Re:They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia
by PorterDuff on Sunday May 12, 2019 @11:12AM
(#19892377)
Exactly. After years of getting highest-end company-supplied desktops, one of my holy missions is to reduce the cost of home computing. Typing on my eBay Chromebook, desktop box is a $35 i5 Optiplex running Qubes. There's better things to spend your money on.
A wonderful world we live in. The best I could come up with as a kid was a used Xbox running Linux and a homemade VGA cable for something like $150. A then-modern machine for $50, I sure couldn't find one. (Of course adult-me is better at bargain-hunting)
Re:They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia
by daveslash on Monday May 13, 2019 @04:29PM
(#19903611)
To introduce people to the very most basic concepts of programming (if-then, loops, etc, and making hello-world, fizz-buzz, etc...), I've been using the javascript console in the Chrome (or Firefox) developer tools. In casual conversations with non developer friends (30-40 y/o), I'll say "here, pass me your laptop... " and I'll do fizz-buzz real quick. I haven't tried with any one, but I would think that teaching someone how to wrap their head around those concepts could be done with a cheap net-book and built-in browser development tools. In the beginning, get all of the dependencies out of the way - no need for a compiler, source control, package manager, etc....
> By all means subsidize a laptop
If you have a certain drive and curiosity for coding the price of a used low-end laptop is unlikely to be a significant barrier, when adequate new ones are available from Walmart for $159. I just found a 3 year old Chromebook on ebay for $57, or around 10 hours work at the federal minimum wage after taxes. And there's a salutary pride of ownership in earning it. I earned my first computer by working the grill at Burger King. Dreaming of what I'd buy with my wages made finally getting it particularly sweet.