BBC news piece on Braben

[TGHC]

Back in my day.. (thinks of slide rules, etc)

<goes into Monty Python mode> Huh you were lucky! in my day you we counted on our fingers and used an elastic band wrapped round one as the memory.

[TGHC]

Actually Oolite is mentioned more than once,

I remember the discussion about if frontier knows oolite

Definetely they know now.

But I must admit these comments about oolite are very good.

where are these discussions, is there a link?

[Commander McLane]

Actually Oolite is mentioned more than once,

I remember the discussion about if frontier knows oolite

Definetely they know now.

But I must admit these comments about oolite are very good.

where are these discussions, is there a link?

In the first post of the thread. The discussion is below the article.

[Selezen]

I've always thought of Oolite as the singular spiritual successor to Elite. Captures the spirit and atmosphere of the original and brings it bang up to date with all the joys of modern technology!

Unlike Frontier - the actual successor - which is a totally different game that happens to share some ship designs and a couple of planet names.

[stevesims]

Back when I was at secondary school we got taught word processing in what was then known as the first year, learning WordStar on RM 480Z machines. At the time, WordStar was the industry standard word processor... IIRC this wasn't a class that lasted all year, I'm not even sure we had a full term of lessons. (They also had a network of BBC Micros, but we didn't get to use them in the first year.) Our IT lessons were restricted to the first year only, with the option of taking it up in the 4th year to study for a Computing GCSE. Back then the Computing GCSE involved such things as writing software...

By the time I'd finished school the 480Zs and BBC Micros were long gone, replaced with a network of Acorn Archimedes machines. WordStar had also gone the way of the dodo, and Word Perfect was the industry standard, but this new upstart called MS Word had arrived. When I dropped out of university a couple of years later, the writing was on the wall for Word Perfect and MS Word was taking over. I had assumed at that time that Word's fate was likely to be similar to that of it's predecessors Word Perfect and WordStar... In some ways that assessment was true, since Word of today doesn't really work much like Word of 20 years ago.

When I was in school there was a distinct movement to try to kill Acorn in education on the basis that they weren't 'industry standard', which never made sense to me, since teaching principles and concepts should be what it's all about. The principles and concepts I learnt about word processing over 25 years ago on WordStar are as valid now as they were then.

What I struggle to understand is why there remains such a thing as an ICT GCSE here in the UK, especially since children use computers in class from reception upwards. I've just taken a look at example ICT GCSE exam questions and they are beyond trivial - IMHO any child that cannot get an A grade is likely mind-numbingly stupid and will be unable to properly function in the modern workforce, and it should be impossible any child with an interest in IT to fail to get an A* grade.

It seems that the Computing GCSE, which was much more Computer Science than ICT, has vanished from the modern curriculum, and that this is what David Braben things should return. I'm with him on that completely. Maybe the rise of things like Arduino may bring about a resurrection in interest in such things?

[Disembodied]

It seems that the Computing GCSE, which was much more Computer Science than ICT, has vanished from the modern curriculum, and that this is what David Braben things should return. I'm with him on that completely. Maybe the rise of things like Arduino may bring about a resurrection in interest in such things?

Bringing programming, or at least an understanding of what programming is, into the classroom would be a great step forward, I think. In fact I've managed to interest a couple of teachers of English in Oolite as a way of communicating the importance of things like proper spelling and grammar. If you mis-spell a word, or get a semicolon in the wrong place, when you're writing an OXP, then it won't work. Correct – indeed exact – spelling, and the precise, structured use of language, is vital for programming. If you can do it properly then you can make things happen.

On the word-processor front, if they could teach people basic things like "how to indent a paragraph properly" or (better) "how to use styles", that would make my life a lot easier! And if all those ex-typewriter jockeys out there could stop telling people to put two spaces after a full stop, I'd be very grateful.

[Cmd. Cheyd]

But I like my double-spaces... I still do them.

[Disembodied]

But I like my double-spaces... I still do them.

If you use a monospace font, like Courier, then that's fine. The double-space convention was designed for use where all the letters, and all the punctuation, take up exactly the same width – so a typewriter "m" takes up exactly the same space as a typewriter "." Putting a double space after a full stop on a typewriter helps emphasise the full stop, and makes reading easier. But it's totally unnecessary if you're using a word processor with a proper font ...

Actually, it doesn't matter as far as personal use is concerned – it's just one more thing for me to find-and-replace before typesetting! Oh, how I love the find-and-replace function ... it's got the potential for enormous, grandiose foulups, true, but still, its inventor deserves at least three medals.

[Commander McLane]

Actually, it doesn't matter as far as personal use is concerned – it's just one more thing for me to find-and-replace before typesetting! Oh, how I love the find-and-replace function ... it's got the potential for enormous, grandiose foulups, true, but still, its inventor deserves at least three medals.

Wholeheartedly agreed.

