Great chat. :) Eben is spot on with the class thing about Spectrum-ST versus BBC-Amiga! I was probably even a tier below this, I was using 8-bit well into the mid 90s!
I agree about the failure of computer education at secondary schools in the 1980s. Bare in mind I’m older born in 1967. This is despite having a 380Z and Kim-1 at middle school and at secondary school a computer lab with one PET and a teletype connection to a PDP 11/70 at Hatfield polytechnic) so I learned BASIC myself and that was the basis that got me my first job. I wasn’t a good student either, really failed at school as I didn’t know how to apply myself and I was one of those invisible students. I managed to get on a year’s course at college which was basically a kit office admin but I got to do some computer application use which fired my imagination. I could actually be interested in this stuff! I did get on a microelectronics course at college after that where I learned assembly and electronics. They cancelled the course before the last year due to low numbers. I wanted to join the BTEC computer science but “I didn’t have A levels” so was rejected. So my entry into a computer career was not certain by any means. I really wished I’d had a good school/teacher back at school.
I was about 10 years in front of you but also used to access the PDP at Hatfield Poly from the Teletype at 'Turnford College (of Further Education', as I believe it was called then, now part of East Herts). Didn't do well at school (mid stream, wasn't interested, wasn't academic, like you, also mostly invisible), built a rowing dinghy in woodwork class before leaving at 15 to go to said college where I did what was called a 'Trans Ed' course for two years that was something the likes of me should have had access to from the beginning. Mornings were English, Maths, Physics and Technical drawing (to 'O level') and the afternoons were Electrical and electronic engineering, sheet metal work, catering, automotive engineering and welding. *Much* more real-world use to the likes of me. Luckily (at the time) I managed to get into BT for 5 years and enjoyed a good career in electronics / datacomms / IT / and IT Training, when it was still good. Like I actually *enjoyed* doing component level repair and was glad to have moved on, just as it went all board-swap. Sadly I still have most of the computers Eben mentions (from the day) but was never good at coding (and still aren't). Give me a soldering iron, a CCT diagram and some components ... or now an ESP32 and someone else's firmware ... ;-)
I'm always slightly jealous of guys whose coding skills seem to have excelled at an early age! Born in the same year (1978) I'd say at age 8-9 I was on a par with Eben in terms of programming Basic on my Commodore Plus 4, but what's evident from this vid is that by age 10-11 there would have been a cavernous difference! Writing graphics games and a mouse driver?! I was still writing text adventure games and to this day in fact this remains the limit of my Basic programming skill. I wonder what the difference was. I had the books and magazines, and I loved programming and debugging, but the knowledge of code to produce graphics and other cool stuff just never 'sank in'! Was it support from Teachers? Friends with similar interests? IQ? Who knows! Anyway well done to Eben and team and thanks for the Raspberry Pi! 🙂👍
For me it was the competition that drove me, partly due to the "friends with similar interests" you mentioned. We always tried to beat each other with better stuff. The thriving demoscene of those days played a part too, but a minor one for me as I tended to stick to Basic. AMOS in my case. I enjoyed optimizing Basic code for speed, and actually was able to copy a lot of typical demo effects that way. Even to this day that period had one of my proudest moments in life. I'd never programmed assembler before, and a friend did. I teased him occasionally saying it wasn't really that much harder, just a lot more work for a bit of extra speed. And at some point he basically told me to shut up and prove it. I told him "give me the assember and the manual, and tomorrow I'll have a working file requester (windowed, controlled by mouse) that outputs the name of the selected file to the command line." And I succeeded. Without the friendly competition among us I'd never have achieved it in a single day. And this was early 90's, I was born 1 year earlier than you were. It also taught me that assemby was not for me; that in some way my teasing comments were right. It felt like being an architect and having to build your designs literally brick by brick. Slow and tedious. I wanted faster results, so stuck to Basic, and 30 years later I still work in high level languages for 80% of the time. The other 20%? Contrary to what you'd expect now, I bought an Arduino instead of a Pi. I chose C instead of Python, mostly because I like the limits the Arduino poses on me. It's all about optimization again. And I recently acquired a Multitech Micro-Professor from the early 80's that I'm playing with now, so after all I still got to do some machine language. :-)
@@ArumesYT The MFP! Brilliant! The MFP I was Z80 assembler, if I'm right on that? I know (looking back) I'm fascinated by the MPF-II which was an Apple II clone of sorts.
