BBC Micro Making A Comeback?

Filed in Discussion on Aug.25, 2010 By Keith Lunt

A report on the BBC website talks about a set of A-Level computer studies students who were set about to program a suite of old BBC Micro computers.

The idea is that by programming this dinosaur of computers, the students would really get a feel for what is really involved in programming and learn about taking more care.

Without features such as copy and paste, every part of the code has to be typed very carefully into the correct place. Make a single mistake and you are left potentially retyping a large section.

I am all for this! I myself learnt my programming skills on BBC Model Bs, Acorn Electrons, Atari 400 and the likes. The skills that you learn programming these are far more advanced to the skills you learn coding the more modern computers with their easy to use and ultra friendly interfaces.

“Syntax Error at line 1000″ was about as much information as we got when it went pear shaped. These days, code such as HTML will quite often just ignore the errors and make the best of what it has, which might not actually give the correct result. With debuggers and easy to edit WYSIWYG interfaces a lot of the programming skills are not as needed, until it is too late.

I have worked with excellent graphic designers who have been stuck with big name web design tools with, for example, a thin blank line appearing in the screen. Only when you have a good knowledge of coding and plenty of experience in tracking down that one incorrect character can you easily solve the problem.

So I hope that maybe more BBC Micros will be being resurrected and more students given the chance to really learn what goes on inside a computer.