"Um..." {taps chunky BBC Micro keys} "180 ... GOTO 30 ... and ... RUN!"
June 27, 2018 10:21 PM Subscribe
In the 1980s, the BBC funded The Computer Literacy Project. They commissioned a home computer (the BBC Micro) and software, and broadcast many features. These (267 of them) are online. See Chris Serles, Gill Nevill, Ian McNaught Davis, Bernard Falk, Lesley Judd, Fred Harris and others and grapple with topics such as programming in BASIC, the Sinclair ZX80, how crap much educational software is, simulating the British economy, robots making harpsichords using Pascal, the ridiculous idea of connecting computers around the world, and what should happen if machines can do things better than people. There's also a project history, a timeline and 166 BBC Micro Software programs. Some materials also on archive.org, and the continuing need for IT education in the UK.
All of this was utterly mandatory viewing at the time for this computer-crazed 1980s teenager.
Regarding computer literacy, we need it more than ever. Not this well-intentioned but misguided 'everyone must be a coder' nonsense, though. What we need is people who understand how to keep themselves and their devices secure and free of malware in an online world.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:50 AM on June 28, 2018 [9 favorites]
Regarding computer literacy, we need it more than ever. Not this well-intentioned but misguided 'everyone must be a coder' nonsense, though. What we need is people who understand how to keep themselves and their devices secure and free of malware in an online world.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:50 AM on June 28, 2018 [9 favorites]
Heh. A friend of my father taught me a bit of BBC Basic. I owned a Commodore 64 and was making small Basic programs on that, but learning from somebody who knew their stuff rather than trying to read up on stuff myself (in the library!) was a hundred times quicker. That being said, I remember having a hard time grasping for loops, for some reason. Nonetheless, here I am 30+ years later making my living as a SW developer. (There's a lot less sprite manipulation and PEEK and POKE than I imagined, and a lot more time spent on Stack Overflow).
posted by Harald74 at 2:01 AM on June 28, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by Harald74 at 2:01 AM on June 28, 2018 [5 favorites]
I wonder, has there been any studies on the effects of the computer literacy project? I wouldn't be surprised if British society has gotten back the investment tenfold in the decades since.
posted by Harald74 at 2:03 AM on June 28, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by Harald74 at 2:03 AM on June 28, 2018 [5 favorites]
I was hugely excited a while back to discover that Usborne freely released all their 80s kids computing books as PDFs (Ctrl+F "1980s"). I had copies of a lot of them, and they're pretty in-depth, considering the target audience.
Cartoon robots explaining the intricacies of 6502 assembler? Good times.
posted by PeteTheHair at 2:24 AM on June 28, 2018 [11 favorites]
Cartoon robots explaining the intricacies of 6502 assembler? Good times.
posted by PeteTheHair at 2:24 AM on June 28, 2018 [11 favorites]
I trained as a teacher in the north-east of England in the early 90s, and a school I spent time at had a classroom with a dozen BBC Model Bs, which were still in use in poorer state schools.
The classroom was a windowless concrete bunker with a heavy steel door, due (I was told) to the high risk of theft. I remember joking about this with another student teacher. But, lo and behold, the next afternoon I stopped two kids on the way out of the room, one with a Model B stuffed up the front of his jumper, and another with one of those cube-shaped CRT monitors.
There was no way either of them could have run, at least. Those things were bulky. Apparently trying to liberate the Model Bs from the bunker was a popular sport at the time.
posted by pipeski at 3:07 AM on June 28, 2018 [5 favorites]
The classroom was a windowless concrete bunker with a heavy steel door, due (I was told) to the high risk of theft. I remember joking about this with another student teacher. But, lo and behold, the next afternoon I stopped two kids on the way out of the room, one with a Model B stuffed up the front of his jumper, and another with one of those cube-shaped CRT monitors.
There was no way either of them could have run, at least. Those things were bulky. Apparently trying to liberate the Model Bs from the bunker was a popular sport at the time.
posted by pipeski at 3:07 AM on June 28, 2018 [5 favorites]
Fantastic post thank you, I didn't know the BBC had a site for all this stuff. The BBC Micros present at my little primary schools open day and my parents subsequent purchase of ZX Spectrum 48k some years later made me who I am today. Despite the occasional comments of "Why don't you go play outside" and "All you do is play games on it" it fostered a life long love of programming (and gaming). I really tried as a kid to understand, I made little programs, none of them ever worked properly or were anywhere near as impressive as the games I played. I think it was only at university that coding finally clicked for me, it took a long time and a lot of effort.
