Will their ever be hobbyist computers for children again?

Will their ever be hobbyist computers for children again?

any pc with linux

I don't think hobbyist computers will ever get popular in any age range, let alone children. Kids just want to play their games and watch youtube videos without any fuzz. Most of them don't even know what binary is. Even old people are like that now. My father wants his computer to "just work" without putting any work in. But it's not like he uses his PC for critical jobs that would drive him into bankruptcy, he just watches movies and plays racing games.

I actually agree with this. Linux is a good ecosystem to experiment with.

No, modern hardware and software stacks are far too complicated to understand in their entirety.

Get a ZX Spectrum for a kid to play with.

Do you think the Raspberry Pi was only designed for /hsg/ neckbeards who lose their shit if they forget to turn off a lightbulb? Introducing children in low-income households to computing was one of the main things they were built to do.

The C64 was also just a general consumer system, that shit was generally too expensive to waste on a kid.

Chrome gives you a compile-less platform to develop anything from simple interactive apps with shapes (DOM / CSS3 / Canvas) all the way to big complex 3d games (WebGL) with a builtin debugger and mini-IDE (check the local workspace feature of the inspector).

It's not about what is or isn't there, it's about "who is going to tell them".

Even if you had the pefect platform (and I agree that a browser is far from it) the mentality of experimenting and making your own stuff is just missing.

The problem with the Pi is that's it's not an all-in-one solution the same way that these systems were. Unless you already have a keyboard, SD Card, HDMI/S-Video, etc. then it starts becoming quite expensive for what it is meant to be for.

No.
People will never be expected to learn how to operate their own computers ever again.

These old hobby computers used to come with programming guides introducing you to BASIC and other domain specific languages.
A computer in 2016 just comes with a leaflet telling you where the power button is and how to activate the Norton 360 malware added by the manufacturer.

There's not a lot done to teach. Remember when computers used to come with manuals on how to computer?

As if 80s kids didn't want C64's and Speccys just for playing games on... Sure some of them decided to delve deeper and try to program something, but that's what happens nowadays too.

Will there ever be computers based on a keyboard form factor again?

It's going to be far less though because the modern computer is far more capable. Most of those kids probably took to learning BASIC because they had punched in the Frogger-clone from the monthly magazine one too many times and wanted something else to do with it.

Plus there's the inherent mathematical foundation to BASIC that things like Python lack. When you move something across the screen in BASIC you do it with mathematics, when you do it in Python its done with a command.

You can pick up a USB keyboard/mouse from any second hand store for next to nothing, likewise for spare S-video/HDMI cables that pretty much every TV has now, even shitty ones. You can pull small MicroSD cards out of old phones or just go buy one for $5 at an office supply store, it ultimately still comes out to $20-$25 at most if you had none of those already laying around, and that's way cheaper than a minimum $100 (before inflation) Commodore 64 that also needed software on top of it.

Self-containment is a plus but you can excuse that away as part of the GPIO programming angle, which is also something the C64 didn't have going for it either.

The kids certainly weren't reading those in-depth manuals, that was shit for hobbyists that were a big portion of the consumer market at that time.

Probably not, not even users in the '80s liked that shit, it was only good in a time before affordable monitors and standardized keyboard interfaces, otherwise it was unexpandable, bulky and more painful to work on.

>It's going to be far less though because the modern computer is far more capable.
The sheer number of users alone makes up for this by a huge margin, fucking nobody had a computer in the '80s. People with passion and interest will always find a way to get into it, usually through fucking around with games.

>usually through fucking around with games.

No one is going to play the latest AAA game and then go and make Snake and consider it time well spent. They'll go on to google and place Snake.

You don't have to think of something do with your computer now, so the boredom-based exploration will never occur in the younger generation.

There are plenty of prolific modding communities for plenty of games, just because you're jaded with the current state of things doesn't mean everyone else is.

