Programming | Childhood | Life Story | Logic
My Programming Journey 1: The Cereal Box and Knitting Needle Computer
I was exposed to ideas about logical thinking years before I started programming
Today — just for fun — I recreated something I made as a child.
I don’t remember whether it was from a children’s TV show or a book. But when I was a child in the 1970s, I remember making something with my sister using a cereal box and knitting needles.
It was one of the first things that made me think about logic, quite a few years before I started using programmable calculators and microcomputers.
What does it do?
The idea is to ask the “cardboard computer” questions such as, “Who plays a musical instrument and likes cats?” by leaving in the appropriate knitting needles. The cards that fall indicate the answer.
Admittedly, it’s not exactly convenient to use, given that you are limited by how many knitting needles and cards you can fit in! And don’t get me started on making changes to the data…
How I recreated it
Items used
- Cereal box
