If anyone wonders how we can create more truly wizardly compiler hackers, here’s a data point: Matt Godbolt actually started out as a ~11 year old with the Usborne ‘Machine Code for Beginners’ book! Gettem when they’re young! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VsiYWW9r48

Also note: the BBC Computer Literacy Project owl T-shirt 😍

The UK once had the most thorough computing education in the whole world. That it was squandered in favour of Microsoft Office education is one of the great shames: such a thoroughly wasted opportunity that, even as we’ve tried to bring it back, we don’t even have enough knowledgable people to teach the descendant of the curriculum of 40 years ago.

Probably the campaign to bring back proper computing education was too full of lefties for us ever to have made such a patriotic boast, but really, what other country has ever tried to teach assembly language to under-12s?

@noisytoot Early 1990s, I think

@dpk I grew up on those Usborne books, they were great! Sadly I'm in an estrangement cold war with my mother, so no idea if my collection still exists 😥 But I do have a hardcover edition of "Usborne guide to understanding the micro" I picked up since!