@@uforex911 I'm late to replying but here goes... I think you're definitely somewhat true, there's also I think a big helping of natural ability to enables someone to go further that someone else. But there's definitely something to be said for "right time, right place"
@@TheCentreforComputingHistory I asked a question (just below) a year ago and nobody responded! Do 'you' still have the section of my post which was removed? I purchased a BBC 'B' for my family in 1983 when I retired (early!) from the Royal Navy.
It appears that if I include a link to a Jumpshare URL, the post which I make is duly removed (probably automatically) I suspect that it's a Google (TH-cam) ruling and nothing to do with The Centre for Computing History. It would be good to have that confirmed though!
Interesting that he kept it around $250 U.S. - me I buy refurbished laptops. If I get 3 years out of it I'm ahead of the game. Right now I'm posting this from a Dell Latitude E6420 running Windows 10.
Most exciting video. Will the new Raspberry Pi-5 go toe to toe with the Orange Pi-5? The OPi-5 works very well and is the typical Chinese Junk on support examples and documentation like making the GPIO PWM, I2C work in Thonny-Python without messing around. OPi.GPIO SUCKS!! 🥵 I love the Raspberry Pi family they just work. 🥳 Thank you Mr. Upton. 😎
Absolutely superb talk. Thanks so much to those involved in making it....
Great chat. :) Eben is spot on with the class thing about Spectrum-ST versus BBC-Amiga! I was probably even a tier below this, I was using 8-bit well into the mid 90s!
I was a BBC, Spectrum and Amiga guy. Still an Amiga guy :)
I agree about the failure of computer education at secondary schools in the 1980s. Bare in mind I’m older born in 1967. This is despite having a 380Z and Kim-1 at middle school and at secondary school a computer lab with one PET and a teletype connection to a PDP 11/70 at Hatfield polytechnic) so I learned BASIC myself and that was the basis that got me my first job. I wasn’t a good student either, really failed at school as I didn’t know how to apply myself and I was one of those invisible students. I managed to get on a year’s course at college which was basically a kit office admin but I got to do some computer application use which fired my imagination. I could actually be interested in this stuff! I did get on a microelectronics course at college after that where I learned assembly and electronics. They cancelled the course before the last year due to low numbers. I wanted to join the BTEC computer science but “I didn’t have A levels” so was rejected. So my entry into a computer career was not certain by any means. I really wished I’d had a good school/teacher back at school.
I was about 10 years in front of you but also used to access the PDP at Hatfield Poly from the Teletype at 'Turnford College (of Further Education', as I believe it was called then, now part of East Herts).
Didn't do well at school (mid stream, wasn't interested, wasn't academic, like you, also mostly invisible), built a rowing dinghy in woodwork class before leaving at 15 to go to said college where I did what was called a 'Trans Ed' course for two years that was something the likes of me should have had access to from the beginning. Mornings were English, Maths, Physics and Technical drawing (to 'O level') and the afternoons were Electrical and electronic engineering, sheet metal work, catering, automotive engineering and welding. *Much* more real-world use to the likes of me.
Luckily (at the time) I managed to get into BT for 5 years and enjoyed a good career in electronics / datacomms / IT / and IT Training, when it was still good.
Like I actually *enjoyed* doing component level repair and was glad to have moved on, just as it went all board-swap.
