Lamenting the decline of the bedroom coder - perhaps we can bring them back?
This is an opinion piece. There - I said it. Now, I don't normally do these, but I've been busy writing some books of late, aimed at a particular segment of the computer using public, and I'm beginning to wonder how worthwhile the effort will eventually be.
You see, I want to bring back the bedroom coder. The hobby programmer. People who want to write programs because the machine in front of them will let them.
Back in the days of the Commodore 64, Spectrum 128, Atari ST and BBC Micro (for the UK audience, that last one) bedroom coders were prevalent. In fact, I'm guessing that most owners of these machines at least tried to write a program even if all it did was fill the screen with 'Hello World'.
Where are they now? Programming is still as fun as it always was, but it seems that there are less and less hobbyist coders around.
Perhaps we should start a campaign, here, to educate the PC owners worldwide in the joys of programming. Even if all you do is write a Windows application that draws random rectangles on the screen, the challenge will teach you something.
It might even teach you something about yourself.
