tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post114698308861999722..comments2024-03-28T15:48:48.514-07:00Comments on CONTRARY BRIN: The Age of Miracles & Wonder...David Brinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comBlogger76125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147478716192694682006-05-12T17:05:00.000-07:002006-05-12T17:05:00.000-07:00PostscriptWorld immigrant population, 2005: 191 mi...Postscript<BR/><BR/>World immigrant population, 2005: 191 million<BR/>U.S. immigrant population, 2005: 35 million<BR/><BR/>Just wondering the 'where from' of the World immigrant population. Sounds like you have the start of a new book in mind...offworld immigrants taking advantage of our planets largess.D R Wilsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06829586465978364973noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147346202609877852006-05-11T04:16:00.000-07:002006-05-11T04:16:00.000-07:00Try giving an eye to this. http://www.yabasic.de/Q...Try giving an eye to this. http://www.yabasic.de/<BR/>Quoting:<BR/>"Yabasic implements the most common and simple elements of the basic language; It comes with goto/gosub, with various loops, with user defined subroutines and Libraries. Yabasic does monochrome line graphics and printing. Yabasic runs under Unix and Windows; it is small (around 200KB) and free."<BR/><BR/>I've not tried this but on the paper it seems what you ask for (even if i believe, like many other here, that basic is not the best way to approach programming nowaday, not even for a child). Actually, for quite some years i teached programming to young childs, retired old people and housewives for a private school... from these experiences I developed the idea that approaching the computer from the command line at least at the beginning is much more helpful, if you want to make of the teached something more that a passive user.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147326233917038842006-05-10T22:43:00.000-07:002006-05-10T22:43:00.000-07:00Yeah, but it doesn't meet his requirements.And, fo...Yeah, but it doesn't meet his requirements.<BR/><BR/>And, for the record, I have experience with the UI stuff that comes out of Tcl/tk, and I think it's ugly, clunky, and annoying. Almost as ugly, clunky, and annoying as Perl, which is a travesty. <BR/><BR/>And I fundamentally disagree that IDE's prevent learning. The more you can focus on the program itself, rather than arcania and esoterica, the better for teaching *algorithms*. Think Turbo Pascal, here, and build on that.Rob Perkinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13115249244056328076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147325760900246082006-05-10T22:36:00.000-07:002006-05-10T22:36:00.000-07:00David, I think your feelings on basic are colored ...David, I think your feelings on basic are colored by nostalgia.<BR/><BR/>Modern languages are easier to learn than basic. The many examples already given, Python, KPL, etc, are much easier to understand than BASIC ever was. You might have learned BASIC, but for others, the world has moved on.<BR/><BR/>That's still no excuse for why windows doesn't include any developer support with a default install. But there are great options out there.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147311416758953952006-05-10T18:36:00.000-07:002006-05-10T18:36:00.000-07:00IDEs stink for learning a programming. Java also s...IDEs stink for learning a programming. Java also stinks; it has too much overhead. BASIC sort of worked, but I never liked its irregularity, or dealing with line numbers.<BR/><BR/>The language you want is TCL, which stands for "Tool Command Language." This is about the simplest language I have ever encountered. It started off as an ultra simple scripting language written by an electrical engineer to make it easy to add a user friendly front end to number-crunching C code.<BR/><BR/>Then Ousterhout (the creator) added the Tk toolkit, a graphical toolkit which has since been integrated into most of the world's scripting languages (including perl, ruby and python).<BR/><BR/>TCL is free, and runs on anything. Ousterhout's "TCL and the Tk Toolkit" is extremely readable. You can start writing interesting code by just reading a small portion of the book. (About half is dedicated to extending the language with your own C code.)<BR/><BR/>The Tk canvas widget can allow drawing graphics without having to worry about events and such like.<BR/><BR/>You may have to write the first few lines of boilerplate to get the canvas widget displayed. From there, it is possible to move objects on the canvas using simple commands. No compiling is necessary. It is possible to send commands using an interactive shell.<BR/><BR/>This boilerplate code can be written once, and placed in a file. Then, all your son needs is a single line to include the boilerplate file.<BR/><BR/>While TCL is a bit primitive for building big systems, it is still used for some UNIX installation scripts and the like. And as I said before, the Tk toolkit has been ported to more advanced scripting languages, so this knowledge is useful going out.