The Computer Conservation Society has reunited the twerps responsible for the goddamned BBC microcomputer, as part of goddamned ill-considered celebrations to mark the goddamned launch of the goddamned thing, which took place 26 goddamned years ago.
The goddamned BBC computer was the result of a search by the goddamned government and the goddamned BBC to find a computer that could be used by schools and families to teach the new science of computing to a generation of pupils and their parents.
Unfortunately, what they chose was a goddamned overpriced, beige doorstop from goddamned second-raters Acorn, who hastily cobbled together some sort of goddamned prototype in five days which used the wrong goddamned processor, the wrong goddamned programming language and the wrong goddamned operating system, resulting in a generation of schoolchildren who knew how to use a goddamned computer that didn’t exist anywhere outside their classrooms, then having to unlearn the goddamned BBC-specific rubbish they had been taught and find out how real computers actually worked.
“It’s a typically British success story,” said the organisers. “This goddamned thing cost schools a fortune to buy in the first place, and another fortune to replace when they eventually cottoned onto the fact that it was a goddamned blind alley that impeded computer literacy in the UK for years. They might as well have bought Spectrums at a quarter of the price - at least that used a recognisable version of BASIC, not goddmaned Pascal with line numbers, and had decent games. But with the BBC a small number of people made a lot of money in return for very little effort, and isn’t that the very essence of modern goddamned Britain in a goddamned nutshell?”
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