Ask HN: How can I make a “kid's computer” today as good as an Apple II?

Re:Ask HN: How can I make a “kid's computer” today as good a... by 509engr on Friday February 04, 2022 @12:43PM (#30210005)

I was in middle school around that same time, my parents got me the educational equivalent of Mindstorms (with RCX 1.0). We didn't have a PC and the educational edition came with a alternative LabView-based UI that ran on classic Mac OS. I remember seeing that article in Macworld and wanting to learn some of the other languages, but I never had much success. I can't say it was totally life altering, I was already headed down the path of an engineering career.

My college was still using the official Mindstorms sets for their intro to engineering classes, and so I recall finally getting my hands on the official Mindstorms software and finding it lacking. A classmate was using NQC to do it all, and his team let him do the programming. My team wasn't a fan of that approach so I stuck to the hardware.

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Re:Ask HN: How can I make a “kid's computer” today as good a... by Teknoman117 on Friday February 04, 2022 @03:19PM (#30212475)

> alternative LabView-based UI that ran on classic Mac OS

Was that Robolab? I remember running that on an G4 PowerMac.

I always thought that the "Robotics Invention System" sets were the consumer oriented ones and the educational ones were a separate product line distributed by a company called Pitsco if I'm recalling correctly. Came in a green tub.

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