'Retro Programming' Teaches Using 1980s Machines

Death Metal Maniac writes "A few lucky British students are taking a computing class at the National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) at Bletchley Park using 30-year-old or older machines. From the article: '"The computing A-level is about how computers work and if you ask anyone how it works they will not be able to tell you," said Doug Abrams, an ICT teacher from Ousedale School in Newport Pagnell, who was one of the first to use the machines in lessons. For Mr Abrams the old machines have two cardinal virtues; their sluggishness and the direct connection they have with the user. "Modern computers go too fast," said Mr Abrams. "You can see the instructions happening for real with these machines. They need to have that understanding for the A-level."'"

Niggers

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't niggers like to eat Tootsie Rolls? They keep biting their fingers off.

They'll just use them to play Elite all day

[elrous0]

That could teach them a thing or two about commerce and trade, I suppose.

Sounds like fun

[elmodog]

Next up: Driver's Eduction on the Model T [wikipedia.org]. ;)

Re:Does that make sense ?

[jeffmeden]

How will the student then apply his knowledge to modern languages such as Java, C# ?

It's really pretty simple. After seeing what a computer can do with code intimately optimized for the machine it's running on, they will be exposed to the status quo in Java or C# and their heads will explode. Problem solved on our end!

Re:Does that make sense ?

[oodaloop]

Amongst our weaponry are such things as...I'll start over.

Re:Just dump Windows and goto DOS

[Rand Race]

Or you could just fire up a terminal ... Oh, Windows. Never mind.

I just dusted off a couple of C-64s, an Amiga 500, a Sun 3/50 and an Apple IIc the other day. They were filthy. And on top of the box of cables I needed to get at.

Re:Does that make sense ?

[Sponge Bath]

...exposed to the status quo in Java or C# and their heads will explode.

Or at least cause their head veins to pulse as shown in this computer lab photo [treksf.com].

Re:Does that make sense ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought we were supposed to pick the two we liked and ignore the others...

Re:How does it work?

[tomhudson]

The computing A-level is about how computers work and if you ask anyone how it works they will not be able to tell you

That's what most people would say when you asked them how something works. Computers, fermentation, a Wok . . . etc.

You don't understand - this is Bletchley Park, you know, the codebreakers during WW2. Old habits die hard. They *could* tell you, but then they'd have to kill you.

For Sale

[Anonymous Coward]

Timex Sinclair 1000 w/ 16KB Expansion Module. Manual included. Original boxes & styrofoam.

Re:How does it work?

[sconeu]

No, they could tell you, but you wouldn't be able to use that info on your A-levels for 50 years.

Compiling...

[boristdog]

It's true, today's computers ARE too fast for students.

Kids today don't know the joy of being able to slack off for 5 to 10 minutes in class while their screen says "Compiling..."

Re:IMO: Great

[Anonymous Coward]

I am getting back into assembly programming after 8 years of C# and it is a bit of a shift in thought.

Would that bitshift be a SHL or a SHR?

Re:They'll just use them to play Elite all day

[c0d3g33k]

Sadly, I remember when spelling and grammar were taught in schools. Those days seem to be gone as well, and I miss them much, much more than the days of limited computer resources.

Well, that is the end of my rant.

8080 - Pascal

[asmith.atx]

I was learning Pascal on an 8080 in 1997 in High School. It was retro, but not in the way you think is cool - it was in the we have NO money way

Re:IMO: Great

[Planesdragon]

Now to make these 5 Apps and have them run at 1/2 of the memory footprint takes 40% more time.

Thankfully, you only need to spend six months beating your developers to be aware of memory bloat once. So, count the 40% as a capital cost and move on. (Added bonus: your cultural shift will cause new programmers to adapt or fail, thus extending the value of your investment in proper discipline!)

Re:They'll just use them to play Elite all day

[PReDiToR]

Should have had the BBC Master (512) with the 8086 daughter board.

*CONFIGURE TUBE

That got me into DR-DOS (I forget what version and can't be bothered to try and reason it out due to alcoholic indifference).

Oh, and a couple of months after I was playing with that crap my IT teacher at school turned up with a Schneider 8086 machine with an orange monochrome monitor and admitted that he had no idea how to use it but that it was the latest generation of computer that businesses were using. I actually got up in front of the class and showed the teacher what it could do.
I lost all my street cred that day =/

Re:Any way this could be done everywhere?

[dbIII]

The incoming batch of engineering freshmen were being taught, as was the tradition, to program badly in FORTRAN.

That's not fair! We were also taught how to program badly in Lisp, Pascal and Modula-2!