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147306448296680292006-05-10T17:14:00.000-07:002006-05-10T17:14:00.000-07:00David, some of the stuff you said was "easy" in ba...David, some of the stuff you said was "easy" in basic really wasn't all that easy, at least at first. Writing pong in Applesoft, for example, required getting keyboard input while still processing data. If I remember correctly, this required using Peek and Poke statements. (Getkey came latter.)<BR/><BR/>It is ironic that the easier it has become to build real applications the harder it has been to build "Hello World" applications.<BR/><BR/>In OSX the easiest build in language is CSH. You can even program interactively:<BR/><BR/>[mark-matson:~] mark% 50:<BR/>[mark-matson:~] mark% echo Apple ROOLZ!<BR/>Apple ROOLZ!<BR/>[mark-matson:~] mark% goto 50<BR/>Apple ROOLZ!<BR/>Apple ROOLZ!<BR/>Apple ROOLZ!<BR/>Apple ROOLZ!<BR/>Apple ROOLZ!<BR/>Apple ROOLZ!<BR/>Apple ROOLZ!<BR/><BR/>....<BR/><BR/>What could be cooler than command-line goto statements? Just be ready with the ctrl-C.Xactiphynhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08254344563346437079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147286680908365722006-05-10T11:44:00.000-07:002006-05-10T11:44:00.000-07:00Of course, now that I've actually read Raymond's a...Of course, now that I've actually read Raymond's article and tried a little python, I take your point.Rob Perkinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13115249244056328076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147277052726166062006-05-10T09:04:00.000-07:002006-05-10T09:04:00.000-07:00Sal, what you've described is a very seasoned prog...Sal, what you've described is a very seasoned programmer learning any new programming language; eventually doing it again (as is true with any human language as well) is not at all difficult. <BR/><BR/>After about 30 years of writing computer programs (though I usually don't put the time between when I was seven and seventeen on a resume) I too can pretty much pick up any computer language with the same ease as Eric Raymond picked up Python, because I know what to expect. So his point is moot, unless he can also show that a beginner to *programming* has the same ease. I predict that one cannot show that.Rob Perkinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13115249244056328076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147259981271904312006-05-10T04:19:00.000-07:002006-05-10T04:19:00.000-07:00here's an article by one of the world's major hack...here's an article by one of the world's major hackers, explaining why he had a couple of bombshell moments when he first tried Python:<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3882" REL="nofollow">"Why Python?"</A> by Eric Raymond.<BR/><BR/><I>"That was my first surprise. My second came a couple of hours into the project, when I noticed (allowing for pauses needed to look up new features in Programming Python) I was generating working code nearly as fast as I could type. When I realized this, I was quite startled. An important measure of effort in coding is the frequency with which you write something that doesn't actually match your mental representation of the problem, and have to backtrack on realizing that what you just typed won't actually tell the language to do what you're thinking. An important measure of good language design is how rapidly the percentage of missteps of this kind falls as you gain experience with the language.<BR/><BR/>When you're writing working code nearly as fast as you can type and your misstep rate is near zero, it generally means you've achieved mastery of the language. But that didn't make sense, because it was still day one and I was regularly pausing to look up new language and library features!"</I>Salhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04241907951700887861noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147259596691552302006-05-10T04:13:00.000-07:002006-05-10T04:13:00.000-07:00lob any Mac questions at me if you like -- i do a ...lob any Mac questions at me if you like -- i do a lot of help-out work on several mac groups (and have used every MacOSMacOSX since MacOS 2)<BR/><BR/>and re BASIC:<BR/>can i suggest you contemplate an alternative approach, one that fits well to a novice but also offers powerful future upside?<BR/>2 legs:<BR/>• teach him how the machine's logic has to work upside-down under the hood: RPN Reverse Polish Notation, either by a little bit of FORTH or maybe postscript or maybe a HewlettPackard 12, to get the understanding of how the machine has to think about data and processing. this doesn't take very long at all, but the mental switch profoundly informs all your later coding.<BR/><BR/>actually, motivationally: the HP approach is probably best. not only is it a funky looking calculator, but he can code with it anywhere, and he can use it at school just for his normal maths stuff and impress the hell out of his mates. <BR/>and he'll keep that calculator until the keys wear off...