[NigelJK]

Phew lot there to digest ...
It never ceases to amaze me how the WinTel cartel got some much clout, but I can throw some light on it. To set the scene:

IBM announces the PC, an 8 bit single floppy drive machine with max memory of 64K. Keyboard extra. OS Extra. Monitor Extra. retails at a cool £20K (not a misprint)

At this point I was 'teaching' at an iTec (basically YTS for smart kids). We had a Torch Unicorn 12 station network(!) with a 20MB Central Station for holding all of the student data, lessons, payroll, attendance, etc ,etc . This rare beasty was actually 12X BBC B's + z80 second processors(!) (for those interested running over the Tube(c)) + 32K extra memory. Capable of running normal 6502 based stuff and z80 based stuff it was, probably, the most versatile machine I ever worked on. You could download a CPM program (over the networking version of CPM called CPN), then use a 650 program to print the results. We had a networked version of the Peach suite (Peach Calc,Peach Word(!), Peach Data). We taught the students how to touch type using a 6502 based program called touch type, which stored their efforts on the hard drive. We taught them Database, Word processing and so on (Modern office skills). We taught them coding (right down to 6502 and z80 - one oddity (brilliance) of the BBC micro is that you could have in line machine code ours also allowed in line z80). The whole kit and caboodle was £15K.

So what went wrong? Well as I remember it a large US corp called Zenith offered us 4 networked versions of the PC (clone) with ethernet network for FREE. They told the big white chief how it was worth over £100k. It ran MS DOS 0.9 (sometimes). Not much else. We bench tested the BASIC (and BASICA) against the BBC's - no contest. We even used their own test suite, tuned for the machines. I got a 16 year old to rewrite the tests for the BBC's (as a project) and voila , no contest.

So where did we go wrong? We didn't charge enough.
Sorry for the long post, but this is subject close to my heart.

[TGHC]

Fascinating

[DaddyHoggy]

Back when I was at secondary school we got taught word processing in what was then known as the first year, learning WordStar on RM 480Z machines. At the time, WordStar was the industry standard word processor... IIRC this wasn't a class that lasted all year, I'm not even sure we had a full term of lessons. (They also had a network of BBC Micros, but we didn't get to use them in the first year.) Our IT lessons were restricted to the first year only, with the option of taking it up in the 4th year to study for a Computing GCSE. Back then the Computing GCSE involved such things as writing software...

By the time I'd finished school the 480Zs and BBC Micros were long gone, replaced with a network of Acorn Archimedes machines. WordStar had also gone the way of the dodo, and Word Perfect was the industry standard, but this new upstart called MS Word had arrived. When I dropped out of university a couple of years later, the writing was on the wall for Word Perfect and MS Word was taking over. I had assumed at that time that Word's fate was likely to be similar to that of it's predecessors Word Perfect and WordStar... In some ways that assessment was true, since Word of today doesn't really work much like Word of 20 years ago.

When I was in school there was a distinct movement to try to kill Acorn in education on the basis that they weren't 'industry standard', which never made sense to me, since teaching principles and concepts should be what it's all about. The principles and concepts I learnt about word processing over 25 years ago on WordStar are as valid now as they were then.

What I struggle to understand is why there remains such a thing as an ICT GCSE here in the UK, especially since children use computers in class from reception upwards. I've just taken a look at example ICT GCSE exam questions and they are beyond trivial - IMHO any child that cannot get an A grade is likely mind-numbingly stupid and will be unable to properly function in the modern workforce, and it should be impossible any child with an interest in IT to fail to get an A* grade.

It seems that the Computing GCSE, which was much more Computer Science than ICT, has vanished from the modern curriculum, and that this is what David Braben things should return. I'm with him on that completely. Maybe the rise of things like Arduino may bring about a resurrection in interest in such things?

I was the first year to do GCSEs, you could take Computers as one of your two compulsory Science subjects - which I did - Physics being my other choice. We too had a network of BBC Micros and we produce our own Intranet for the school, using the Ceefax technology. We also had a Commodore PET and two Commodore C64s - I was lucky enough to have one of these at home too - so armed with the Reference Guide and a few books on programming it I wrote an Art Package called "Arty Farty" as my project - it wasn't very good, but it worked and it was all mine. My nine year old does ICT at school, so has a head start on me and my 3yr old has access to a PC at nursery and here at home and has asked for a Nintendo DS for her 4th birthday next week. She can read enough now to log on to the PC with the account we've set up for her and I must remind myself and I am not a digital native, I may have a fake passport but I did grow up initially in a world without home computers, mobile phones or even games consoles - I was about 8 or 9 (c. 1980) before I encountered my first Atari 2600 and knew my life would never be the same. But my nine year old and three year old have never known any different - a mouse to them is as much a part of their lives as a pencil was for me...

[Killer Wolf]

i must be getting old. i can't get my head around 4 year olds etc having PCs and Game Boys and the like. i used to have Stickle Bricks :-/

[TGHC]

i used to have Stickle Bricks :-/

Hi tech stuff, for me it was wooden blocks, hand made by my grandad!
In my teens I saw the introduction of electronic calculators as the cutting edge of technology based on the new transistor. These were the size of typewriters with about 10 decimal places and the numbers were displayed in glass tubes. It really is quite amazing how far we have come since then.

[DaddyHoggy]

i must be getting old. i can't get my head around 4 year olds etc having PCs and Game Boys and the like. i used to have Stickle Bricks :-/

She's a big fan of Lego too, it's not all tech driven!