Your point may be true that because computers are actually useful now that people aren't going to get into it from that angle, but how much of a difference did it really make? Tech fields are booming more than ever before despite this, and many of the greatest minds in computing didn't have access to a computer at all as a kid.

>hobbyist computer
>posts picture of a computer that cast as much as a fucking car

Must be a really shitty car, even for 80's dollars...

Those magazine games were seen as a means to an end, not a valuable learning experience. You have to consider that a pack of floppies back then might cost as much as a new ZX spectrum, and games on cassette were fairly expensive as well.

At launch they were expensive yeah, but in the UK at least the c64, ZX and Amiga 500/600 were popular into the early 90s and could be picked up for £100 with a massive bundle of software easily.

I'd recommend Ubuntu.

Makes cool sounds, looks neat and colorful, and kids could fuck around with it.

How can you play a racing game on a PC if you don't know anything about the PC the game is running on?

Black kids in the hood don't know how do to all that shit.

A Chromebook should be a kids first computer. I forget the first computer I learned to use since it was in the early 90's but a Chromebook has a good foundation.

And they're pretty inexpensive.

He knows enough to pirate it and crack it, but that's where his PC knowledge ends.

So you say I have to know biochemistry to cook? There's a fucking shortcut, you double click it, game starts, there's the wheel, good luck.

What about Steam? Can he figure that out?

Surprisingly, my dad has an Android that I got him (nothing fancy but decent) and he knows when someone fucks with it.

You should at least know what fps means if you're gaming on a PC. Even watching a video on YouTube, I right click the video, stats for nerds, and check for dropped frames.

It's not that hard, user. Sorry that your dad is autismo.

Raspberry pi

He's never used Steam since he's a carry over from when getting an international credit card was next to impossible in my country, but I guess he could figure it out. He's not really tech-stupid, you could even say he's a bit more in depth than the average highschool student, but he has no desire to even know what the fuck games are built on, much less how they're built.

That reply wasn't me. My father knows what FPS are, he's not retarded. I meant that he doesn't want to go in-depth as to how things work, like people did with the C64.

>numbers are important
>calls others autismo
Pick one.

I couldn't give two shits about stats. I'm not fapping to counters and diagrams. There are two states. Smooth and choppy. I don't need a counter telling me which one is which.

The only thing you should know if you're gaming on a PC is whether you're satisfied with what you see. Not everyone is a spoiled brat that can't enjoy something without big numbers behind it.

The day that kids won't allow themselves to be cucked by social media, "smart"phone gaems and Fucktard Fucking Fatman, there will rise a new hobbyist computer.

>No, modern hardware and software stacks are far too complicated to understand in their entirety.
Bunch of crap. Knuth invented a 6-bit computer in order to show off.

My suggestion is that you bild a virtual computer in Fallout 4 using logic switches and then move on from that.

>Introducing children in low-income households to computing was one of the main things they were built to do.
yep

>The problem with the Pi is that's it's not an all-in-one solution the same way that these systems were.
The C64 was a badass computer and major value for it's day, but the floppy drive cost about as much as the computer. Considering you can get a Raspberry Pi fully equiped with several storage cards, keyboard, mouse, case, cables, power supplies, for under $100, I'd say that's pretty good.

>As if 80s kids didn't want C64's and Speccys just for playing games on... Sure some of them decided to delve deeper and try to program something, but that's what happens nowadays too.
As if todays kids don't want Raspberry Pi's for retro games. But having full linux and great programming resources is way better than the old days.

>early 90s
You mean late 90's. The C64 was being produced up to 1994.
When Windows95 came out... that was it. Game over for everyone except Microsoft. Apple was holding on by a thread. Windows 95 was the point where other architectures were totally irrelevant and niche. Sure, the neckbeards and yurofags of the era still had Amigas... but they were in the minority.

If it's choppy, I want to know why.

Apparently, not everyone on Sup Forums is technically literate.

If I'm playing Forza 6 on my PC, I wanna know if I can max my settings out or if I need to drop them down so that I don't have any issues. Any gamer will tell you that.