And to think it all really started with primary schools high score competition on Chuckie Egg, running on a bunch of BBC Micro's in a temporary mobile classroom.
I still haven't made the video game in my head though this year I finally believe I'm good enough to do it and have started learning. 30+ years later.
posted by diziet at 3:44 AM on June 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
And to think it all really started with primary schools high score competition on Chuckie Egg, running on a bunch of BBC Micro's in a temporary mobile classroom.
I still haven't made the video game in my head though this year I finally believe I'm good enough to do it and have started learning. 30+ years later.
posted by diziet at 3:44 AM on June 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
Look around you.
Look...around you.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 3:54 AM on June 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
Look...around you.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 3:54 AM on June 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
Don't forget the delightful Alan Sugar's AMSTRAD CPC computers competing with the BBC for that educational $$
posted by lalochezia at 5:48 AM on June 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by lalochezia at 5:48 AM on June 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
And to think it all really started with primary schools high score competition on Chuckie Egg, running on a bunch of BBC Micro's in a temporary mobile classroom.
Gosh, yes! For those of us of a certain vintage, Chuckie Egg on a BBC Micro at school was a rite of passage.
On the really good days, Mrs Chapman the Computer Studies O-Level teacher would, if no-one had tried to burn down the school or steal one of the computers, bring out the securely stored away copy of Elite, and much fun was had trying to dock your vector graphic ship. As I went to a school run by nuns in the early to mid 1980s, this manoeuvre turned out to be far more realistic than the cursory, and deeply confusing, 20 minutes in total sex education class we had in the final year.
posted by Wordshore at 5:56 AM on June 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
Gosh, yes! For those of us of a certain vintage, Chuckie Egg on a BBC Micro at school was a rite of passage.
On the really good days, Mrs Chapman the Computer Studies O-Level teacher would, if no-one had tried to burn down the school or steal one of the computers, bring out the securely stored away copy of Elite, and much fun was had trying to dock your vector graphic ship. As I went to a school run by nuns in the early to mid 1980s, this manoeuvre turned out to be far more realistic than the cursory, and deeply confusing, 20 minutes in total sex education class we had in the final year.
posted by Wordshore at 5:56 AM on June 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
Obscure and bizarre fact, also for those of us Brits of a certain vintage. Giles Watling, the MP in the final link of the post, used to play the part of Oswald the vicar in the TV sitcom Bread (he was also in Grange Hill, and 'Allo 'Allo).
posted by Wordshore at 6:27 AM on June 28, 2018
posted by Wordshore at 6:27 AM on June 28, 2018
Around the same time in the US Radio Shack was the place to go for computer books (hardware and software). And they kept most of their books low-priced, even for the times, so you could always pick up something new. And don't forget your battery club card!
posted by lagomorphius at 6:42 AM on June 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by lagomorphius at 6:42 AM on June 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
Tandy in the UK!!
posted by Burn_IT at 6:55 AM on June 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Burn_IT at 6:55 AM on June 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
Fred Harris should have a knighthood by now
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:20 AM on June 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:20 AM on June 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
Poke
posted by unliteral at 7:22 AM on June 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by unliteral at 7:22 AM on June 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
Peek
posted by unliteral at 7:30 AM on June 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by unliteral at 7:30 AM on June 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
Regarding computer literacy, we need it more than ever. Not this well-intentioned but misguided 'everyone must be a coder' nonsense, though. What we need is people who understand how to keep themselves and their devices secure and free of malware in an online world.
Unfortunately, there's precious little government money for designing such programs.
And the very nature of what you've proposed is anathema to most tech firms that would help sponsor this, as their primary interests are demonstrably to produce a glut of programmers so they can pay less and getting society to accept that their internet-connected devices are necessary without understanding the implications thereof.
posted by thegears at 7:38 AM on June 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
Unfortunately, there's precious little government money for designing such programs.
And the very nature of what you've proposed is anathema to most tech firms that would help sponsor this, as their primary interests are demonstrably to produce a glut of programmers so they can pay less and getting society to accept that their internet-connected devices are necessary without understanding the implications thereof.
posted by thegears at 7:38 AM on June 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
I'm using a Das Keyboard clicky keyboard at work, and I'm sort of tempted to replace the function key keycaps with red ones as a homage to the BBC Micro.
posted by Harald74 at 7:43 AM on June 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Harald74 at 7:43 AM on June 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
I wonder, has there been any studies on the effects of the computer literacy project? I wouldn't be surprised if British society has gotten back the investment tenfold in the decades since.