<BR/><BR/>• teach him Python. python is even easier to learn than basic, and is almost executable pseudocode (the stuff you teach the kids so that they can then turn their pseudocode into BASIC -- Python cuts straight to the chase). python has been around for a while and has an exponentially exploding userbase, fits extremely well with all the esoteric computerscience concepts (which is WHY it's so good), and is FREE on all platforms (e.g. comes pre-installed on Mac OS X). superior to basic in every single way, including friendliness-to-novices.Salhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04241907951700887861noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147232325049126542006-05-09T20:38:00.000-07:002006-05-09T20:38:00.000-07:00David Brin wrote:Moreover, if you cannot see the v...David Brin wrote:<BR/><I>Moreover, if you cannot see the value of other people getting a brief taste of lower-level, line-programming</I><BR/><BR/>I do see the value of that kind of programming, and will not call it "non-modern".<BR/>There are always tasks for <BR/>this kind of programming, I do it all the time and I am happy with it.<BR/>In the Old Days QBasic was great (among other things) for introducing kids to computing.<BR/>Not so sure if it is the best introduction of this kind: these days I'd take C or Fortran95. QBasic should still be an easily accessible option, because surely it is good enough.<BR/>You fully convinced me with the following:<BR/><BR/><I>But dig it. It would have cost nothing, nil, zip to include a simple BASIC compiler in Windows.</I><BR/><BR/>Maybe it's better for kids of today to start with a standardized language like C or Fortran, but surely enough QuickBasic did the job, quirky as it is. I forgive its quirks, I was a kid when I used it first; first year of grad school when I used it last.<BR/><BR/>Quirky or not, it gets the jobs done, the user can program without having to know explicitly about the OS.<BR/>And, and, and... it was there.<BR/><B>No excuse for elimination.</B><BR/><BR/>On the good side, while writing this message I have just learned that there is a VBasic compiler coming with Windows. Access to it is far, far from obvious, it's almost <B>hidden</B>. Conspiratorial theories welcome?<BR/><BR/>The rest of this long message tells my first impressions about this compiler. Never used any kind of Visual Basic before. Skip it if you have decided (maybe for good reasons!) to hate VBasic.<BR/><BR/>This VBasic dialect is, in its own endearing ways, just as quirky than the old QuickBasic. Maybe kids like quirky stuff? Sure enough some programmers do...<BR/><BR/>The following website contains a tutorial telling how to access a vbc.exe compiler already present on most Windows machines, and tells how to write and run some simple programs:<BR/><BR/><A>http://www.functionx.com/vbasic/Lesson01.htm<BR/></A><BR/><BR/>That's good, maybe not news for you, but definitely on the good side.<BR/>There is a way to do simple programming on the non-Linux side of the machine after all!<BR/><BR/>VBasic does not satisfy all of David Brin's requirements:<BR/><BR/>1) I found no obvious way to do graphics. Bad for beginners.<BR/><BR/>2) I found no interpreter. Many beginners like the option of running Basic under an interpreter instead of a compiler - more interactive, more immediate gratification of results.<BR/><BR/>3) I found no IDE, a graphical environment to help the programmer. No big deal for me, I'm accustomed to use a simple text editor when I program, but I know many programmers of today swear by their IDEs, and surely would be useful for the kids too.<BR/>Sure you can get that environment in full glory - by buying the full Visual Basic from Microsoft. Is there any other way? Legal and ethical, of course.<BR/><BR/>4) It is not compatible at all with code written in QBasic. That's sad, but it may be paying the price of an old mistake, rather than making a new one. QBasic has many good points, but it has no standards, it was never designed for portability. Sadly enough, incompatibility is one natural, bitter fruit of the lack of transportability. I take that as one lesson that the language we used as kids can teach us today -Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147230456364029022006-05-09T20:07:00.000-07:002006-05-09T20:07:00.000-07:00Once More, with feeling:http://www.qbasic.comQBasi...Once More, with feeling:<BR/><BR/>http://www.qbasic.com<BR/><BR/>QBasic was / is the last BASIC supported by Microsoft for PC.<BR/><BR/>It supports old fashioned line-numbered programs AND, with its support of subroutines and procedures, can serve as a stepping-stone to more advanced programming languages.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147222981059780152006-05-09T18:03:00.000-07:002006-05-09T18:03:00.000-07:00Precision’s good!I’m not doing anything under OS9 ...Precision’s good!<BR/><BR/>I’m not doing anything under OS9 emulation. I open my Application folder and double-click on System Preferences. It’s divided into five sections. Under System, I see an icon for Speech, and if I open it, I find it’s a bit different from the 10.3 I was using at work!