[realslimjd]

There were on the order of hundreds of high school students with computer access in the US in 1969, and even fewer with computer literacy. Growing up in the Space Age probably was inspirational, but that doesn't change the fact that computers basically didn't exist to the general public at that time. Unlike now, software development wasn't a widely known career. There wasn't a CS major in the US until 1962. I think that makes it pretty notable he was a high school senior in 1969.

[schiffern]

EDIT Personally, for clarification, I do think the code is impressive, but the above back-and-forth doesn't really explain why.

---

That explanation still wouldn't mean support the assertion that writing the lander game is the part that's "impressive for a high school senior in 1967."

If anything, all this explanation would show is that their having access to a computer is the "impressive" part.

[Closi]

It needs access to a computer, creativity, and an impressive amount of capability for a high school senior.

This is 5 years before pong - you are inventing game concepts from scratch rather than standing on the shoulders of giants.

[WalterBright]

> and an impressive amount of capability for a high school senior

It's only impressive because very few (none?) high schools teach calculus at the level required for his implementation. High schoolers are quite capable of handling that kind of calculus, it's just that the high schools don't teach it.

[Closi]

It's not about the level of calculus knowledge for me - it's about building this from scratch with 1960's technology in 50 lines of basic and very little prior art.

It's easier to be the second person to do something.

[krallja]

For accuracy, it was written in FOCAL, not BASIC.

[Closi]

Thanks, my mistake!

[WalterBright]

I agree with that.

[Aeolun]

I’m fairly certain that while schools might be capable of teaching calculus at this level, the amount of interest in that roughly corresponds with the number of students that already know calculus at that level anyway.

[mhh__]

The UK stopped including calculus as part of physics even!

I got told off for doing an integral.

[WalterBright]

How sad.

[renewiltord]

Yeah but being first is part of it, no? In my mid 20s I read Karl Popper's Conjectures and Refutations and realized I'd reached the falsification pathway to epistemology as a teenager. But was I a genius or was I just lucky to be born in this age where the soup of concepts we're bathed in makes that obvious? I think the latter. Same with Goldbach's Conjecture, I came up with an equivalent conjecture as a pre-teen.

Evidence since has shown I'm reasonably intelligent but not the Popper or Goldbach or even the Walter Bright of our times.

Humanity the organism evolves so more things become obvious to more average members. Perhaps ten year olds will see the intuitive use of monadic structures in the future.

[tivert]

I think both. It's likely only very impressive high school students got that much access to a computer in 1967.

It reminds me of an article I read about Jai alai years ago: the sport is long, long past its peak, and one of the people interviewed said the players nowadays are some of the best ever, because only people who are really, really good and really, really love the game still try to play professionally.

[smabie]

That doesn't make any sense.

[blahedo]

Not disagreeing with the overall point here, but there definitely were some high schools with computers and programming classes by then---my mom was teaching programming (FORTRAN) in a Chicago high school starting in 1967. I think she was one of the first dozen or so high school programming teachers in the country but I don't think she was _the_ first.

[scrame]

yeah bill gates at lakeside in Seattle was one of like 3 high schools in the country that had a computer.

[layer8]

It’s unsurprising that at least one of the hundreds would write such a game though? In particular when those having access already are self-selected to some degree.

[bee_rider]

It’s unsurprising that anything was done by somebody. In fact it is inevitable that the most impressive thing is done by somebody out there, because otherwise it wouldn’t be a thing that was done. But, being that person can still be impressive.

[BobaFloutist]

It's unsurprising that someone is the best at the world at running, but it's still pretty impressive when they do it.