An FPS counter won't tell you the reason why your game runs like shit you fucking moron.

I was talking about YouTube, you fucking mongoloid.

>Sup Forums
>ever technologically literate
This is consummerism central, what'd you expect?

yes. take your pick, raspberry pi, CHIP, pocketCHIP, arduino, whatever. they're all cheap and have lots of documentation.

If your yutube is choppy, toss out that garbage you call a computer and buy a new one, shitskin.

>If it's choppy, I want to know why.
And quantifying it will tell you that... how? Are you fucking retarded?

This is why Sup Forums hates gamers so much, you don't know shit about computers but you think you do for some reason.

That's nice, but that's not really a requirement to play a game or even something that requires a lot of tech literacy, any monkey can regurgitate model numbers from a google search.

>says the idiot who plays LoL

What does that have to do with anything? I've never even played it.

>hurr this is why Sup Forums hates gamers
No, we hate you because we're smarter than you. It takes more skill to develop a game than it does to be some fucking code monkey.

>It takes more skill to develop a game than it does to be some fucking code monkey.
Fucking christ, don't kid yourself, with the toolkits available to developers now it's never been easier. Nobody writes a full 3D game from scratch anymore, most never did in the first place. They leave the hard parts to other, more qualified individuals.

Besides, gamers don't develop games, they consume them.

Why don't they give kids interesting classes.... like microcontrollers or middle school or making the logo turtle draw shapes in elementary or maybe programming simple gba games in freepascal?

A few years ago, the Game Boy Advance was an interesting plateform to learn low level programming. It's very well documented, and it costs nothing today.

You don't teach obsolete/legacy shit to get people into anything. That's like teaching false historic events only to correct everything later in high school in another history class.

Because underfunding and shitty curiculum

I did not mention one obsolete thing tho

isn't the GBA fast enough for C though?

you can even target the machine's processor with GCC i think

Indeed.

>No, we hate you because we're smarter than you. It takes more skill to develop a game than it does to be some fucking code monkey.
Not only technical-artistic skills, but being well-read too.

Consider this, yesterday I saw Goto, Island of Love (1968) at Cinemateket in Stockholm (it was so cash watching it at the big screen).

The premise is that in 1887, some natural disaster destroyed most of the island Goto and isolated it from the rest of the world. It is now ruled by Goto III. The society is not post-apocalyptic, but post-post-apocalyptic. And of course I compared it to Fallout 4, having nutrided it on Xbone since July and of course I compared it to animu too, because Borowczyk cut his teeth first at painting and animation. And it does seem to have a lot in common with Tardi.

Of course you can set out to go from zero to hero in the humanities, just as you set out to go from zero to hero in *any* programming language on *any* suitable computer. Period.

But then? Humanities isn't technology. Not even cookie-cutter story telling isn't technology. Because it works associatively. True, technology may work the same way. Dabble in programming and electronic music and zoop comes the associations. But if you on the other hand has written a program in C for DOS 6 to work optimally on a 386-PC, then you've basically created a perfect world that doesn't need anything else.

So assuming that the vidya has a narrative, the first questions that should be answered is what story you want to tell, and how. NOT how the 432th memory buffer (or whatever it's called) will handle the 34th on screen blood splatter.

>logo turtle
Read about it. Saw pictures of it. Never saw one IRL...

And was born in 1976.

>Besides, gamers don't develop games, they consume them.
Jesus Christ, the ra/g/e is unberable. Here's another example, continuing from Elio Petri (1929-1982) believed that it was elitism to discuss ideas in your films in a way that could only be understood by an elite. He believed that you shouldn't be afraid of being too close to kitsch.

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) is really stylish. But there's no subtlety in it. Quite low pace, somewhat dry humor, but the points are made with a poleaxe to your face.

Does this remind you of anything? Does this remind you of the narration in Halo or Mass Effect? Well, see the film for yourself and compare. You'll probably be amazed that it's almost 50 years old. So in a way, Petri won.

