Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks very much for this book reference. Our son (10yo) is learning to code and after quite a bit of research (and to my own huge surprise), I've pointed him to QBASIC (via DosBOX). I'm just a hobbyist, and approaching 40, so maybe this is pure nostalgia. But I do think text adventures (especially writing one yourself) are still a great way to teach coding -- and the whole keyboard-centric paradigm of computing. As…
The Ted Felix tutorial reminds me of the beginner's guide I got with my VIC-20 -- easy enough for a five-year-old (me) to read and follow, and it got me thinking of the kinds of programs I could build on my own.
This is exactly what happened to our son (10yo) as he went through the chapters. He would start seeing everything around him (and, particularly, in his Minecraft environment) in if-else statements, etc. It was quite fun to observe.