There are times when I'm baffled by how digital novice some so-called "digital natives" are.

It's not their fault, though, but our new intern described himself as "very good with computers".

Nope.

It started with "where is the browser ?"
me: "On the Taskbar, Firefox, what do you use?""
intern: "Don't know, it's from google."

me: "I set up a network folder for you, just move your files to y:\[his name]"
intern: "Move files?"

me: "You'll need a code editor, just instal VS-Code."
intern: "What? I can't find it on steam."

Again, it's not his fault. But one should assume .... one should not.

I'm spending the next few hours teaching him the BASICS of using a computer. I may even let him set up his own Linux.

And we haven't even started "coding" yet.

#digitalnatives #intern #myfirstcomputer

Let’s play “The first computer I used and/or wrote software for”.

The first computer I remember seeing was at a county fair in the back of a tractor trailer. They entered your birthday and it spit out your horoscope on a punch card. There were lots of blinky lights. But I seriously doubt there was actually a computer in there. :)

Technically the first computer I used was a CDC Cyber at UMASS Amherst. It was 1972 and I was in 6th grade. My father was spending a semester there to work on his PhD (he ended up being ABD), and so for a semester I was going to UMASS Amherst’s experimental teaching school, which was pretty amazing. The assignment was to enter some APL code (from a printout) on a teletype, and then it would print out a Christmas tree. I can honestly state that my first piece of software ran the first time with no errors. :)

Then in 1975/1976 I was at a private high school, I learned BASIC as part of freshman algebra. That was using a remote connection to Dartmouth, I presume to Dartmouth’s DTSS system (which I later accessed remotely in college too).

But really, the first computer I spent time on and actually wrote some software for was in 1976 (back in public school). It was a brand new school and they’d gotten funding for a computer. It was an HP9830A, basically a glorified calculator that ran BASIC. It probably cost around $6000, which was horrifically large amount for them to invest. You were supposed to use it only under supervision, but only one teacher had experience with it, and I already knew BASIC, so I had free rein. I wrote a Blackjack program for it. It had a single line, 32 character LED display, and you stored programs on audio cassette tapes. There was no way for it to generate random number seeds, so I had to prompt the user for a seed, or else they’d always get the same cards.

http://madrona.ca/e/HP9830/index.html

The first computer I owned was an Apple // clone called the MicroProfessor.

#MyFirstComputer

Just had one of those conversations with my son where I blew his mind talking about how a #ZX-81 worked, as in:

No sound.
No OS, apart from a basic interpreter.
No IDE.
1K Of RAM
No GUI, mouse.
No passwords, encryption.
Saving to tape.

I think I’d thoroughly depressed him by the time I’d finished talking!

#myfirstcomputer

@ClarusPlusPlus

This was #MyFirstComputer too!!