<BR/><BR/>I can still duplicate what I think you’re seeing with 10.4 at home, though. If I click on Speech Recognition, then Settings, I can turn Speakable items On or Off. Turning it On displays that round Speech Recognition thing; turning it off makes it disappear.<BR/><BR/>Is the graphic you’re seeing divided into four sections: microphone picture in the upper hemisphere, bubble with Esc (or some other key name) in the center, four lines in the lower hemisphere, and an arrow at the very bottom? If you click on that arrow, do you see two options, one of which is Speech Preferences?<BR/><BR/>If I select Speech Preferences and click on Speakable Items: Off, the thing goes away.<BR/><BR/>I can’t imagine it’s that simple.<BR/><BR/>Does that help at all?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147221236797445322006-05-09T17:33:00.000-07:002006-05-09T17:33:00.000-07:00David,I apprecate your frustration. I think the be...David,<BR/><BR/>I apprecate your frustration. I think the best place for you to go to get what you want is in an old-machine emulator, like VISE emulating the C-64 or an Applesoft BASIC emulator. Both exist, as well as emulators for Amiga, Atari, and old-school DOS.<BR/><BR/>That's the way people have been keeping the "historical take", as you say, on programming. And preserving the tens of thousands of software titles unique to those platforms (for better or worse)Rob Perkinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13115249244056328076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147221154760980762006-05-09T17:32:00.000-07:002006-05-09T17:32:00.000-07:00Tangentially related:Mark Frauenfelder is having f...Tangentially related:<BR/><BR/>Mark Frauenfelder is having fun looking for "old" (Sputnik era) childrens' science and math books -- not text books, but the kind that parents bought for curious young ones -- which he finds superior to those of today:<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://madprofessor.net/" REL="nofollow">http://madprofessor.net/</A>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147220355403173872006-05-09T17:19:00.000-07:002006-05-09T17:19:00.000-07:00TC, sorry, I remain deeply confused about how you ...TC, sorry, I remain deeply confused about how you replicated my speech button problem. The need for precision here is crucial. If speakable items is turned off, exactly HOW did you replicate the problem? Are the OS9 "control panels" involved in any way?<BR/><BR/>As for gnosticism, I am running into the same problem in sci fi fandom. Some of us keep trying to get the fan community to reach out to kids, teachers, librarians and recruit the "next generation". But this effort is greeted with fierce, loathing hostility by many SMOFS. They now accept what they rejected 5 years ago... the clear evidence that SF fandom and literature are in decline. They just see no reason why they should do anything about it. Especially letting another generation inside to look behind the curtain.<BR/><BR/>My wife pointed out that many of the most vehement on this are childless... a very common quality in fandom. And perhaps not at all coincidental.David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147219872778235642006-05-09T17:11:00.000-07:002006-05-09T17:11:00.000-07:00Ruben, your long answer contains wisdom and truth....Ruben, your long answer contains wisdom and truth... and was directed at a strawman, not at my wishes or desires. I have been very clear what I wanted and what would be useful to millions of kids. <BR/><BR/>Nobody is asking ANYBODY to wallow in retro tech. Moreover, if you cannot see the value of other people getting a brief taste of lower-level, line-programming before moving on to more modern things, please do not thereby assume that other people who DO see this as desireable are automatically perception-defficient.<BR/><BR/>Fact. one simple and clear and universally available BASIC-for-XP would make ten million textbooks suddenly useful again, to tens of millions of kids who just want a taste of the concepts that were illustrated by the examples in those books. <BR/><BR/>Fact. That would be the quickest way to make available a brief historical taste of line coding without wasting a thousand man-years yelling at each other about the advantages of Logo, Python, etc. And it would do that without detracting from those worthy projects a bit.<BR/><BR/>Clearly, I hold a minotity view that many perople are dismissing as antedeluvian and neandertal. But dig it. It would have cost nothing, nil, zip to include a simple BASIC compiler in Windows. Its exclusion was deliberate, and you gotta wonder why.David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147219606548681162006-05-09T17:06:00.000-07:002006-05-09T17:06:00.000-07:00Goddamn snobs.You've . . . forgotten.It's not all ...Goddamn snobs.<BR/><BR/>You've . . . forgotten.<BR/><BR/>It's not all about transportability, efficiency, and rigor.<BR/><BR/>It's about diving right in. It's about sharing. It's about "borrowing" ideas from programs in books. It's about making mistakes and trying again.