zx basic in the zx for kids

[rleao]

hello fellow users,

i just would like to share my experience with you and ask your opinion on why 80s computers, specially the little menacing spectrum, are so good for teatching your kid some programming principles. My 11yo girl told me a few months ago that she wanna work with archtecture but that she would never lern to program (probably because she over the years observed my poitless excitment or self inflicted frustration w matlab or python). But her comment did not digested well for me. I would probably be a drunk, drug addicted or just someone that does not deserve the O2 that consumes if it wasn't for my brazilian apple/atari clone (called microdigital tk2000). that thing completely changed my interests, my way to understand the world. In the street i grew up, all families had more or less the same income, we all went to the same schools but the kids that had spectrum, trs80 or apple (all brazilian clones) all ended up in science or law activism (fighting corruption for example) or they are artists. All the ones i met 30 years later are exemplary parents, have an unusual (to brazilian standards) way of communicating with their children. I know that my street is not statistically significant but for me there is a clear trend. Also, i asked my postdocs/phd students who had computers as kids and there was a clear correlation between those that were not afraid of the 3d printer and python and some early exposure to unfriendly computers. I tried with her different arduino projects also some pointless online block thing that was supposed to introduce kids to programing and there was never the slightest interest. then my faulty spectrum came, i ordered parts, she and her sister sat with me during the whole hour i took to recap and remove falty memory chips. i gave her a simple problem (convert celsius in farenheit) and the next thing i know is that she was doing a series of ifs to simulate a conversation. On monday she left school all jumpy because she finally understood the concept of a variable. Her posture in doing math home work completely changed and it was the 1st time she came from school and turned on something to experiment with (the ps4, the laptop or other gadgets were never appealing to them) and i did not see her touching her phone until the next day. I would like to know if anyone had similar experiences with their kids and if you think that the serial single tasking grey screen basic interpreter are more challenging and appealng to 9-12yo kids than new shine OSs with anaconda and visual basic (or lego programable robots for example). i was wondering if the basic semantics play a part or it is just the challenge or because old computers were less abstract. I know that the amount of stories i attach to the hardware is a bias but her friends always came to visit her to play atari 2600 or to take and enlarge analog pictures. They never spent more than a few minutes on the ps4 attached to the same tv set. Thank you for reading.

[p13z]

I think having the tokens for BASIC on the ZX81 and Speccy gave a lot of kids their first interest in programming. Having every keyword printed on the keyboard appealed the same way as football stickers, stamp collecting or later - Pokémon. Just an initial desire to try every command, and work out what it did.

[rleao]

I agree, but i dont know if any computer language was projected also to be a learning tools for math or whatever. for example the bbc computer literacy program (in my opinion) was intended to make people aware that instead of be replaced by a robot they would control it. Early 80s you were pretty much stuck on the household computer w basic and crazy games produced in bedrooms today there are thousands of options. These days robotics became very fashonable in private high priced schools and, again, this is not statistically significant but the demo classes i watched could not contribute to logical thinking and math abstraction. those lego bits just need to be wired in the marked spots, use premade routines for sensors etc. the basic is just basic. a pacman at x,y to move right needs x to be appended x=x+1

i dont know if this is my daughter personal wiring that syncs w the sinclair basic (that i did not know before and it is bloody brilliant) but the 80s micro kids are way more affected by their old machines than the pc generation (most of the latter cannot even remember the type of their first computer) i decided to give as gifts to very good friends harlequim computers in those shine new cases of byte delight and see what happens.

[PeterJ]

Whilst there are now languages (if you want to call it a language) like Scratch which help kids (and other learners) get quick results, there is not much else out there. Even with Python and languages like Visual BASIC and C# you need to learn a great deal to get more that text appear on screen.

Remember we are talking almost 40 years ago when the world was a very different place, and weren't all glued to phones like robots. There was no internet (unless you worked for the Advanced Research Projects Agency!), no Windows, PCs or laptops. BASIC gave the opportunity for kids and adults to get started on the road to programming without the steep learning curve. The majority of people didn't know what a computer was.

The Acorn BBC was focused on schools and education (at least in the UK). Sir Clive lost that battle with the BBC, but he provided a bargain basement platform that is probably more responsible for the development of programmers than any other initiative since.

[druellan]

Oh, what a nice read!

When the speccy entered my house my dad also wanted to learn how to program. He had a couple of books about illumination and refrigeration theories, and he translated those books to the Spectrum.

The program basically ask questions about room type, dimensions, wall colors, windows, etc, using the draw functions to help visualize the data. It was a really interesting way to learn the basics, plus the software actually works and returns how big the AC must be or how many fluorescent or incandescent lamps you need for a good illumination.

In retrospect I can see that the Spectrum basic was a nice package that provides logic, math and drawing functions on a fixed, easy to understand canvas. You can have results almost immediately, and don't need to worry about resolutions, functions or code structure. Everything is there if you have an objective (make the computer do the math for you) and you want the program just to work, instead of today were the possibilities are so immense you don't know how to start and you can land on very complex and boring things regarding programming theory.

