[dan-bailey]

This is definitely true, and we definitely need something similar again. I've been using a game ("The Farmer Was Replaced") as a jumping-off point for teaching the kids Python, but the more I think about it, the more I think that they need some sort of hardware package similar to an old Apple //e that gives them just enough rope to hang themselves. It was easy, back in the day, to learn a ton (even assembler) on a system like that, and I feel like there's some value in rewinding the clock back to that point, forking the experience from there, and seeing what a new generation of kids will cook up.

[mdavidn]

Zach Barth and his former studio Zachtronics released several entertaining puzzle games based on idealized fake assembly languages. These are a lot of fun and useful for introducing registers and multiprocessing.

[Folcon]

I keep coming back to the idea of taking that concept and just running with it, IE building up a toolchain alongside some concrete tasks to solve with it and just adding more detail until we reach a reasonably sophisticated level

I've been staring at 0x10c, carwars and battletech and there's a sense that I could build a sort of programming / engineering Zach like

[rmunn]

> ... I think they need some sort of hardware package similar to an old Apple //e that gives them just enough rope to hang themselves.

Something like https://miniscript.org/MiniMicro/ perhaps? It's a virtual machine rather than real hardware, but apart from using disk image files instead of real floppy drives, the experience should be rather similar to what we* grew up on.

* Mine was a KayPro II running CP/M rather than an Apple //e, but you get the idea.

[mghackerlady]

If you want to go the old computer route, find an old vic-20. It has the best manual for any computer ever made imo