Oh man, getting obsessed with TI-82 BASIC in middle school is definitely the reason I have the career and life I do today. I remember after years of dealing with ~36 variable slots and all the other insane limitations, my parents got me a TI-89 for Christmas and it changed everything. You could perform "indirection" on a constructed string, which opened up all kinds of awesome techniques. And you could draw lines and points on the canvas! I built an incredibly slow pokemon clone and a theorem prover before a kind mentor suggested I try programming on the computer.
I hope these sorts of experiences will still be accessible for my kids. Having a school-mandated device with a button labeled "PROGRAM" that took you straight to a BASIC interpreter made it possible for someone like me, growing up in a rural area with zero parental technical knowledge, to end up where I am today.
"I hope these sorts of experiences will still be accessible for my kids. "
If they surfe the web from their computers, they are just a click away, from a WebIDE, called dev tools, much more powerful, and millions of tutorials how to use them. Thd opportunity they have.
I hope these sorts of experiences will still be accessible for my kids. Having a school-mandated device with a button labeled "PROGRAM" that took you straight to a BASIC interpreter made it possible for someone like me, growing up in a rural area with zero parental technical knowledge, to end up where I am today.