In the 80's our school got a room full of apple IIs. It resulted in me getting a school report that said that I needed to learn to use computers for something other than programming.
It struck me as a little odd because you can't program a computer without having a task that you want to do. That was the boring bit though, getting the computer to do it was where the fun was.
In hindsight I never learned very much from the school computers. The limited access meant you couldn't dedicate the time needed for a deep dive. I was lucky to have computers at home. over time A trs-80, PET, vic-20, c64, Amiga. No Apple at home though. The real learning came from spending hours at a time mucking around with them. Also Compute, and Dr Dobbs were invaluable growing up in a town of about 5,000 information was limited.
For all that people complain about the internet rotting the brains of our youth, I know there are kids out there that are like I was, they have easy access to so much more information. They will do some great things, and they will do it because it's interesting, not because it will make them rich.
It struck me as a little odd because you can't program a computer without having a task that you want to do. That was the boring bit though, getting the computer to do it was where the fun was.
In hindsight I never learned very much from the school computers. The limited access meant you couldn't dedicate the time needed for a deep dive. I was lucky to have computers at home. over time A trs-80, PET, vic-20, c64, Amiga. No Apple at home though. The real learning came from spending hours at a time mucking around with them. Also Compute, and Dr Dobbs were invaluable growing up in a town of about 5,000 information was limited.
For all that people complain about the internet rotting the brains of our youth, I know there are kids out there that are like I was, they have easy access to so much more information. They will do some great things, and they will do it because it's interesting, not because it will make them rich.