Why Johnny can’t code

By David Brin, Salom Magazine, Sept 14, 2006

from Barron’s Dictionary of Computer and Internet Terms for: BASIC

BASIC used to be on every computer a child touched — but today there’s no easy way for kids to get hooked on programming.

Also see our main page on What is mathematics, really? Is it made by humans or a feature of the universe? Math in art & poetry.
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For three years — ever since my son Ben was in fifth grade — he and I have engaged in a quixotic but determined quest: We’ve searched for a simple and straightforward way to get the introductory programming language BASIC to run on either my Mac or my PC.

Why on Earth would we want to do that, in an era of glossy animation-rendering engines, game-design ogres and sophisticated avatar worlds? Because if you want to give young students a grounding in how computers actually work, there’s still nothing better than a little experience at line-by-line programming.

Only, quietly and without fanfare, or even any comment or notice by software pundits, we have drifted into a situation where almost none of the millions of personal computers in America offers a line-programming language simple enough for kids to pick up fast. Not even the one that was a software lingua franca on nearly all machines, only a decade or so ago. And that is not only a problem for Ben and me; it is a problem for our nation and civilization.

Oh, today’s desktops and laptops offer plenty of other fancy things — a dizzying array of sophisticated services that grow more dazzling by the week. Heck, I am part of that creative spasm.

Only there’s a rub. Most of these later innovations were brought to us by programmers who first honed their abilities with line-programming languages like BASIC. Yes, they mostly use higher level languages now, stacking and organizing object-oriented services, or using other hifalutin processes that come prepackaged and ready to use, the way an artist uses pre-packaged paints. (Very few painters still grind their own pigments. Should they?)

And yet the thought processes that today’s best programmers learned at the line-coding level still serve these designers well. Renowned tech artist and digital-rendering wizard Sheldon Brown, leader of the Center for Computing in the Arts, says:

“In my Electronics for the Arts course, each student built their own single board computer, whose CPU contained a BASIC ROM [a chip permanently encoded with BASIC software]. We first did this with 8052’s and then with a chip called the BASIC Stamp. The PC was just the terminal interface to these computers, whose programs would be burned into flash memory. These lucky art students were grinding their own computer architectures along with their code pigments — along their way to controlling robotic sculptures and installation environments.”

But today, very few young people are learning those deeper patterns. Indeed, they seem to be forbidden any access to that world at all.

And yet, they are tantalized! Ben has long complained that his math textbooks all featured little type-it-in-yourself programs at the end of each chapter — alongside the problem sets — offering the student a chance to try out some simple algorithm on a computer. Usually, it’s an equation or iterative process illustrating the principle that the chapter discussed. These “TRY IT IN BASIC” exercises often take just a dozen or so lines of text. The aim is both to illustrate the chapter’s topic (e.g. statistics) and to offer a little taste of programming.

Only no student tries these exercises.

Not my son or any of his classmates. Nor anybody they know. Indeed, I would be shocked if more than a few dozen students in the whole nation actually type in those lines that are still published in countless textbooks across the land. Those who want to (like Ben) simply cannot.

Now, I have been complaining about this for three years. But whenever I mention the problem to some computer industry maven at a conference or social gathering, the answer is always the same: “There are still BASIC programs in textbooks?”

At least a dozen senior Microsoft officials have given me the exact same response. After taking this to be a symptom of cluelessness in the textbook industry, they then talk about how obsolete BASIC is, and how many more things you can do with higher-level languages. “Don’t worry,” they invariably add, “the newer textbooks won’t have any of those little BASIC passages in them.”

All of which is absolutely true. BASIC is actually quite tedious and absurd for getting done the vast array of vivid and ambitious goals that are typical of a modern programmer. Clearly, any kid who wants to accomplish much in the modern world would not use it for very long. And, of course, it is obvious that newer texts will abandon “TRY IT IN BASIC” as a teaching technique, if they haven’t already.

But all of this misses the point. Those textbook exercises were easy, effective, universal, pedagogically interesting — and nothing even remotely like them can be done with any language other than BASIC. Typing in a simple algorithm yourself, seeing exactly how the computer calculates and iterates in a manner you could duplicate with pencil and paper — say, running an experiment in coin flipping, or making a dot change its position on a screen, propelled by math and logic, and only by math and logic:

All of this is priceless. As it was priceless 20 years ago. Only 20 years ago, it was physically possible for millions of kids to do it. Today it is not.

In effect, we have allowed a situation to develop that is like a civilization devouring its seed corn. If an enemy had set out to do this to us — quietly arranging so that almost no school child in America can tinker with line coding on his or her own — any reasonably patriotic person would have called it an act of war.

Am I being overly dramatic? Then consider a shift in perspective.

