I first learned to program a computer in 1970. When I moved to NJ the next year I taught many teachers at WHS the basics of programming. At RPI in 1975, like most of the freshman, I did projects in machine language, assembler and fortran. Then I never coded again. I got my first PC in 1987, a toshiba T1000. I learned MS-DOS and how to touch type on that computer (I actually still have it, and it works!). I dont know how many DOS or Windows based machines Ive had both at home and work but recently have switched to all Apple. The most important lesson I learned about computers at RPI is how stupid they are. They have very very limited native abilities (take commands, add, move numbers around, retrieve data and then output all in less than a blink of an eye) the rest is combining those basic abilities into the great diversity of applications because of the creativity and skill of programmers world wide. I also learned that front end effort saves back end effort. By that I mean spending time learning the capabilities of the operating system and the apps one uses regularly is tedious, boring and in the end makes the machine a much more efficient productivity tool. One common problem is that todays computers, which are designed to be used by those who never learned how to write their own autoexec.bat or config.sys files means that people can often get some work done without that front end work but it also means its all much less productive then it could be. Most people dont know how to use computers and worse yet the net natives of the younger generations are often technology immigrants. Surfing the web, sending text but editing a PDF and then attaching it to an email, while changing the permissions so the recipient cant easily edit it is too difficult. See: coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 12:14:24 +0000
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