There are STEM schools for kids in the US. Just gotta know where to look.

For instance, Charter School of Wilmington in Delaware offers:
While not unique to Charter, there are some course offerings that are not seen at a majority of American high schools:

Software Engineering
Data Structures
Differential Equations
Digital Electronics Design
Introduction to Engineering, Robotics, and Data
Forensics
Calculus 3
Advertising and Marketing
Philosophy
Photography
Critical and Creative Thinking
Research and Publication in Human &
Computer Interaction (Students published in international, blind-reviewed conferences.)
Nanotechnology
Modern Physics
Optics

>b-but video games are humanities!
What a pretentious, long-winded wankfest of a straw man, and it's not even that good, the story and narrative of a film is just a shallow aspect, you're either purposely or ignorantly omitting the many deeper symbolic aspects of good film that video games will never bother with or even be able to incorporate.

>Jesus Christ, the ra/g/e is unberable.
Pretty ironic thing to say when someone made an off-hand comment about gamers being retarded and you've been triggered to the point that you've written two halves of an essay about the subject going off on some irrelevant tangent trying to paint the average mindless shithead who thinks surfing logicalincrements and knowing what FPS means is "tech literacy" as some kind of well-read computer scientist savant.

But by all means, keep jerking yourself off about how smart you are for playing through the Halo campaign, it's certainly made you great at wasting everyone's time with this drivel.

choose.

a. computers are the new mtv channel. all channels on it will be mtv. get used to it.

b. computers are the new social network datamine all the reactions? profit.

c. computers are in our brains and aren't fun anymore because we are the borg.

which is it Sup Forums ?

pic related.

d: a bullet in my brain

>computers for children
Macs exist.

Well A and B kind of coincide because MTV has a show about social networking which is Catfish.

C, I believe, has already happened. We have started to assimilate with other societies and cultures whom we have no business being around.

/thread

I've seen a lot of people doing events with children and the raspberry pi

Say Raspberry Pi to a fat kid and he'll probably salivate.

KEK

>muh FPS
Either it's good or it's not. Period.

And regarding film, I'm used to fuzzy VHS on old tvs, scratched old film on the big screen and so fucking on.

Video games ARE part of the humanities, just as films are. I guess that back in the days there was some Ebert that claimed that film wasn't art because
>muh books

entertainment software is hardly art
a video game only has value to anyone if it has good gameplay.

Games that try to be good "art games" usually lack gameplay because their writers simply wanted to make a movie and couldn't make it in hollywood.
Video games are where failed writers end up when they can't make it in cinema.

So no, video games are not art, and the medium is far too immature to be considered art.

And I say this as someone who enjoys video games a lot.

Here is a simple litmus test for art:

Does it have an amateur- and a trash division? If yes to both questions, then it's art. So, let's ask the questions about video games:

Is there amateur made video games? Yes.
Is there trash video games? Yes.

Then video games are art.

>muh fake art-entertainment dichotomy

I feel sorry for you who can't both be entertained and think that something is artful. And I feel sorry for me because cucks like you are ruining it for everyone.

Anything made by apple.

So all a game is to you is just an engine? What about the 3D modeling, user?

fuck, are all """gamers""" this autistic?

No. everything is shit. get used to it.

What's wrong with being autistic?

Not exactly. For Chinkshit, there's the OneBoard Pro+ with Cherry MX Blacks running a third-party Android 4.4 and the K3 Wintel Keyboard Mini PC. Cybernet makes keyboard PCs and this German guy puts modern hardware into old C64 cases:
retropc64 dot jimdo dot com

sick of Sup Forums's attitude, 99 percent of you faggots started on windows playing fucking flash games but you got to high school or college and started learning to code and just think you're hot shit

you're not, shut the fuck up, you didn't write your own programs as a kid, you didn't have a commodore 64 you had a nintendo 64

just get the fuck over yourselves, i wish you would die