NESTA researched and produced a report (downloadable PDF) on the project, in 2012. Though (unfortunately) there wasn't much from the economic point of view, there's other things of interest in there, especially situating the project into the contemporary needs of IT and computing education. And, though 2012 was six years ago, it's still recent enough to mention things such as Minecraft.
posted by Wordshore at 10:33 AM on June 28, 2018
NESTA researched and produced a report (downloadable PDF) on the project, in 2012. Though (unfortunately) there wasn't much from the economic point of view, there's other things of interest in there, especially situating the project into the contemporary needs of IT and computing education. And, though 2012 was six years ago, it's still recent enough to mention things such as Minecraft.
posted by Wordshore at 10:33 AM on June 28, 2018
A friend of my father taught me a bit of BBC Basic.
Which, compared to the other BASICs of the time, was utterly gorgeous. Named procedures and functions instead of having to use GOSUBs. Inline assembler. Sensibly named OS calls instead of jumping to some hex address. RENUMBER.
Downside was that the MOS and BASIC took 16k each, and graphic screen modes would take up to 20k leaving you with not all that much program memory.
Hardware was also definitely better than the C64, never mind the Sinclairs. Keyboard was one of the best of that time (again, the less said about the ZX and Spectrum, the better).
I still have a couple (in boxes in the attic at the moment), as well as two Electrons and a Master128. One of those B's I found at the rubbish dump: took it home, plugged it in and heard the two-tone beep.
posted by Stoneshop at 11:10 AM on June 28, 2018 [4 favorites]
Which, compared to the other BASICs of the time, was utterly gorgeous. Named procedures and functions instead of having to use GOSUBs. Inline assembler. Sensibly named OS calls instead of jumping to some hex address. RENUMBER.
Downside was that the MOS and BASIC took 16k each, and graphic screen modes would take up to 20k leaving you with not all that much program memory.
Hardware was also definitely better than the C64, never mind the Sinclairs. Keyboard was one of the best of that time (again, the less said about the ZX and Spectrum, the better).
I still have a couple (in boxes in the attic at the moment), as well as two Electrons and a Master128. One of those B's I found at the rubbish dump: took it home, plugged it in and heard the two-tone beep.
posted by Stoneshop at 11:10 AM on June 28, 2018 [4 favorites]
I'm using a Das Keyboard clicky keyboard at work
Unless you work in a private office, you know that your coworkers want to murder you, right?
posted by thelonius at 11:19 AM on June 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
Unless you work in a private office, you know that your coworkers want to murder you, right?
posted by thelonius at 11:19 AM on June 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
thelonius: pretty sure that's a feature, not a bug.
#ibmmodelmkeyboard4life
posted by hanov3r at 11:23 AM on June 28, 2018 [5 favorites]
#ibmmodelmkeyboard4life
posted by hanov3r at 11:23 AM on June 28, 2018 [5 favorites]
#ibmmodelmkeyboard4life
The IBM Model M. You can beat someone to death with one, then use it to write their obituary.
At work, by the way, I've settled on a Cherry G3000. Less noisy, not quite the feel of an M, but quite OK. As I'm a sysadmin, not a coder, a lot of what I do is:
- some typing to get a logfile on screen,
- a lot of reading and thinking, trying to come up with a way to untangle the mess before me, cursing optional but rarely absent,
- entering a couple of commands to achieve said untangling,
- sitting back,
- redo from start
posted by Stoneshop at 12:28 PM on June 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
The IBM Model M. You can beat someone to death with one, then use it to write their obituary.
At work, by the way, I've settled on a Cherry G3000. Less noisy, not quite the feel of an M, but quite OK. As I'm a sysadmin, not a coder, a lot of what I do is:
- some typing to get a logfile on screen,
- a lot of reading and thinking, trying to come up with a way to untangle the mess before me, cursing optional but rarely absent,
- entering a couple of commands to achieve said untangling,
- sitting back,
- redo from start
posted by Stoneshop at 12:28 PM on June 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
Some materials also on archive.org
There's quite a lot Beeb-related stuff on the 8-Bit Software site, even schematics and functional descriptions for each of them.
posted by Stoneshop at 12:43 PM on June 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
There's quite a lot Beeb-related stuff on the 8-Bit Software site, even schematics and functional descriptions for each of them.
posted by Stoneshop at 12:43 PM on June 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
The boop BEEP startup sound of the BBC B — inspiring awe in junior me as the computer teacher hit the gang switch to turn all 17 Beebs on at once — is only coded as a single BEEP!. The SN76489 sound chip powers on making an annoying constant boooooooooooooooooop sound, so most emulators just make the second noise.
