Date   : Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:28:30 +1000
From   : msmcdoug@... (Mark McDougall)
Subject: BBC Micros used in retro programming class

On 25/08/2010 6:54 PM, Tim Matthews wrote:

> Great item - and a great idea to teach the young uns too.

I wonder what they thought of it all? I've had a few funny experiences with 
non-programmers trying to "dip their toes in the water".

A few years ago, my now-brother-in-law decided he wanted to write World Of 
Warcraft for his PSP - despite never having written a single line of code in 
his life. He downloaded some sort of SDK for it (I don't know the details) 
and proudly showed me his first programming effort - a message box that 
popped up with "hello world".

The problem was, his plan was that his *second* programming effort was going 
to be World Of Warcraft. A week or so later and I never heard about it again.

And a few years ago, the younger brother of a former colleague (a 
self-styled entrepreneur) announced that he was going to produce the next 
"killer game" for PCs/consoles. Despite having never programmed before, he 
actually went out and spent thousands of dollars on a wiz-bang graphics 
workstation. He tried to rope a few of us into working on it.

I think he had the idea that such a game would require a *few hundred* hours 
of effort all-up. Didn't hear much about it after that.

I suspect the whole BBC experience would sort the wheat from the chuff to 
some degree. If you found the whole experience underwhelming, you're 
probably not cut out to be a programmer anyway. The true geeks could 
probably see beyond the limitations and only marvel at the possibilities...

Regards,

-- 
|              Mark McDougall                | "Electrical Engineers do it
|  <http://members.iinet.net.au/~msmcdoug>   |   with less resistance!"