Blog: It Made A Generation Who Can Code

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Last night, when the news broke that Sir Clive Sinclair had died, people started talking about it online, and an awful lot of them quoted bits of Hey Hey 16K. This was as ever an HONOUR - I obviously didn't have anything to do with the ZX Spectrum or the subsequent wave of UK BRANES going on to develop our current computing industry, and I don't really have that much to do with the Retro Gaming types or the various museums, but it was still nice to know that I had made a tiny contribution to the historical record of it all, even if it was only to express how many of us remember the era. It was still a bit odd though when Dominik Diamond (off the telly!) mentioned it!

Back when I wrote the song it felt like nobody ever talked about the influence that the ZX Spectrum had on us all, and on the country, and even though that's changed a bit since then it was still a bit weird to watch the news later that night and see as much time given to the C5 as to the home computers. I guess a grainy clip of people looking vaguely silly on a C5 makes for better telly than a teenager hunched over a tiny keyboard playing "Manic Miner", but it seemed like a wasted opportunity to really celebrate the fact that Sir Clive Sinclair's inventions changed the way the entire country looked at computers. SO many people of my generation owe much of the way their lives turned out to the DIY spirit of the Spectrum, whether that's just getting a start in coding or grasping the idea that you COULD create things yourself and get them out into the world. If we hadn't had the Spectrum we'd all have grown up with BORING BBC Micros, genuinely using it to do homework or solve math puzzles, rather than creating our own stupid games and, occasionally, being able to make a living out of it.

What I'm trying to say is basically what the song says, I guess - we all owe a huge debt of gratitude to a PUNK ROCK GENIUS who gave so many of us our start in DIY culture, as well as the ability to make a living in computing too. Thanks very much, Sir Clive!

posted 17/9/2021 by MJ Hibbett

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