BBC BASIC itself is pretty clever, and used a bunch of shortcuts to get its legendary speed: a very exacting parser that would only accept upper-case keywords, variables A%-Z% stored as a direct vector of contiguous words for fast lookup, multiple linked-lists for variable lookup, and the most no-fair speedup of all, no dynamic string space garbage collection. Richard Russell still produces updated BBC BASIC interpreters for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and Linux: the community versions are free.
I recently discovered that Richard had designed a Z80-based "parent" of the Acorn machine. This machine - aka the Richard Russell board - ran an early BBC BASIC dialect and a very simple fast DOS for 8" disk drives. The board was widely pirated inside the BBC for use as a low-cost control system. Unfortunately, Richard hasn't caught the retrocomputing bug and claims that the board could be of no historical interest to anyone, dammit.
One bit of the BBC literacy television programmes I remember was a section I'm still amazed made it past the censors. One of the less regular presenters (he tended to do off-site features) was at a computer show, paused at the Wang stand, looked straight into the camera and said, deadpan: “The people who work at this company are called … employees”.
posted by scruss at 1:15 PM on June 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
BBC BASIC itself is pretty clever, and used a bunch of shortcuts to get its legendary speed: a very exacting parser that would only accept upper-case keywords, variables A%-Z% stored as a direct vector of contiguous words for fast lookup, multiple linked-lists for variable lookup, and the most no-fair speedup of all, no dynamic string space garbage collection. Richard Russell still produces updated BBC BASIC interpreters for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and Linux: the community versions are free.
I recently discovered that Richard had designed a Z80-based "parent" of the Acorn machine. This machine - aka the Richard Russell board - ran an early BBC BASIC dialect and a very simple fast DOS for 8" disk drives. The board was widely pirated inside the BBC for use as a low-cost control system. Unfortunately, Richard hasn't caught the retrocomputing bug and claims that the board could be of no historical interest to anyone, dammit.
One bit of the BBC literacy television programmes I remember was a section I'm still amazed made it past the censors. One of the less regular presenters (he tended to do off-site features) was at a computer show, paused at the Wang stand, looked straight into the camera and said, deadpan: “The people who work at this company are called … employees”.
posted by scruss at 1:15 PM on June 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
I am a history teacher who was so shocked at my students’ lack of computer literacy I bought. a BBC which sits in my classroom for students to play with.
posted by stanf at 3:36 PM on June 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by stanf at 3:36 PM on June 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
It's interesting that the Raspberry Pi is a direct descendant of the BBC Micro, but the official BBC "micro:bit" - though technically a very fun microcontroller platform - has had a somewhat lukewarm response. I was disappointed but unsurprised that most UK schools apparently kept the micro:bits for themselves, rather than giving them to all the 11 year olds, as was intended.
posted by scruss at 4:20 PM on June 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by scruss at 4:20 PM on June 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
After lurking on MeFi for ages, this thread has finally prompted me to make an account. Hi.
So I was directly involved with the micro:bit campaign. No juicy gossip, but some insights that might help clear up what that project was about:
The m:b was aimed at secondary school Year 7/8 students (11-12 year olds) rather than primary school. While some primary schools in the UK use 'code blocks' as an entry into programming skills, the web-based coding suites we had were to encourage the transition from blocks to Javascript and Python.
An early aim was learning through play that could be done at home as well as in school, but due to a few factors (in part what Scruss has said about teachers holding onto the m:bs sent for the kids) things switched to hitting the school curricula checklist as hard as possible.
We did a number of maker projects and collaborations during the run of the campaign. Unlike the Micro, the m:b doesn't have a screen (just a matrix of 5x5 LEDs) so it's mostly about connecting it to other things - LEDs, motors, sensors all that good stuff. I'm especially proud of the collaboration we did with Doctor Who. It had a mini plotline and even had a browser game where you hack the shell of a Dalek.
The project is now being run by The micro:bit Foundation, a non-profit establishing the m:b in the curriculum for schools in other countries. They don't really do maker projects like we did, though.
posted by NeonCaster at 3:52 AM on June 29, 2018 [6 favorites]
So I was directly involved with the micro:bit campaign. No juicy gossip, but some insights that might help clear up what that project was about:
The m:b was aimed at secondary school Year 7/8 students (11-12 year olds) rather than primary school. While some primary schools in the UK use 'code blocks' as an entry into programming skills, the web-based coding suites we had were to encourage the transition from blocks to Javascript and Python.
