I see there is a lot of nostalgia in that post that I (and others like me) will probably never understand. But, I still don't see the point.
It's nice that we could buy and old machine and program something on it. But at the same time we could do it in Javascript, on the web with a very pretty interface. So why should we trade all the knowledge, the tools and the languages that we (well, people like you how tend to get all nostalgic over this topic) have built and and write something on an archaic system?
I never had such an old system, yet at the same time, I understand the constraints more or less, I now a bit of assembler, C and still question where this knowledge is really benefiting me. (Though I do find it very interesting!)
If I want to have a constraint environment, I could join a JavaScript 1k challenge and also work with artificial constraints (at the same time I could still enjoy the modern tools, environments and even graphics).
Maybe I just really don't see the point.
And to your last point, I think a better approach would be to show our children either PyGame or even modding tools for modern games. I just don't think a young child would really be that interested in the archaic inner workings of a slow machine, but could be really interested in making mods. I'm not saying there are no such children around (I'm sure there are), I'm just questioning the approach here.
The point is that there is, in essence, no point. That's the same as the point of working on a Bonzai tree. It has no point except that you can come to inner/outer peace and beauty.
If you read carefully you see that actually I see 'few hours per week', so there is no mentioning of 'trade all the knowledge'; you are not going to work on ancient stuff fulltime.
For children you might be right; I just know what I was like and what the kids I hung out with were like; I grew up in the 80ties and significant parts of that I spent disassembling, soldering, recreating and such of OLD (50-60s) radio's. Because they are EASY to understand and master.
My issue with PyGame for children (versus for instance an Arduino kid, Rasberry PI or Xgamestation or, much cheaper and better documented, an ancient computer) is that I have seen many kids growing up like that (replace PyGame with VB or HTML) and they don't have A CLUE how a computer works. And when they try to learn that, it is hard to make that step from this, basically, blackbox system to how it actually works. You got that, but many don't.
But yes, I'm biased, I just know quite a few people who followed me and are happy with it; I just summed up stuff I/we get from that. I'm probably just crazy :) And I do know you can do this in JS too but people just don't because their computeres are powerful enough to do it with a ton of fancy libs and tools. In my experience it ends up people (and yes there are exceptions; you are probably one of them) just being lazy.
I think you can replace it with that (I used to do other stuff for relaxation and focus change, I just now like this more), but i think you'll get more out of an old computer than a rock garden :)
I think the point is that there's very real value in understanding how the machine works at a low level. While it might seem like arcana, and while you might think that you understand the constraints more or less and be aware of how the machine is programmed, the value comes from actually asking the hardware questions using those methods.
Unless you're very lucky, at some point in your career your high-level development is going to get constrained by some very low-level fundamentals. Knowing what's going on in the machine is going to be key to working your way through it.
Not to mention the fact that you'll have the ingrained mentality to always think about the performance and bottlenecks in your code and systems, even if you're highly unlikely to ever hit practical limits.
Knowing that stuff -- more importantly being an experienced practitioner -- just makes you a better programmer overall, and makes you more sympathetic to the hardware that has to execute your code. It's a dying skill and it's very far from being nostalgia when it can bite you in the real world very easily.
I don't fully understand the parent's point either, but I think there is value in learning and using different systems, even as a hobby. As you agree with, programming a low level system can't be done with the same tools as you are used to, you won't have the same convenience, and you might have to do things differently, even think differently about otherwise common problems. There seems to be plenty of
learnings in there.
It's nice that we could buy and old machine and program something on it. But at the same time we could do it in Javascript, on the web with a very pretty interface. So why should we trade all the knowledge, the tools and the languages that we (well, people like you how tend to get all nostalgic over this topic) have built and and write something on an archaic system?
I never had such an old system, yet at the same time, I understand the constraints more or less, I now a bit of assembler, C and still question where this knowledge is really benefiting me. (Though I do find it very interesting!)
If I want to have a constraint environment, I could join a JavaScript 1k challenge and also work with artificial constraints (at the same time I could still enjoy the modern tools, environments and even graphics).
Maybe I just really don't see the point.
And to your last point, I think a better approach would be to show our children either PyGame or even modding tools for modern games. I just don't think a young child would really be that interested in the archaic inner workings of a slow machine, but could be really interested in making mods. I'm not saying there are no such children around (I'm sure there are), I'm just questioning the approach here.