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147218224794576952006-05-09T16:43:00.000-07:002006-05-09T16:43:00.000-07:00I just realized, by hovering my house cursor, that...I just realized, by hovering my house cursor, that OS X calls it System Preferences. It should be in the Applications folder. I found Speech under System. <BR/><BR/>Like I said, you've probably aleady looked there, but I was able to exactly mimic your symtoms.<BR/><BR/>Interesting point about BASIC, its accessibility, and its banishment. Looks like Gnoticism to me! Many of the experts just don't like folks to take a peek behind the curtain.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147213068175440702006-05-09T15:17:00.000-07:002006-05-09T15:17:00.000-07:00I'm a Mac tech (corporate support now). I worked t...I'm a Mac tech (corporate support now). I worked two years at an Apple authorized repair shop and seven years as the Mac Guy at a small college. Before that, supported Macs at Honeywell. My email's on my web page.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147212651913029362006-05-09T15:10:00.000-07:002006-05-09T15:10:00.000-07:00David Brin wrote:There is no ground level common t...David Brin wrote:<BR/><BR/><I>There is no ground level common tool for letting kids see how human beings began as the line-writing masters of the machines. No way for millions to sample, quickly, get a gut feeling... and then move on, without having to commit themselves to learning a whol foreign language that nobody else speaks.</I><BR/><BR/>No need for paranoia, I hope.<BR/><BR/>I think that times have changed and some needs have changed and what people are doing now makes sense for the needs of today.<BR/>The rest of this post is a rant trying to defend the present state of business against the lure of some things that looked better in the past.<BR/>(By present I may mean something<BR/>in the late 1990s more than the real present, I have missed many recent developments, too busy with work to keep up with all.)<BR/><BR/>There is a common language these days - although it is not Basic anymore, if it ever was.<BR/>If not for children, then for starting programmers, the common language of these days is probably C.<BR/><BR/>Taken raw, or used only as an inspiration for syntax, that's the common basis of most text-based computer languages used today.<BR/><BR/>I guess and I hope that many kids are learning C, or some other of the many text-driven computer languages inspired on it.<BR/><BR/>If your point is giving the human user an inkling of what the machine is really doing inside, definitely C does an better job than old-time Basic.<BR/><BR/>Of course C has nothing to say about how to do drawing on the screen; and that's good, machines vary too much, details like these are better left to specialized tools, libraries or the OS itself.<BR/><BR/>Direct pixel manipulation of screens made sense in the bad old days when programs routinely bypassed the OS to do things on the screen directly. The lack of good libraries and drivers made that necessary, but it paid a price in weird crashes; it is almost impossible to do it right in the multitasking days of today - you need the OS to negotiate the needs of the many programs running at the same time, you can't have all of them trying to write directly onto memory locations living on the video RAM.<BR/><BR/>In those bad old days, people often communicated with the screen by directly manipulating magic memory locations using commands like PEEK and POKE -<BR/>Direct manipulation of memory is (first) far from easy, the user needs to know the magic memory locations and some usually quite complicated encoding, often completely unportable, and (second) a non recommendable way of programming, direct memory manipulation is fine when needed, but the risks of major crashes on a trivial bug are quite bad; so it is probably *not* the first thing to teach children, it may give the wrong impression that this is a good programming style.<BR/><BR/>That said, that said...<BR/>The past has some points, we are not doing the best we could do.<BR/><BR/>The libraries to communicate from the programming language to the video screen are often more unintuitive than they could be, that's bad for the learning curve. Even worse, there is little standardization on this,<BR/>and that hurts portability.<BR/><BR/>There should be a place in children's computer education for things related to text-based programming languages, and the lack of a universal immediate-reward screen manipulation system makes it harder than it should. That said - you may be overestimating the Old Days - many of those Basic commands to manipulate screens that you miss are strongly dialectal, not universal and not portable. Which is a another reason why standardized languages such as C or Fortran can't include them and have to relegate them to libraries.<BR/><BR/>Another important change: in the Old Days, there were fewer and weaker applications, so users had more need to program than now. That may explain a big part of the relative low profile of introductory programming languages these days. I guess that nowadays, by the time a user starts to program, there is a good chance the user does not need that kind of handholding. And many users find no need to learn programming at all; if the applications they use are flexible and powerful enough, that may be a good choice after all.