Raise Your Computer Literacy to Mastery

There are different levels of computer literacy.

1. Beginner - You know how to turn on a computer, open a web browser, use email and a word processor, etc. and maybe how to copy files around.  If you have been using a computer for many years and this is what you know, you are still a beginner.
2. Power User - In addition to what the Beginner knows you also know how to tweak operating system settings and how to type some commands in a terminal or command window.
3. Master - You know all the above and you also understand programming concepts.  Without this knowledge you are really at the mercy of the computer and software providers.

I like to compare this to understanding something about cars and how they work.  People who drive cars without automotive literacy face big challenges when buying a car (especially a used car), when the car breaks down on the road, and when bringing the car to the mechanic for repair.  Understanding cars improves driving skills, personal safety, and saves you time and money.

When schools first started teaching young people about computers they had a high concept of literacy and they tried to teach programming using languages like Logo, and Pilot and BASIC and sometimes Pascal.  Over time this eroded and computer class became more about just teaching the Beginner skill set described above.

Adults now are wowed by how much young people know about computers, but this is usually just a knowledge of computer trivia and of surface details, and not a deep understanding of computers at all.  We must be careful not to be hoodwinked by the semblance of mastery.

Real mastery is achieved only if you understand programming and have learned to make the machine do what you want.  Otherwise your computer will only do what other people have programmed it to do, and is that really what a so called personal computer is supposed to be?  I am including phones and tablets when I use the word computer, because clearly these things are computers.

A non-obvious benefit of mastery of computer literacy is the personal growth that happens when you learn to program because of the way it sharpens the mind.  Programming teaches analytical thinking and problem solving skills, and it can also be great fun.

I hope that this article encourages you the reader to raise your level of computer literacy!

MIX C

Unlike today, in the 1980s most computer magazines like BYTE, Compute!, and PC Magazine had lots of articles about programming and programming languages. BASIC, Pascal, Prolog, Lisp, Forth, assembly language; you name it. In 1987 C was a very popular language and a good C programmer made good money so I decided that I should learn it.

I found an magazine ad for MIX C headlined "C for yourself". They had a very special deal called MIX C Works and this included the compiler, a split screen code editor, and a source level debugger for only $89.90. The ad claimed that the included book would make learning C easy. I paid for this software myself, and it was so exciting to open the package when it arrived in the mail. Nice new crisp books and disks. It all felt very professionally done. It was a great investment.

It was very exciting to dig into the C tutorial and use the editor and the source level debugger. This was really well written software and book was as good as the ad promised. C is a nice, small language and well written C is actually quite pretty to look at with those curly braces.

We had some simple applications in engineering that were perfect for learning a new language. Open a file, translate the information in some way and write it back out to a new file.