Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era
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Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era
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Re: Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era
#2For a few years now I’ve been teching my son to code. This feels like a good project to do together. Grab one of these games understand it in basic and then reimplement it using my fav language.
Any other parents out there teaching their kids/teens/young adults to code?
Re: Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era
#3For a few years now I’ve been teching my son to code. This feels like a good project to do together. Grab one of these games understand it in basic and then reimplement it using my fav language. Any other parents out there teaching their kids/teens/young adults to code?
I tried but quickly realized that teaching is a different skill than coding itself. i also got overwhelmed with the choices and did not know how to start. Scratch did not really grab his interest. And "dad, teach me how to make a minecraft mod" was not possible. I also did not see the patience necessary to learn it.
Re: Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era
#4For a few years now I’ve been teching my son to code. This feels like a good project to do together. Grab one of these games understand it in basic and then reimplement it using my fav language. Any other parents out there teaching their kids/teens/young adults to code?
I bought a programming magazine in the 1980s and copied a game to my Commodore 128. It didn't work, and I failed to debug it, so I set the magazine aside and starting writing my own games. In retrospect I think it was a great educational lesson. My first attempt to copy/paste code was a complete failure, so I was forced to think up stuff on my own. Man, youngsters nowadays can copy/paste in milliseconds, whereas back in the day it took us hours!
Re: Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era
#5I was introduced to programming by the book that came with The Apple IIGS, "A Touch of Applesoft Basic." http://www.apple2.pl/books/applesoft.pdf
I've always wondered if it was one of the most influential books, ever. It certainly influenced me!
Re: Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era
#6For a few years now I’ve been teching my son to code. This feels like a good project to do together. Grab one of these games understand it in basic and then reimplement it using my fav language. Any other parents out there teaching their kids/teens/young adults to code?
I think the key is not to go too fast. Simply writing simple statements and seeing it work and do stuff is enough. So I found it best to start simple and work your way up. These little games look like great examples to work from.
Re: Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era
#7I remember getting that book from the library and getting the games to work on my TI-99/4a. The BASIC dialect on that machine was not quite the same as used in the book so some translation was necessary. Can't copy/paste from a book (copy/paste wasn't a thing on that machine anyway) so you had to sit down and type it in, keystroke by keystroke. I think the slow pace of it helped me understand what the program was doing. If a line was "GOTO 500" I would always look down at line 500 and try to understand why that jump was there.
Re: Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era
#8For a few years now I’ve been teching my son to code. This feels like a good project to do together. Grab one of these games understand it in basic and then reimplement it using my fav language. Any other parents out there teaching their kids/teens/young adults to code?
I think the key is not to go too fast. Simply writing simple statements and seeing it work and do stuff is enough. So I found it best to start simple and work your way up. These little games look like great examples to work from.
I remember typing up a paint/simple sprite animation program from a book in BASIC when I was 12 or so. I had no idea what anything meant, but I managed to add color support to it. Geez, this brings up memories of me sitting there on the computer debugging things. It was before the age of popular Internet connectivity as well, so no stupid social media (there wasn't even social media!) to distract me every 30 seconds.
Re: Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era
#9I was introduced to programming by the book that came with The Apple IIGS, "A Touch of Applesoft Basic." http://www.apple2.pl/books/applesoft.pdf I've always wondered if it was one of the most influential books, ever. It certainly influenced me!
To be influential, it would help if it were sold with one of the most popular systems. There were only around 1.7 million Apple IIgs systems sold.
The Commodore 64 sold the most systems but so many owners only played games on it that the manual probably wasn't the most influential book on BASIC.
Exempting system manuals, the BASIC Computer Games books were probably it.
Re: Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era
#10Oh man, I learned so much from these books and a few other similar ones.
I learned to program a few years after these were popular (around 1991 or so), but a friend of my dad’s gifted me a bunch of them after he found out I was into computers. I was 8, and it changed my life.
They were magical to me. I didn’t even have access to a BASIC interpreter yet (I didn’t even know what that meant), but I read the intro to BASIC programming book and the computer games books so many times. I remember running to my parents room to tell them I could use PRINT to output to the screen. I would write programs by hand onto paper.
I remember a few months later going to my dad’s friend and asking, “ok, where do I type these programs in?” He gave me a copy of QBasic, and away I went.
I remember having to learn so much to get the games to work. I learned about different versions of BASIC, and how to convert things to work in my version. Taking bits of one game and combining them with others. Making my own.
My life has never been the same since.