I think it's fantastic that it brings us right back to one of the things that made the first home computers so compelling: the ability to see what you just did on your TV.
I think maybe I'm explaining it wrong. I'm sorry. What I mean to say is that there was a certain wonder and a strange form of legitimacy that writing software on a "real" computer that kids got when they were able to type something into the same device that ran their favourite games/software from "real" developers and see it show up on the screen just like the big boys. There was a sense of "Wow, anything is possible now that I can develop real software!"
The legitimacy of the company that produced Mario, etc. will rub off onto a new generation of kids and make them feel like they are really playing with the big boys.
I don't know how to explain this right. I know that I myself still get this feeling when I see something I wrote running on an actual Atari Jaguar because I was such a fan of that console when I was a kid. It's like, "wow, I'm actually a real developer! I made it!"
I start thinking about all the things I can do and all of the possibilities that are more than just firing pixels on a screen.
It's a form of technological empowerment, and it's something that makes a huge difference in a kid's life. I know it did for me when I first discovered BASIC on the Commodore.
You're completely right there's a positive emotional response to this - just like the click when you pressed the cartridge, the same reason Nintendo brought the click sound to the Switch controls - the sound means "it's fun time!".
This is about telling stories with your kids - it's a canvas in your living room for everyone to see, give ideas and encourage - all packed in a box you have positive emotions towards.
It's not "any device" that can connect to the TV - it's your Switch, and you can make games on it now!
My kids would rather play minecraft than code. They can create stuff in it too. Instant gratification trumps intellectual development 9/10 times if given free choice. I know some people have the capability to motivate kids in anything but the only way I know of to redirect mine from games is pulling the plug.
Yes, I've tried many ways to get them interested on how the stuff they enjoy actually works, but they prefer to use digital stuff just for entertainment.
When I was in middle school, there was this free web host I found[1] that gave you a small amount of storage and allowed you to load in templates and build your site with a WYSIWYG editor. Anyway, the homepage features a single text field where you type in what your website's subdomain would be (eg, website.20megsfree.com). For years that lone little text field was really exciting to me. With a few key presses and a click of the mouse I could create _anything_ on the internet (as far as 13yo me thought anyway!). And it was up to me to decide what went on the internet.
Mine's a different example, but I know exactly what you mean. It was my first opportunity to make a place of my own on a website and almost 20 years later I'm a web developer and the feeling that website gave me had a lot to do with me getting where I am.
I missed the generation of computers where writing BASIC was just a part of owning one. I think it's a shame that writing code isn't a more integral part of life, but I understand why it isn't anymore.
I would suggest that maybe this says something more about you and your natural passion, than whether your first intellectual doodles were on a TV or a monitor.
I've noticed this kind of response before - recall that when Dropbox was first shown to HN, one of the responses was something along the lines of "This is trivial to set up with a linux box and (esoteric techno-babble follows)."
Not wrong, per se, but a super-technical HN reader was not the target of Dropbox, and I feel like it's the same situation here.
While you could, I guess, plug your HDMI cable from your computer running your first hello world python program onto a screen, I think there's something much more tangible and incredible to a child to run their own code on the device they usually play video games on. As a 10 year old, I would flux around with the debugger cheat in my Star Wars n64 game and think "well obviously these numbers change the color of fog, but how on earth did they code the actual game? The characters? The lasers?" What's being demonstrated here is "look kids, it IS possible for YOU to write code and run it on a video game console! YOU can become a game developer, if you learn about this stuff!"
Another anecdote - my uncle gave me his old computer to pull to pieces, I wanted to know how it went from circuits to showing Windows on the screen. I finally get to what he kept calling the "motherboard" and "processor," which he said is where most of the work is happening. So I pulled off the processor, disappointed at just seeing more circuits. He said there was even more circuitry inside it, so I cracked it open to find a black blob of I guess silicon. Nothing revealing how it worked! "What'd you expect to find," he asked, "a brain?" Imagine if the gap had someone been bridged by the existence of arduinos back then, or even just redstone in minecraft - a direct link between logic gates and, say, a calculator working.
