Usborne 1980s Computer Books

This was really cool to see life as a kid in '84 for some of these stories/games and how you convinced a young kid to copy page after page of BASIC and adapt for various machines. I loved the, "don't look at this unless you really need to cheat" and the text was mirrored (right-to-left) so you had to use a mirror to reveal or become dyslexic.

Thanks for sharing this, it's getting my creative engines going for what to do TODAY that would be fun and engaging for my daughter. :)

Is there some relationship between Usborne and Osborne books? And of course the Osborne portable computer?

> Why not python? It's pretty simple for kids to understand.

Not for the book type format - the kids will be typing the code in, not copying + pasting them.

Significant whitespace is a killer in printed form; so Python is not even in the running.

I had the same experience in the mid 90s. We had a computer lab with windows 98 and VB was around but all the library books were for qbasic and older things. Luckily 98 did have qbasic installed so I was able to use the code.

I then asked my dad for a book on C++. While I managed to make a few things, I distinctly remember getting lost at the concept of the "this" pointer. I really gained programming competency when I discovered python a few years after this. Teenage years I spent most of my time playing with HTML and trying to understand what the heck dynamic HTML was.

I'm trying replicate that path with my kid. We just got him a C64 ultimate (replica of the original highly recommend commodore.net) and these books are perfect for him to toy around with.

These were some of the most influential books of my youth, teaching a generation of young kids quite advanced topics. I still picture cartoon robots putting numbers in boxes whenever I write code involving pointers.

But my favourite[0] was Write Your Own Adventure Programs, which taught data driven programming and text parsing.

[0] https://sheep.horse/2017/2/usborne_computer_books.html