Man, I just posted this in a recent thread :-) Still think my comment applies: they need to be updated for a modern platform (not Python).
What “modern platform” would you suggest?
Lua/Love2D?
Usborne 1980s Computer Books
31–40 of 62 posts
Re: Usborne 1980s Computer Books
#32Thanks OP. Would've never found these without your link.
Re: Usborne 1980s Computer Books
#33I knew an adolescent kid (not me) who built the robot from that exact robots book. A historical thing to appreciate is that, even though this book was unusually prescriptive and nuts&bolts detailed, for the time, building the robot was much harder, and much less likely, than it would be today, even to the same design. This was pre-Web, and it involved mail-order adventures, and you were kinda alone. IIRC, he got the…
I loved this book as a kid, and I built this robot as a kid for a science fair. And, despite having built a lot of balsa wood R/C airplanes, it was challenging.
It kick started an interest in robotics for me though. I now work for my second robotics startup company!
Re: Usborne 1980s Computer Books
#34There used to be more on this page, if memory serves. Like I remember grabbing one of these books on Programming Assembly for the 6502 chip maybe 5 or 10 years ago, but I'm not seeing it now.
Re: Usborne 1980s Computer Books
#35These are actually how I first learned to program, but around 2001-2002, when I was about ten years old. I found a couple of them at the library, and that's when I realized it was something you could just learn...but lacked a BASIC interpreter. I ended up also finding a No Starch Press book on JavaScript, and porting the BASIC listings to ye olde pre-Node JavaScript as my first foray into programming. Then I also got…
Anyone remember the book "Absolute Beginner's Guide to QBASIC"?
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/absolute-beginners-guide-to-qb...
Like most people, I also learned how to program in BASIC from a mustachioed machete-wielding British gentleman whilst on safari.
Re: Usborne 1980s Computer Books
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not python? It's pretty simple for kids to understand.
> 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.
[picture of Tips Kitty] Don't forget! Every time you see " ⦙ " in the listing, press the [Tab] key on your keyboard. See page 23 to learn why this is important.
And page 23 teaches you about significant whitespace, and how to configure several text editors that a kid's likely to have available to actually show it like that. Heck, I use Panic's Nova for my text editing and it does that out of the box with no configuration needed.
Re: Usborne 1980s Computer Books
#37These are actually how I first learned to program, but around 2001-2002, when I was about ten years old. I found a couple of them at the library, and that's when I realized it was something you could just learn...but lacked a BASIC interpreter. I ended up also finding a No Starch Press book on JavaScript, and porting the BASIC listings to ye olde pre-Node JavaScript as my first foray into programming. Then I also got…
That’s super cool. I’m actually surprised if you had a PC in 2001 that it didn’t have QBASIC on it though. I think that was being shipped with Windows at least through Windows 98. But of course, your solution to that was twice as good for your education than if you’d learned only BASIC so that’s good. My experience was kind of similar except I was learning in the mid 90s and only had access to various flavors of BASI…
Internet resources weren't amazing back then (and, of course, still dial up at home until around 2005) so I didn't know QBASIC existed at first. We were on to Windows XP by then, which I don't believe included it, but our old '98 box would have had it.
I think I did also get my hands on a free version of Liberty BASIC from another book at one point, because it was on an included CD-ROM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_BASIC
I also moved into the Web sphere, because of course there were HTML books and I was already looking at JavaScript. I ended up picking up PHP for awhile, then eventually got into Java (especially after Minecraft was on the scene) and that has served me well career-wise.
Re: Usborne 1980s Computer Books
#38I had the space games and the adventure games book as a kid and I was obsessed with them. I’d type in the whole program to play a game and then because I didn’t have a floppy drive on my C64 I’d have to type them in all over again the next time I wanted to play. This was how I learned BASIC and started programming. 40 years later I’m still at it.
Re: Usborne 1980s Computer Books
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
[picture of Tips Kitty] Don't forget! Every time you see " ⦙ " in the listing, press the [Tab] key on your keyboard. See page 23 to learn why this is important. And page 23 teaches you about significant whitespace, and how to configure several text editors that a kid's likely to have available to actually show it like that. Heck, I use Panic's Nova for my text editing and it does that out of the box with no configura…
Python is also already all over the Raspberry Pi and MicroPython/CircuitPython spheres, so there's an easy road into SBCs and microcontrollers.
Education has already chosen Python as the preferred language for this sort of thing. It has some unfortunate bits, but it's certainly a more ergonomic language than BASIC. Counting tabs is less arduous than messing with line numbers and GOSUB.
Re: Usborne 1980s Computer Books
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
[picture of Tips Kitty] Don't forget! Every time you see " ⦙ " in the listing, press the [Tab] key on your keyboard. See page 23 to learn why this is important. And page 23 teaches you about significant whitespace, and how to configure several text editors that a kid's likely to have available to actually show it like that. Heck, I use Panic's Nova for my text editing and it does that out of the box with no configura…
> [picture of Tips Kitty] Don't forget! Every time you see " ⦙ " in the listing, press the [Tab] key on your keyboard. See page 23 to learn why this is important.
I don't think you actually used those books :-/
No one linearly writes code, from the start of the file to the end; they edit it. They move blocks around if they missed a page, they navigate around putting in missing if statements and removing incorrectly-added loops. Those programs were very much not one-and-done, they were heavily modified by the kids.
Your proposal of "Tell them to configure their editor for Python" and "add in unicode symbols to represent whitespace" is the exact opposite of what those books were about.
The books were about removing superfluous barriers, not adding them! Using Python would result in a whole lot of incidental complexity for literally no gain.