I know you meant intellectual empowerment but in the current employment market "YOU can become a video game developer" sounds like "YOU too can be a slave and work the salt mines". Where my kids passions take them, I let them happily choose it but it's unlikely I'm going to encourage them to pick one of the most precarious, underpaid shitjobs available to keen minds. I'd rather have them being the capitalist rather than slaving under one. I know not all gaming jobs are like that but given the rising power of companies and the availability of labour (everybody loves video games) it's unlikely to be any better in the future.
Besides, games are not important. They are really fun, but things like medicine, art, literature and mathematics are way more important. All of which programs can empower, sure.
I know we all here love code, but objectively speaking, it's not the best thing in the world unless a person has a specific inclination towards it (like I do, but not all do, and it's totally fine).
Woah, it seems like you feel very strongly about this subject, is that interpretation correct? Why is that?
I feel like statements such as
>games are not important
are very unfair. Same with your assumption that a game developer will be I guess a capitalist slave? What about indie developers? Crowdfunded developers? Dwarf Fortress?
Some indie games that have exploded, off the top of my head:
* Flappy Bird
* Shovel Knight (crowdfunded)
* Divinity and Divinity 2 (crowdfunded)
* Stardew Valley (single developer)
* Minecraft (was a one man passion project)
* Terraria
> I know we all here love code, but objectively speaking, it's not the best thing in the world
What gives you this perspective? Speaking as someone who has tried art/literature, I think it's a false narrative that the "starving artist" is happier because their work is more "fulfilling" or something. I tried that, and yea I loved my art and I loved pursuing it, but it didn't pay the bills, and I still had to have just a regular job to keep it up. A sales job, keeping me at a healthy but relatively insignificant 40k/year, limiting my travel options and forcing most of my time to be spent sustaining my ability to eat and pay rent.
Then I discovered programming - still a creative endeavor! I can work for a company, freelance, work from home, work much better hours, and at that paygrade I could afford to get solid savings that grants me the confidence that I can retire at some point to pursue my writing full time, if I want.
As for medicine, my conversations with friends who have to put up with 10+ years of medical schooling at massive costs only to suffer through 60-80hr workweeks and claw their way up the medical ladder have convinced me that that path is not something I would like to entertain.
> What's being demonstrated here is "look kids, it IS possible for YOU to write code and run it on a video game console! YOU can become a game developer, if you learn about this stuff!"
You do realize that people play game on PC too? The main issue that you are trying to address, i think, is whether there are other frameworks in teaching kids programming with games?
In, fact the part of world where i live in, it is much more expensive to buy a nintendo switch than to assemble a computer and hook it up to your tv and use scratch to teach the kids.
Yes, you can hook up a laptop to a TV. Then you'll sit down your eight year old and explain all of the messy tooling and errata of :insertlanguagehere:, and after multiple hours of stumbling through an IDE with too many features for them to comprehend (or a CLI environment that simply frustrates them), they'll say "damn, this sucks."
It was without a doubt significantly easier to start programming when the process consisted of hook the Commodore up to the TV, plop in your disks/tape, and write in a dead simple language that can be largely described in a few short pages. We haven't had anything like that for years; a spiritual successor to BASIC on a set hardware and software environment (the Switch) is as close as we'll probably come in this day and age.
Almost every old wizard-level programmer I've talked to started off by being massively inspired by the ability to program games when they were kids.
A teaching technique as old as teaching - find something the kid is actively interested in and excited about, and sneakily teach them stuff using that.
I introduced my 8 year old to Scratch and he loved it. But generally games and videos they could be enjoying on a device are so distracting in my kids minds they are not really interested in the concept of further education in the subject. They'd rather play Minecraft. Which is totally fine, not anyone needs to be a programmer and I'm not going to jepardize any internal motivation to the subject in the future by being overtly persuasive about it.
