

The UK risks excluding the best developers on social class grounds - thetimmorgan
http://picklive.com/blog/the-uk-risks-excluding-the-best-developers-on-social-class-grounds

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semanticist
(Repeating the comment I left there.)

I don't think just giving computers and internet connections would be
sufficient - modern computers are rubbish. The generation of kids who grew up
with Spectrums and C64s and Amstrad CPCs learned programming because they were
presented with a screen like this:

<http://www.retroisle.com/amstrad/cpc/Articles/cpc6128.png>

That little flashing prompt which promised effectively unlimited potential.
You just needed to type the right thing and you could do ANYTHING.

Especially for kids from poor backgrounds, the revelation that you can, by
yourself, create anything you can imagine is just huge.

Windows and and Mac computers don't have that. I mean, it's there - I can open
a Terminal window on my Mac and type 'irb' and start writing Ruby, but it's
not obvious. It's not RIGHT THERE, staring you in the face, daring you to use
it.

I think the Raspberry Pi - <http://www.raspberrypi.org/> \- project might be
the solution. It's incredibly cheap, it plugs into your TV (which was why the
Spectrum was a huge success at the low end of the home computer market,
because unlike the technically better BBC/Acorn or Amstrad machines, it didn't
need a dedicated monitor), and it runs Linux.

Yes, it'll boot into a GUI and not that teasing little flashing prompt, but
BECAUSE it's a non-standard OS on a non-standard CPU platform - and because
it's so cheap and easy to rest if you mess it up - it'll encourage fiddling
and exploring and that is what we need to get the next generation of hackers.

This is something I feel really strongly about. It's so easy to dismiss kids
from shit backgrounds as worthless neds/chavs, but for every knuckle-dragging
thug there's another kid with a spark of potential. I know how easily I
could've been a knuckle-dragger instead of the computer geek I turned out to
be.

------
sjtgraham
I'm working class, don't come from the typical background. I've experienced
snobbery and elitism in the UK tech scene.