First ponder the notion of programming as a series of layers. At the bottom-most level is machine code. I showed my son the essentials on scratch paper, explaining the roots of Alan Turing’s “general computer” and how it was ingeniously implemented in the first four-bit integrated processor, Intel’s miraculous 1971 4004 chip, unleashing a generation of nerdy guys to move bits around in little clusters, adding and subtracting clumps of ones and zeroes, creating the first calculators and early desktop computers like the legendary Altair.

This level of coding is still vital, but only at the realm of specialists at the big CPU houses. It is important for guys like Ben to know about machine code — that it’s down there, like DNA in your cell — but a bright kid doesn’t need to actually do it, in order to be computer-literate. (Ben wants to, though. Anyone know a good kit?)

The layer above that is often called assembler, though there are many various ways that user intent can be interpreted down to the bit level without actually flicking a series of on-off switches. Sets of machine instructions are grouped, assembled and correlated with (for example) ASCII-coded commands. Some call this the “boringest” level. Think of the hormones swirling through your body. Even a glimpse puts me to sleep. But at least I know that it is there.

The third layer of this cake is the operating system of your computer. Call it BIOS and DOS, along with a lot of other names. This was where guys like Gates and Wozniak truly propelled a whole industry and way of life, by letting the new desktops communicate with their users, exchange information with storage disks and actually show stuff on a screen. Cool.

Meanwhile, the same guys were offering — at the fourth layer — a programming language that folks could use to create new software of their very own. BASIC was derived from academic research tools like beloved old FORTRAN (in which my doctoral research was coded onto punched paper cards, yeesh). It was crude. It was dry. It was unsuitable for the world of the graphic user interface. BASIC had a lot of nasty habits. But it liberated several million bright minds to poke and explore and aspire as never before.

The “scripting” languages that serve as entry-level tools for today’s aspiring programmers — like Perl and Python — don’t make this experience accessible to students in the same way. BASIC was close enough to the algorithm that you could actually follow the reasoning of the machine as it made choices and followed logical pathways.

Repeating this point for emphasis: You could even do it all yourself, following along on paper, for a few iterations, verifying that the dot on the screen was moving by the sheer power of mathematics, alone. Wow!

(Indeed, I would love to sit with my son and write “Pong” from scratch. The rule set — the math — is so simple. And he would never see the world the same, no matter how many higher-level languages he then moves on to.)

The closest parallel I can think of is the WWII generation of my father — guys for whom the ultra in high tech was automobiles. What fraction of them tore apart jalopies at home? Or at least became adept at diagnosing and repairing the always fragile machines of that era? One result of that free and happy spasm of techie fascination was utterly strategic. When the “Arsenal of Democracy” began churning out swarms of tanks and trucks and jeeps, these were sent to the front and almost overnight an infantry division might be mechanized, in the sure and confident expectation that there would be thousands of young men ready (or trainable) to maintain these tools of war. (Can your kid even change the oil nowadays? Or a tire?)

The parallel technology of the ’70s generation was IT.

Information technology (IT) is the application of computers to store, study, transmit, and manipulate data, often in the context of a business or other enterprise.

Not every boomer soldered an Altair from a kit, or mastered the arcana of DBASE. But enough of them did so that we got the Internet and Web. We got Moore’s Law and other marvels. We got a chance to ride another great technological wave.

So, what’s the parallel hobby skill today?
What tech-marvel has boys and girls enthralled, tinkering away, becoming expert in something dazzling and practical and new?
Shooting ersatz aliens in “Halo”?
Dressing up avatars in “The Sims”?

Oh sure, there’s creativity in creating cool movies and Web pages. But except for the very few who will make new media films, do you see a great wave of technological empowerment coming out of all this?

OK, I can hear the sneers. Are these the rants of a grouchy old boomer? Feh, kids today! (And get the #$#*! off my lawn!)

Fact is, I just wanted to give my son a chance to sample some of the wizardry standing behind the curtain, before he became lost in the avatar-filled and glossy-rendered streets of Oz. Like the hero in “TRON,” or “The Matrix,” I want him to be a user who can see the lines that weave through the fabric of cyberspace — or at least know some history about where it all came from. At the very minimum, he ought to be able to type those examples in his math books and use the computer the way it was originally designed to be used: to compute.

Hence, imagine my frustration when I discovered that it simply could not be done.

Yes, yes: For three years I have heard all the rationalized answers. No kid should even want BASIC, they say. There are higher-level languages like C++ (Ben is already — at age 14 — on page 200 of his self-teaching C++ book!) and yes, there are better education programs like Logo. Hey, what about Visual Basic! Others suggested downloadable versions like q-basic, y-basic, alphabetabasic…

Indeed, I found one that was actually easy to download, easy to turn on, and that simply let us type in some of those little example programs, without demanding that we already be manual-chomping fanatics in order to even get started using the damn thing. Chipmunk Basic for the Macintosh actually started right up and let us have a little clean, algorithmic fun. Extremely limited, but helpful. All of the others, every last one of them, was either too high-level (missing the whole point!) or else far, far too onerous to figure out or use. Certainly not meant to be turn-key usable by any junior high school student. Appeals for help online proved utterly futile.

