AWJ |
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Reged: 03/08/05
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Posts: 936
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Loc: Ottawa, Ontario
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Re: Atari: Game Over is now on Netflix streamer
04/28/15 05:09 PM
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> Also, I should note that the various Intellivision developer interviews floating > around are an interesting contrast. Not sure if it's L.A. vs the Valley or just > Nolan's freewheeling Atari vs. a division of a decades-old toy company, but the Inty > programmers were quite a bit more straight-laced. Booze instead of drugs, never to > the Atari levels of excess, and of course infinite practical jokes. It sounds a lot > like the modern game industry, except with female programmers. (Whoever figures out > why girls freely went into CS in the 70s and stopped abruptly in the mid 80s will > make a lot of HR departments very happy).
I can't remember where I read it, but there's speculation that the rise of home computers is to blame. The theory is that before the 1980s basically nobody had any opportunity to interact with a computer before they went off to university, but once that wasn't true any more you had an overwhelming advantage getting into CS if you'd already been developing computer literacy since elementary school on your Apple II or C64 or Atari ST or Amiga, and for one reason or another the category of kids who played with home computers was overwhelmingly male.
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