[p13z]

My oldest is 26 now - and yes, it was hard to get him interested in coding / programming. He ended up taking a minor interest when he discovered scripting and modding for Counterstrike / Doom 3 / COD.
My youngest is only one - and I'll try showing her my old Speccy, SpecBAS and Scratch when she is old enough - see if it can grab her attention - though I want to balance this with a general desire to minimise her screen time :/

[presh]

In retrospect I can see that the Spectrum basic was a nice package that provides logic, math and drawing functions on a fixed, easy to understand canvas. You can have results almost immediately, and don't need to worry about resolutions, functions of code structure. Everything is there if you have an objective (make the computer do the math for you) and you want the program just to work, instead of today were the possibilities are so immense you don't know how to start and you can land on very complex and boring things regarding programming theory.

THIS! So much this...

When I started university, almost everyone wanted to be a games programmer (and/or web designer - it was 1999, the peak of the dot.com bubble). Us wannabe games programmers were all absolutely hankering for the 2nd year computer graphics module, for which one of the assessed projects was "make a game"!

The software engineering aspect of the 1st year involved learning C++ - at this stage, all programs would have command line output only. No fancy graphical representations here.

C++ would later be used in the Computer Graphics module to tell OpenGL how to render the graphics to screen. C++ had a learning curve, and OpenGL had another one on top of that. You needed to understand so much just to get the canvas ready, before you've drawn a single pixel.. And then, you'd have to be comfortable enough with pointers to arrays to specify points & vertices, i.e. a hell of a lot of theory involved.

The fact that with BASIC you can just INPUT a few numbers, then PLOT, DRAW, CIRCLE, PRINT AT etc something visual to the display with zero set-up seems absolutely wild by comparison!

[llewelyn]

You are absolutely right RLEAO and I can say that with confidence because it worked for me. I was in my 30's when I attended uni as a mature student and up to that point my math skills were dreadful so you can imagine my despair when I found myself faced with statistics, a course that even those who like math found to be pretty daunting.

I had also as part of the course, got to learn some Basic and - to cut a long story short - I ended up with a Spectrum so I could work at home and learn in a more comfortable environment than the college mainframes room of dumb terminals which were always in use. The ease of programming the original 48k Spectrum plus its excellent Basic manual, helped me to learn to think more logically and apply that towards helping me get to grips with statistics.

It will sound silly to others but in school I had a hell of a time with algebra because I could not understand how letters could be numbers but once I'd entered LET x=10 LET Y = 10 it suddenly dawned on me what it all meant and what a useful idea it was. Wow! I can tell it to do a calculation and I will see this happen on screen. Oversimplifying a bit but nonetheless true, it was like a light went on in my brain.

At Christmas I showed my 12 yr old niece how to make a computer ask her to enter her name and be rewarded with "Hello Anna, how old are you?" and then react accordingly to whether she gave the right answer or not. By the end of the day she was working it out for herself and she had never had any previous contact with computers. Whether by accident or design, Sinclair made learning Basic so easy as to encourage us to discover what a useful tool a computer could be.

[ketmar]

Wow! I can tell it to do a calculation and I will see this happen on screen.

yeah, easy to use interactive mode with instant replies is a great thing for learners. i strongly believe that it was the cause of "micro revolution". i don't believe that i will ever start learning programming without ZX and MSX, where i can press several keys, and a computer will draw a line, or play a note. such instant response encourages experimenting, and further learning.

that's why languages like Forth, Lisp, Smalltalk are so easy to start with -- they all have interactive mode, and almost no useless extra syntax to learn. oh, and BASIC too, of course. ;-)

[PeterJ]

Python has a nice interactive mode too [mention]ketmar[/mention].

[ketmar]

language in which exact number of whitespaces between words is sometimes important, and sometimes isn't is not usable. that's all i have to say about python (and other languages with semantic indenting).

[PeterJ]

I would agree [mention]ketmar[/mention], especially for a language which is sold as beginner friendly (especially by the Raspberry Pi Foundation).

[ZXDunny]

There's always SpecBAS which is Sinclair BASIC for the PC. Instant results, while vastly more powerful.

[PeterJ]

There's always SpecBAS which is Sinclair BASIC for the PC. Instant results, while vastly more powerful.

Morning [mention]ZXDunny[/mention],

Would you be able to fix the links to SpecBAS on your site, and maybe put the mirror of the manual onto Google Drive rather than that awful (IMHO) Scribd? You can't download or view anything from them unless you sign-up for a 30 day trial.

Cheers

https://sites.google.com/site/pauldunn/

[ZXDunny]

There's always SpecBAS which is Sinclair BASIC for the PC. Instant results, while vastly more powerful.