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147212088658110152006-05-09T15:01:00.000-07:002006-05-09T15:01:00.000-07:00Or how little interest K-12 educators actually hav...<EM> Or how little interest K-12 educators actually have in the maths and sciences</EM><BR/><BR/>In my high-school science department, 20% of us have post-graduate science degrees, acquired because we were curious (we get no monetary incentive for the higher degree). Most of us spend several hours a week keeping up with the science news, as best we can.<BR/><BR/>I don't think we're atypical, at least for Ontario.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147207271134411892006-05-09T13:41:00.000-07:002006-05-09T13:41:00.000-07:00I am quite aware that academic publishers aren't "...I am quite aware that academic publishers aren't "with it" about the departure of BASIC from American desktops. Certainly few parents and kids and teachers are informing them. Still all this advice that we should study this and that candidate neo-beginner language - from a bewildering list of them - is just missing the point. <BR/><BR/>I am not looking for a language for my son and me to "learn". He will move on shortly to the big time world of top level languages where I will (thankfully) not follow. BUT FOR NOW, this summer, I just want to go on a tour of line programming at the pixel and algorithm level SO HE KNOWS WHERE ALL THIS STUFF CAME FROM!<BR/><BR/>We have at least a hundred little sample programs, in books, that we could just type in and see cool things happen. If it were easy to do, millions of kids could do it and maybe a few would become programmers. Why is it so hard to point out the fact that all these ancillary education programs - python and logo and such - ARE NOT BEING USED! Not the way BASIC once was, by millions.<BR/><BR/> The chaotic blur that you can see (above) in THIS very column of comments shows what we have lost. There is no ground level common tool for letting kids see how human beings began as the line-writing masters of the machines. No way for millions to sample, quickly, get a gut feeling... and then move on, without having to commit themselves to learning a whol foreign language that nobody else speaks.<BR/><BR/>And if I were in an SF writing mood, I could offer all sorts of paranoic explanations for how such a godawful thing could have snuck up on us, without anybody noticing.<BR/><BR/>I have copied your suggestions onto a text file that I will try to sort through later. Perhaps amid them there will be a gem, like Chipmunk Basic, that is turn key, simple and will let us have a retro summer with minimum pain.<BR/><BR/>AS FOR MAC OSX: I am so grateful to those of you (especially Ron) who helped.<BR/><BR/>1. I now can fully spotlight-search all my old WP OS9 files! Oceans of text, sifted and available at a touch. In comparison, the "search" function on my son's brand new XP machine is an absolute horror. Heck, old OS9 Sherlock was light years ahead of what PC users rely upon today. I am proud to own Apple stock.<BR/><BR/>(Though, BOY do I have suggestions for OS 10.5!)<BR/><BR/>2. Most other irks solved... except for the mystery dingbat speech disk. TC I have always kept "speakable items" off. What I cannot find is "speech" as an OSX control panel. The only "control panels" I can find are the buried OS9 panels. There is no on-off switch in that "speech" panel. Am I right that "control panels" are mostly-only for OS9 emulation anyway?<BR/><BR/>3. The weird way thaat icons get put on the desktop is my biggest remaining irk. But minor. I can live with it.<BR/><BR/>Thanks. all.<BR/><BR/>dbDavid Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147192683518867312006-05-09T09:38:00.000-07:002006-05-09T09:38:00.000-07:00I mean, WTF? These textbooks are STILL BEING PRINT...<I>I mean, WTF? These textbooks are STILL BEING PRINTED! Ahs anyone told the publishers that the students don’t have “that kid of computer” anymore?</I><BR/><BR/>Actually, I'm a little surprised that you of all people wouldn't recognize how academicians don't really pay attention to industry advances, and how publishers rarely pay attention to much of anything except how books sell. (Or how little interest K-12 educators actually have in the maths and sciences) And frankly, textbooks are a captive market.Rob Perkinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13115249244056328076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1147191501016984922006-05-09T09:18:00.000-07:002006-05-09T09:18:00.000-07:00Regarding Spotlight -- I wonder if you can use thi...Regarding Spotlight -- I wonder if you can use this tip from Apple's site?<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301562" REL="nofollow">Reindexing with Spotlight.</A><BR/><BR/>In case my amazing luck continues with URLs, here's the URL in plain text:<BR/><BR/>http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301562<BR/><BR/>Looks like it might do the trick. I can't test it here from work, because I'm running 10.3 here at work.<BR/><BR/>HTH!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com