, I just felt like I needed a small, unimportant, uninteresting rant! - Martin Hart Turner

[Dan Neely]

Are you just checking the ability to code without intellisence, or the knowledge or running a compiler from the commandline?

The latest nation. Procrastination.

[Richard Jones]

Worst I ever got was a high-pitched squeal, like a dog-whistle. I can "hear" CRTs tube whine. I was really glad when we switched to LCD.

"The activity of 'debugging', or removing bugs from a program, ends when people get tired of doing it, not when the bugs are removed." - "Datamation", January 15, 1984

[ragnaroknrol]

The problem with this is the amount of time it takes to get past these introductory steps and get to functional coding. I am a complete noob at this. I took a C course in 1993 and a C++ in 97. I am an intern learning C# on the job and I am mostly lost. Yes I even made a stupid ball bounce using basic in the 80s... I have sat here at my desk reading up on how to use delegates, working with XML, forms, etc for literally weeks. I still don't get it and even having written some basic programs I am lost when I try to do the next step. I spent a day figuring out how to send an xml file to a pop up box so that the formatting worked and could still not get it to scroll the way I wanted. I am currently trying to get input in 3 pop up forms and then send that to a 4th form which tallies everything and lets the user know what they chose. I decided to do this because our environment actually does something similar. Writing those basic applications has not prepared me for this. I may be too old to just "get it" nowadays or something but my forehead hurts from slamming into a wall and I really do think an instructor with GOOD training in teaching (not just a degree in programming) is really necessary to get programming nowadays. This site has helped a ton, but the language on a lot of articles is so far above where I am that it doesn't always help. Heck, I couldn't even get the delegate thing using the bedtime story article. Learning for me has always required interaction with someone or me being able to puzzle out things with numbers and a map of sorts.

[David Crow]

Christian Graus wrote:

The point appears to me to be that languages with line numbers and no OO are a better starting point than any modern language. I don't really agree.

The guy was expressing his opinion. You have to respect that. He obviously is fond of his roots. I too started with Basic and undoubtedly would not be where I am today otherwise (thanks Commodore). The Basic language is a tool like any other. It has pros and cons like any other language.

"Old age is like a bank account. You withdraw later in life what you have deposited along the way." - Unknown

"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons

[pontellen]

I think the reason might be something different entirely. I've noticed that the Jonnys of today have no interest, curiosity, fascination with, or drive to explore computers and how they work. Of course they use technology voraciously. This may be a generational thing. Today, they are so swamped with technology and take it all for granted, and don't even see it as a field worth pursuing. I may date myself, but having grown up when there were no PCs at schools, and getting my first introduction to them in college has left me with a life long appreciation for them, and subsequently writing code. I see the same at work (Not an IT company), those with the most interest and drive are older. Of course the same young generation doesn't read, for example books by Ray Kurzweil such as The Singularity is Near. Those few Jonnys who have that interest and drive are still there, creating the future companies and products. Think Google, Facebook, etc...

[TheGreatAndPowerfulOz]

PIEBALDconsult wrote:

It seems to me that you can't teach "structured programming" unless you've introduced the class to its opposite.

that's ridiculous in the extreme. so if you want to learn math you must first learn non-math? or to learn to cook you must first learn to non-cook?

[TheMandolinMan]

Download a C64 or Atari simulator. Voila - BASIC. And you can do cool things like poke characters on the screen, write garbage into the keyboard buffer, and create your own 8-bit chip tunes!

[Alan Balkany]

The article has a point. When you first learn to program, it's overwhelming because a beginner has to learn a wide variety of "mini-skills" all at once, in order to get the simplest thing working. Miss even one of them, and the program fails, and the beginner often doesn't have a clue what's wrong. Sure there are most sophisticated platforms out there. But a sophisticated platform is counterproductive to the initial programming learning experience. BASIC is simple, which makes it ideal to learn the concepts of programming. It's interpreted so you can bypass the concepts of compiling and linking. Line numbers and gotos are intuitive. Even as simple as C is, there are still complexities (for the beginner) like main () and #include <stdio.h> that distract, must be explained, and add more unnecessary uncertainty to the initial programming experiences.

[DiscoJimmy]

The guys a decent writer, but he's a bit too nostalgic, or just really bad at finding things online. He's totally obsessed with a particular version of BASIC, for some reason. He even mentions QBASIC in his article as one he passed up. That's how I learned to code - after having a TRS 80 16k I was thrilled to get QBASIC on an PC. He keeps going on about how he just wants the kid to able to sit down and punch stuff in with out the hurdles, but QBASIC is actually easier AND better. You don't need line numbers, you have an actual text editor so you don't have to retype a whole line to fix a mistake, etc. He could easily have sat the kid down with QBASIC and punched in all those examples. And if he doesn't like that there's SmallBasic, or Ruby, or for that matter he knocks Python for being too high level, but you can enter BASIC examples in Ruby or Python with only trivial syntax changes. And they're interpreted just like BASIC, so no dealing with a compiler. Basically he just wanted to whine about 'how good it used to be' instead of downloading some of these things from the interwebs. But then I guess he wouldn't have an article.

[DiscoJimmy]

... and just to be clear, I'm not saying he doesn't have a point. I learned through punching in BASIC line by line and i think everyone should experience that. I'm just baffled that he insists that experience is so inaccessible nowadays.

[Marc Clifton]

Richard Jones wrote:

I can "hear" CRTs tube whine. I was really glad when we switched to LCD.

Me too. At least, I used to. I also couldn't understand why people had these fancy CRT's and graphic cards but would keep the refresh rate at 60Hz. The flicker would drive me nuts. Marc

Will work for food. Interacx

I'm not overthinking the problem, I just felt like I needed a small, unimportant, uninteresting rant! - Martin Hart Turner

[Dan Neely]

Not everyone is susceptible to flicker. I only ever notice 60hz flicker from 10' and a 45* angle; meanwhile higher resolution is always useful and the highest generally are where the CRT bottoms out at 60hz max. OTOH I've never met anyone who could use the 85hz interlaced (42.5 effective) mode on 90's era systems; which makes me wonder why they ever offered it.

The latest nation. Procrastination.

[Flynn Arrowstarr Regular Schmoe]

Beats the VB/C# equivalents: VB

Imports System

Namespace Tutorial
Public Class Hello
Public Shared Sub Main
Dim name As String
Console.WriteLine("Please enter your name.")
name = Console.ReadLine()
Console.WriteLine("Hello there, " & name & "!")
Console.ReadLine()
End Sub ' Main
End Class ' Hello
End Namespace ' Tutorial

C#

using System;

namespace Tutorial {
public class Hello {
public static void Main() {
string name;
Console.WriteLine("Please enter your name.");
name = Console.ReadLine();
Console.WriteLine("Hello there, " + name + "!");
Console.ReadLine();
} // end method Main
} // end class Hello
} // end namespace Tutorial

I'll be nice and not post the 200+ line Windows CE VC++ version... :-\ Flynn