Morning @ZXDunny,

Would you be able to fix the links to SpecBAS on your site, and maybe put the mirror of the manual onto Google Drive rather than that awful (IMHO) Scribd?

Cheers

https://sites.google.com/site/pauldunn/

I should take that site down, it's no longer relevant. SpecBAS (and its demos) lives on GitHub now:

https://github.com/ZXDunny

I'm working on the manual. I'll pop it up on its own Git hub repo too, I think.

[PeterJ]

Excellent [mention]ZXDunny[/mention],

I never knew about the GitHub page. Result!

Would you be able to.post on SC when the manual is available? Many thanks.

[ZXDunny]

Oh man, there have been sooooo many updates to SpecBAS since that site! And yeah, I really really need to either get the manual done or add in the online help.

Edit: https://sites.google.com/site/pauldunn/home/manual

[PeterJ]

Sorry, [mention]ZXDunny[/mention], that link gives me a page not found error.

[ZXDunny]

Sorry, @ZXDunny, that link gives me a page not found error.

Try now

Sorry about that.

[PeterJ]

Thanks [mention]ZXDunny[/mention]!

[llewelyn]

BRILLIANT BY ACCIDENT OR DESIGN?
Sir Clive Sinclair built his brand by a mixture of innovation and affordable pricing. He was quick to see the possibilities of first transistors and then integrated circuits (I.C's or 'chips') used in the production of miniaturized products whose appeal was their novelty at the time.

The apogee of this design initiative was without a doubt, the Spectrum micro computer which offered a clever combination of functionality and price that made computers affordable and programming them attainable by anyone willing to give it a shot.

Sinclairs minimalist design philosophy required his engineers to cut corners wherever possible to save every last byte of memory in order to make the most out of its paltry 48k.

A perfect example being the use of Basic commands entered by a single keystroke wherever possible although some also required a sequence of 'press this then that'.

To make this even easier the various keywords themselves were printed either on the relevant keys as well as above and below that single key.

What this unintentionally did for the user was to constantly remind them of the Basic commands even though that aspect of the keyboards appearance was not a deliberate function of the design.

To further enhance the Basic and make learning it even easier, if the user made a mistake in the syntax of a line they wished to enter, the Spectrum would not allow it to be entered and would mark where the error occurred and often suggest the nature of the mistake.

All of which ease of use features made the Spectrum a godsend for the neophyte programmer and better yet almost invited one to try some simple Basic for oneself as many a school boy did with the working machines on display at the local shop, to the amusement and irritation of their friends and the shop assistants respectively.

Once hooked by its ease of use in programming Basic, the next evolutionary step would be to try ones hand at something more ambitious which in many instances meant a game. Sometimes ones own but often copied from a magazine listing which was almost certain not to work as entered. Then you learned how to debug a program.

If one passed through this stage and the majority probably gave up at this point, the third step would be to realize the limitations of Basic, particularly its slow speed and progress to the hard core of learning to use the machine code that directly addresses the CPU's instruction set.

Only a determined, creative and persistent minority reach this point which I must confess to have found completely beyond my ken despite some considerable amount of study. I now realize that the main reason for this failing is simply because I have no use for it so no goal worth pursuing.

However to this day, some 38 years since my initial introduction to using the Spectrum, I still enjoy writing the occasional Basic program, often quite frivolous such as 'talking' to the computer by something like this:-

PLEASE PRESS ANY KEY TO PLAY WITH ME
k
WHAT IS YOUR FIRST NAME? TYPE IN AND PRESS ENTER
arse

(Now here's where it can get interesting. Either you choose the unimaginative "Hello arse" or better still you have entered a list of unacceptable swear words or vulgarities so the computer can give a suitable response to rude boys. Its ALWAYS boys who do this.)

See? You didn't even want to know about Basic and already you are intrigued by the possibilities!
That, in a nutshell, is what Sinclair did with the Spectrum which no other computer maker has ever really understood.

[Vampyre]

Sir Clive lost that battle with the BBC, but he provided a bargain basement platform that is probably more responsible for the development of programmers than any other initiative since.

Absolutely. Even a high-profile, respected-amongst-the-industry, magazine like Edge has stated on several occasions that the Speccy was utterly critical to the burgeoning UK development industry. It introduced many respected programmers, many still in the industry today (although more "hidden" than they were in the 80/90's, to the game development scene.

[akeley]

Check the photos on this auction. This is how you get kids into retro hardware servicing

[Morkin]

Check the photos on this auction. This is how you get kids into retro hardware servicing

...I can imagine [mention]1024MAK[/mention] being given a soldering iron when he was 4 or 5...

[p13z]

...I can imagine @1024MAK being given a soldering when he was 4 or 5...

Not sure exactly what age, but our Dad had us wiring, soldering and even brazing and welding stuff before I was at middle school (so less than 9 years old).
I think it the toy industry is often a bit of a cop-out, distracting kids while their minds are more capable than any other point in life, of learning real/useful skills.