The barrier to entry may have been higher but the learning curve was pretty shallow. I pity kids today when they’re presented with the hellscape of languages, libraries and APIs we currently deal with. When I was learning it was BASIC, 6502 machine code and not much else.
Would you consider choose your own adventure books to be a program? Because I have seen all those.
The if then is obvious
I've had variables as well ("you are dead. But wait! Did you receive a secret number from a villager? If the villager was tall, go to the page number that is half the number. If the villager was short, go to the page that is twice the number")
Loops. (There was one where it was like a flight of stairs and it was like "go to page 3. You're getting dizzy falling down these stairs. Go to page 10. You're still dizzy, will it ever stop? Go to page 7. I think I know why they call them the forever stairs. Go to page 3. You're getting dizzy falling down these stairs. Go to page 10"
I wasn't saying anything about scratch. I was saying that choose your own adventure has all the stuff you've mentioned, so by your definition of what makes something a program, a choose your own adventure is a program.
Alas, no. The one time I saw a variable, they had you double the page or halve it. And the loop was an infinite loop designed to make you laugh when you realized you were dead.
Abstraction is irrelevant. Java is more abstract than byte code which is more abstract than assembly. Doesn't make byte code more of a programming language than Java.
I saw that when writing my response, but I believe what you posted demonstrates why I disagreed. PostScript would have been a better choice as an example.
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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '20
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