Until, at last, Ben himself came up with a solution. An elegant solution of startling simplicity. Essentially: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

While trawling through eBay, one day, he came across listings for archaic 1980s-era computers like the Apple II. “Say, Dad, didn’t you write your first novel on one of those?” he asked.

“Actually, my second. ‘Startide Rising.’ On an Apple II with Integer Basic and a serial number in five digits. It got stolen, pity. But my first novel, ‘Sundiver,’ was written on this clever device called a typewrit –”

“Well, look, Dad. Have you seen what it costs to buy one of those old Apples online, in its original box? Hey, what could we do with it?”

“Huh?” I stared in amazement.

Then, gradually, I realized the practical possibilities.

Let’s cut to the chase. We did not wind up buying an Apple II. Instead (for various reasons) we bought a Commodore 64 (in original box) for $25. It arrived in good shape. It took us maybe three minutes to attach an old TV. We flicked the power switch … and up came a command line. In BASIC.

Uh. Problem solved?

I guess. At least far better than any other thing we’ve tried!

We are now typing in programs from books, having fun making dots move (and thus knowing why the dots move, at the command of math, and not magic). There are still problems, like getting an operating system to make the 5141c disk drive work right. Most of the old floppies are unreadable. But who cares? (Ben thinks that loading programs to and from tape is so cool. I gurgle and choke remembering my old Sinclair … but whatever.)

What matters is that we got over a wretched educational barrier. And now Ben can study C++ with a better idea where it all came from. In the nick of time.

Problem solved? Again, at one level.

And yet, can you see the irony? Are any of the masters of the information age even able to see the irony?

This is not just a matter of cheating a generation, telling them to simply be consumers of software, instead of the innovators that their uncles were. No, this goes way beyond that. In medical school, professors insist that students have some knowledge of chemistry and DNA before they are allowed to cut open folks. In architecture, you are at least exposed to some physics.

But in the high-tech, razzle-dazzle world of software? According to the masters of IT, line coding is not a deep-fabric topic worth studying. Not a layer that lies beneath, holding up the world of object-oriented programming. Rather, it is obsolete!

Or, at best, something to be done in Bangalore. Or by old guys in their 50s, guaranteeing them job security, the same way that COBOL programmers were all dragged out of retirement and given new cars full of Jolt Cola during the Y2K crisis.

All right, here’s a challenge. Get past all the rationalizations. (Because that is what they are.) It would be trivial for Microsoft to provide a version of BASIC that kids could use, whenever they wanted, to type in all those textbook examples. Maybe with some cool tutorial suites to guide them along, plus samples of higher-order tools. It would take up a scintilla of disk space and maybe even encourage many of them to move on up. To (for example) Visual Basic!

Or else, hold a big meeting and choose another lingua franca, so long as it can be universal enough to use in texts, the way that BASIC was.

Instead, we are told that “those textbooks are archaic” and that students should be doing “something else.” Only then watch the endless bickering over what that “something else” should be — with the net result that there is no lingua franca at all, no “basic” language so common that textbook publishers can reliably use it as a pedagogical aide.

The textbook writers and publishers aren’t the ones who are obsolete, out-of-touch and wrong. It is people who have yanked the rug out from under teachers and students all across the land.

Let me reiterate. Kids are not doing “something else” other than BASIC. Not millions of them. Not hundreds or tens of thousands of them. Hardly any of them, in fact. It is not their fault. Because some of them, like my son, really want to. But they can’t. Not without turning into time travelers, the way we did, by giving up (briefly) on the present and diving into the past. (I also plan to teach him how to change the oil and fix a tire!) By using the tools of a bygone era to learn more about tomorrow.

If this is a test, then Ben and I passed it, ingeniously. In contrast, Microsoft and Apple and all the big-time education-computerizing reformers of the MIT Media Lab are failing, miserably. For all of their high-flown education initiatives (like the “$100 laptop”), they seem bent on providing information consumption devices, not tools that teach creative thinking and technological mastery.

Web access for the poor would be great. But machines that kids out there can understand and program themselves? To those who shape our technical world, the notion remains not just inaccessible, but strangely inconceivable.

– David Brin is an astrophysicist whose international best-selling novels include “Earth,” and recently “Existence.” ” The Postman” was filmed in 1997. His nonfiction book about the information age – The Transparent Society – won the Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Association. (http://www.davidbrin.com)

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