A friend and I learned BASIC in 5th grade from older friends using a TRS-80 at a Radio Shack in the local mall. The employees there used to allow the area kids to come in and use the floor models for free (because back in the mid-80s, none of us could afford such a thing.) Eventually, the schools started investing in TRS-80s and set up fledgling computer labs for students to use and that's when things really seemed to take off. I spent a lot of time in front of that green-on-black screen teaching myself how to code and it's amazing to this day how much of what I taught myself is still relevant. Styles and syntax come and go, but the underlying concepts seem to be fairly static.

You do realize, of course, that roughly 30 years ago, computer geeks were running complaining about these new-fangled GUIs and how they just wanted a good ol' command line interface without the pretty graphics. I think we're long past those arguments at this point. IOW, you are squarely in the minority. People want computer interfaces they can relate to and that feel "human" and that means pretty effects and cool graphics.

I'm fine with that attitude which is why I've been migrating off Google's products over the last year. However, don't you take issue at all with a company misrepresenting itself to people? The issue here isn't that Google is collecting data but rather that they're doing it under the guise of providing free services. You really don't think companies like Google--hell, especially Google--shouldn't be a little more forthcoming about these things? I don't understand how our standards and expectations of privacy as consumers got so damn low.

"Most Home Network Gear Buggy"