Sadly I still have most of the computers Eben mentions (from the day) but was never good at coding (and still aren't). Give me a soldering iron, a CCT diagram and some components ... or now an ESP32 and someone else's firmware ... ;-)
I'm always slightly jealous of guys whose coding skills seem to have excelled at an early age! Born in the same year (1978) I'd say at age 8-9 I was on a par with Eben in terms of programming Basic on my Commodore Plus 4, but what's evident from this vid is that by age 10-11 there would have been a cavernous difference! Writing graphics games and a mouse driver?! I was still writing text adventure games and to this day in fact this remains the limit of my Basic programming skill. I wonder what the difference was. I had the books and magazines, and I loved programming and debugging, but the knowledge of code to produce graphics and other cool stuff just never 'sank in'! Was it support from Teachers? Friends with similar interests? IQ? Who knows! Anyway well done to Eben and team and thanks for the Raspberry Pi! 🙂👍
I think the difference is opportunity
For me it was the competition that drove me, partly due to the "friends with similar interests" you mentioned. We always tried to beat each other with better stuff. The thriving demoscene of those days played a part too, but a minor one for me as I tended to stick to Basic. AMOS in my case. I enjoyed optimizing Basic code for speed, and actually was able to copy a lot of typical demo effects that way.
Even to this day that period had one of my proudest moments in life. I'd never programmed assembler before, and a friend did. I teased him occasionally saying it wasn't really that much harder, just a lot more work for a bit of extra speed. And at some point he basically told me to shut up and prove it. I told him "give me the assember and the manual, and tomorrow I'll have a working file requester (windowed, controlled by mouse) that outputs the name of the selected file to the command line." And I succeeded. Without the friendly competition among us I'd never have achieved it in a single day. And this was early 90's, I was born 1 year earlier than you were.
It also taught me that assemby was not for me; that in some way my teasing comments were right. It felt like being an architect and having to build your designs literally brick by brick. Slow and tedious. I wanted faster results, so stuck to Basic, and 30 years later I still work in high level languages for 80% of the time. The other 20%? Contrary to what you'd expect now, I bought an Arduino instead of a Pi. I chose C instead of Python, mostly because I like the limits the Arduino poses on me. It's all about optimization again.
And I recently acquired a Multitech Micro-Professor from the early 80's that I'm playing with now, so after all I still got to do some machine language. :-)
@@ArumesYT The MFP! Brilliant! The MFP I was Z80 assembler, if I'm right on that? I know (looking back) I'm fascinated by the MPF-II which was an Apple II clone of sorts.
@Aero01 We do. Very true. 👍
@@uforex911 I'm late to replying but here goes... I think you're definitely somewhat true, there's also I think a big helping of natural ability to enables someone to go further that someone else. But there's definitely something to be said for "right time, right place"
Used to use the PIF editor in Windows 3.0 on our RM Network to run things we shouldn't :)
Does anyone monitor this channel?
Yeah why?
@@TheCentreforComputingHistory I asked a question (just below) a year ago and nobody responded!
Do 'you' still have the section of my post which was removed?
I purchased a BBC 'B' for my family in 1983 when I retired (early!) from the Royal Navy.
th-cam.com/users/clipUgkxtpuESY34OxYzuUQ5TI3jsP8mCFUEfUeC
This was a 'test' to see if things are working from MY end.
My message posted about 15 minutes ago has NOT appeared here.
Odd!
It appears that if I include a link to a Jumpshare URL, the post which I make is duly removed (probably automatically)
I suspect that it's a Google (TH-cam) ruling and nothing to do with The Centre for Computing History.
It would be good to have that confirmed though!
BBC/Amiga 1970, 8 years older than yourself.
I thank God I grew up in the country during the 70s and was spared PCs.🙃
Interesting that he kept it around $250 U.S. - me I buy refurbished laptops. If I get 3 years out of it I'm ahead of the game. Right now I'm posting this from a Dell Latitude E6420 running Windows 10.
You quote 10x the price he set - the Rasperry Pi is REALLY cheap!
www.zdnet.com/article/raspberry-pi-how-i-spent-almost-150-on-a-35-computer/
where are Pi's ?? In resonable pricce not skyhigh on e*ay !?
Most exciting video. Will the new Raspberry Pi-5 go toe to toe with the Orange Pi-5? The OPi-5 works very well and is the typical Chinese Junk on support examples and documentation like making the GPIO PWM, I2C work in Thonny-Python without messing around. OPi.GPIO SUCKS!! 🥵 I love the Raspberry Pi family they just work. 🥳 Thank you Mr. Upton. 😎