
Mac and the Micro – memories of Ian McNaught-Davis - draegtun
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26278902
======
davidjgraph
Amen buddy. For those not around at the time the BBC Micro and the ecosystem
around it (including this programme) wasn't unlike the Raspberry Pi movement
today.

I got my Beeb at the age of 10 and because of it (and without any formal CS
education) my entire professional life has been in software.

That said, am I right in remembering the programme was cast away to BBC2,
because it just wasn't quite mainstream enough?

~~~
louthy
> I got my Beeb at the age of 10 and because of it (and without any formal CS
> education) my entire professional life has been in software.

Exact same story and age here. I always thought there were two reasons why the
BBC Micro created so many developers. One is the TV programme, the second is
the manual. Pretty much the first page introduces programming, and within a
dozen pages you're making a rocket fly up the screen. As a kid that was enough
to make me think "I can make a game", and I was hooked.

 _EDIT_ Found a PDF of the manual:
[http://bbc.nvg.org/doc/BBCUserGuide-1.00.pdf](http://bbc.nvg.org/doc/BBCUserGuide-1.00.pdf)

~~~
CmdrKrool
524 pages! With chapters on assembly language towards the end. That's what I
call getting your money's worth.

I had a Spectrum myself. The pack-in manual for that wasn't quite as hefty at
about half the number of pages but it was pretty hard to overlook the
possibility of programming when the keyboard itself was festooned with BASIC
keywords.

While messing around with a Raspberry Pi recently and fidgeting with the board
which by default does not come with a case I noted that - while not quite the
same because just looking at a board isn't going to make you an electronic
engineer - having such internals right there in your face does stoke some
curiosity, even now that I'm an adult.

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fidotron
Just how many telephone directories is that then?

It's hard to overstate how important this all was. Without it Acorn would have
probably gone under and ARM would never have happened.

And that's aside from the massive amounts of development going on with
Spectrums and then later Amigas leading to the UK punching well above its
weight in the games industry to the present day.

One reason I'm so happy to have stayed doing mobile dev for 10+ years is that
it has had the same sort of enthusiastic chaos that existed then. Yes, some
things about not having a homogeneous ecosystem are a pain, but the benefits
that arise from actual competition lead to a far better rate of progress all
round. The incessant whining of developers is a leading cause of inertia.

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hoggle
The pre 90s exuberance for computing in general keeps me going to this day.

I tremendously enjoyed Ian McNaught-Davis appearances on "The Computer
Programme" \- the "Computer Chronicles" are also very much worth watching by
the way:

[https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles](https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles)

[https://archive.org/details/computer-
programme](https://archive.org/details/computer-programme)

Douglas Crockford often says that most of us don't have a sense of history
really, that's a shame if you ask me.

[https://archive.org/donate/index.php](https://archive.org/donate/index.php)
(they take bitcoin as well)

~~~
pjmlp
Quite true. Sometimes you see someone just telling how great technology X is,
when something similar was already done in the 70 - 90's time frame.

They just weren't born or too young to ever know it.

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onmydesk
As seen in Micro Men - BBC Dramatisation of the business end of (some of) the
80s home computer scene in the 80s in the UK

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM)

~~~
hoggle
Cool, I didn't know about that documentary! Perfect Saturday evening cinema,
thanks!

~~~
louthy
Slightly interesting fact: The barmaid at the end is Sophie (was Roger)
Wilson.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson)

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gaius
Ugh, don't read the comments, people arguing Mac vs Windows. It would be
better for the universe if the BBC just disallowed commenting and all the
discussion takes place on 3rd party sites like HN.

