Quote:
Originally Posted by MiamiBoyz
(Post 20105014)
Back in my day we didn't have them fancy computer things...we had to actually read books and learn things like math.
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There's debate about the so called digital native (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_native ) like these kids, born after 2000's, being really more smart in using computers than digital immigrant who today is 40 or 50+ years old.
In early '80s my father purchased me an 8bit computer (Commodore, not Apple, but was look-alike) with green-tones monitor and no joystick or games (even joystick and games of course it existed already, my father was a little nazi in education). Really, he wanted to get a computer for himself, but to convince the wife of such a big expense (costed 1+ month worth of salary), he found the excuse it was for the me, the kid.
I did not asked for this thing or cared to it, but since it was in my bedroom and my father gave up quickly to learn it, I took the big manual and started to read it, copying the "10 input what is your name?, variable; 20 print: your name is: variable" stuff there, since the cynical father purposely did not purchased any game or joystick, so I was left with manual and text interface, at like 8 or 9 years old.
Eventually I could code when 12, and been my job until now. Probably if I got a computer with games in first place, no matter if 8bit or modern, I would have loaded games only, and ignored the code part - which is what the native digital kids are doing: click icons very quick.
Have to say, coding today it is also easier, except using assembly or C instead of modern languages, we not even had floating point so for divisions had to first multiply (shift >>, really) by 256 both, divide the 2 numbers, then re-divide by 256 the result... that's called fixed point (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-point_arithmetic ) , so just to make easy math you had to use integers to simulate floating point it was not easy when writing an own 3d engine (eh no 3d video cards or openGL).
In fact you can make a 3d rotating cube with few lines of openGL (ES) in Android java - but not so easy to display same in old computers (check the doom and wolfenstein3d old sourcecode here:
https://github.com/id-Software ). Not saying APIs are a bad thing, the opposite, just a guy who code today a rotating cube it needs to know 1% of the things going on - 3 lines of opengl and java - he's called genius but he's 1% of genius if compared with who let rotate a same cube on 20 years ago screens. Eventually not many know this "you 2 both let run a same cube on a screen, so what's the difference" ?