An early aim was learning through play that could be done at home as well as in school, but due to a few factors (in part what Scruss has said about teachers holding onto the m:bs sent for the kids) things switched to hitting the school curricula checklist as hard as possible.
We did a number of maker projects and collaborations during the run of the campaign. Unlike the Micro, the m:b doesn't have a screen (just a matrix of 5x5 LEDs) so it's mostly about connecting it to other things - LEDs, motors, sensors all that good stuff. I'm especially proud of the collaboration we did with Doctor Who. It had a mini plotline and even had a browser game where you hack the shell of a Dalek.
The project is now being run by The micro:bit Foundation, a non-profit establishing the m:b in the curriculum for schools in other countries. They don't really do maker projects like we did, though.
posted by NeonCaster at 3:52 AM on June 29, 2018 [6 favorites]
On the micro:bit front, there's also a thriving programme of libraries having microbits that you can loan, which seems to have spread in a grassroots fashion from the awesome Amy Hearn (she's a librarian in Huddersfield)
I know the Code Club here in Liverpool (which runs from the Central Library) uses them much more than Raspberry Pi.
posted by amcewen at 8:54 AM on June 29, 2018 [3 favorites]
I know the Code Club here in Liverpool (which runs from the Central Library) uses them much more than Raspberry Pi.
posted by amcewen at 8:54 AM on June 29, 2018 [3 favorites]
Thanks, NeonCaster - the micro:bit is really cool. I just wish the Bluetooth stack worked with MicroPython so we could program the one I got for my nephew on his iOS devices. They're a tablet/phone-only family
posted by scruss at 12:17 PM on June 29, 2018
posted by scruss at 12:17 PM on June 29, 2018
I saw this linked on the BBC website and figured (hoped!) it would end up here. I don't think I saw any of these programmes, but a good POKE may prove me wrong. All my formative '80s computer learnings were via the BBC Model B at school, my ZX81/Spectrum at home, those remarkable magazines of program listings for every computer imaginable and, best of all, a couple of the amazing Usbourne books which PeteTheHair links above.
Never lost my fascination for that era of computing. The aforementioned POKE is afoot!
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 8:03 PM on June 29, 2018
Never lost my fascination for that era of computing. The aforementioned POKE is afoot!
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 8:03 PM on June 29, 2018
One of the great offshoots of the computer literacy project was magazines publishing one liner BASIC programs.
I got to over 1000 on this one. Can you? Z and X steer: https://8bs.nerdoftheherd.com/8BS29/content/2-1k1/
posted by scruss at 8:49 PM on June 30, 2018
I got to over 1000 on this one. Can you? Z and X steer: https://8bs.nerdoftheherd.com/8BS29/content/2-1k1/
posted by scruss at 8:49 PM on June 30, 2018
Which, compared to the other BASICs of the time, was utterly gorgeous. Named procedures and functions instead of having to use GOSUBs. Inline assembler. Sensibly named OS calls instead of jumping to some hex address. RENUMBER.
Wait, what? Proper functions? As an Apple ][ kid... umm... grar.
(No really my HS computer-whatever teacher was so shit that I don't think it would've made any difference...)
posted by pompomtom at 7:07 AM on July 2, 2018
Wait, what? Proper functions? As an Apple ][ kid... umm... grar.
(No really my HS computer-whatever teacher was so shit that I don't think it would've made any difference...)
posted by pompomtom at 7:07 AM on July 2, 2018
btw, the wonderful folks on the stardot forums found a one-liner game I'd been pining for for years. Here it is: Asterisk Tracker by N. Silver, published in BEEBUG, Dec 1984.
this brings all the feels …
posted by scruss at 7:32 PM on July 4, 2018
this brings all the feels …
posted by scruss at 7:32 PM on July 4, 2018
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*deep breath*
I always get the feeling that most people didn't really get how computers were going to change the world, except for a few people who watched too much Star Trek who knew exactly how much the world was going to change. But I think even for a lot of the people who knew- the connecting the computers worldwide part blew a lot of minds. And now of course a lot of us can't think of life without them.
And of course as exemplified by that last link (and the US pol who said "series of tubes" lol UK/US shockingly ignorant politician solidarity amirite?) yeah, we have a way to go even now for full IT literacy. I sometimes think that's the problem with the much much better interfaces we have today- people like me who aren't in IT are so divorced from the nuts and bolts of *how* a computer/phone/tablet works could never make or program one without a lot more education, and yet I am very proficient with say word or blogging or games or *insert program here*. Reminds me to maybe invest in a programming course...
delighted to see you posting again Wordshore, many happy returns!
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 10:50 PM on June 27, 2018 [3 favorites]