+1 to Input. I learned programming from the Brazilian version of Input, a straight translation from the original AFAIK, which you could bind in a branded Input hard cover (for a fee) and create a mini programming encyclopedia.
I've actually been collecting the Usbourne books for the past couple years! For my research on providing typing exercises to CS students, I like to use the books as a physical prop to point out how "this was how they used to do it" [1]. This is actually one of the issues in modern CS learning resources - it's too easy for novices to simply copy and paste the code, so they never really refine the mistakes made from simple syntax errors. By forcing students to retype code, you are making them more comfortable with the keyboard and they don't have to worry about juggling technical literacy with problem-solving skills.
I agree with you completely. I am self taught. I started as a child from books like this and also the help files in qbasic.
Ever since those days any time I'm learning a new framework or language I turn auto complete off. If I find good code snippets, I retype them and usually refactor them completely.
Although it takes me a bit longer to ramp up, i feel this has lead to me being a very good engineer and has given me a deeper understanding of many techniques and has helped me commit many things to memory. At this point adapting to new languages and being productive in them only takes me a few months.
Yup, I feel the same way with unpacking a tar file. Rather than just copy/paste the answer I see on SO, I explicitly retype it to that I learn the syntax.
And just look at how much simpler it is compared to modern kids programming materials. The code is denser but there's less of it, and far far less bootstrapping.
I think that is the killer right now, the amount of barriers to moving pixels on the screen is very high relative to how it was for us on the 8bits.
I'm playing with DragonRuby now [1]. It lacks a lot (but is coming along very rapidly). It's aimed at adults wanting to build real games, but what appealed to me was exactly that the barrier to get started is extremely low compared to most game engines out there. I particularly dislike the IDE-based ones that expects you to learn a custom environment and build a lot of the game visually.
I love GLBasic. It's a basic with types (sort of classes). Also has 3D grafics but I mostly used it for 2D. It's on steam now and can export to several platforms other than windows. It has been around for quite a while, there is little to no bootstrapping needed and it's fast. You can also write inline C if you need more speed. I haven't had the chance to try android export yet but I have seen some people from the community put up things there recently so it does work.
Another killer is that kids expect much more from a computer nowadays. Being able to move around a block on the screen was something that you could impress your nerd friends with, but today, what can you possibly program in a few lines of code to impress kids?
Actually kids can be pretty impressed if they did the program themselves. They think it's all magic until they try it on their own, also makes them more understanding for others work and bugs. Less acidic when it comes to judging others work on the play-store.
I sure would have loved this as a kid! It's even more fun and colorful than Creative Computing (although it's not a monthly publication). I really used to look forward to every issue of CC each month.
I also loved these books as a kid. A while ago I started making a game - BASIC Instincts - that was going to be about type-in listings and modifying your world with code (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwBiJR_rj_w)
I got the interpreter working and started creating the world... then the game Else Heart.Break() came out and took the wind out of my sails - it did what I was planning to do, only much better. Though it might be time to revisit it now!
One of my favourite programming books for its anyone-can-get-into-programming optimism and for including the timeless advice "Remember, when you are trying to work out a game, not to include anything which your computer won't be able to do" (p38).
It's also amazing that this short volume supports (at least) 8 dialects of BASIC. Much respect to the authors for writing mostly-portable code and then tweaking and testing it 8 times.
I had an Oric-1 in those days and cut my teeth porting the games in this book to the Oric. The cassette tape with my work is long since perished, but I do still have the drawings from those books burned in my brain, like a searing brand. ;)
If I recall, the same artist also illustrated a kids "Spy" book, which was also another favourite .. although in hindsight, a bit spookier now than it should be.
I really wish they would release as free PDFs the Usborne Book of the Future series. I'd also love to get my hands on PDFs of the Neil Ardley 'World of Tomorrow' series as well!
I remember the commodore blue book christmas. I went through that book in a weekend. I could never get the sprite/gaming stuff working as they were laid out in the book, though. Very frustrating as an 11 year old.
There was a book on computers I found in my childhood that inspired me to get into programming, and I'm really interested in finding it again. I'm convinced it was either an Usborne book or was somehow related to the Usborne books, and there's a lot of fans of those books around here, so I figure this thread is probably a good place to ask around to see if anyone recognizes it.
The book had qualities in common with the books "The Usborne Young Scientist: Computers (1992)"/"Usborne Guide to Computers (1981)" (near-identical span and even order of topics, but this book was much less cartoony and was more technically in-depth) and "The Usborne Book of the Future" (it contained some pages like https://miro.medium.com/max/1920/1*M9yzYC6k154ODT0k0SiYMg.jp... with same style of illustration and lots of descriptions about the items in the illustration) but the book was none of those. The book wasn't dedicated to showing off program code, but it did have a bit of BASIC on one page, it contained descriptions of logic gates, and it even had a half-adder circuit, which I remember copying each of into my notebook and simulating on paper. I think the book was either based on or was a precursor to "Usborne Guide to Computers (1981)", but I haven't been able to get any further than that. I've written a lot more of a description from what I remember at https://tildes.net/~talk/is4/whats_one_thing_you_havent_been....
00.ИПА 01.ПА 02.ИП7 03.- 04.Fx<0 05.12 06.ИПВ 07./-/ 08.÷ 09.П2 10.БП 11.36 12.ИП4 13.ИПА 14.÷ 15.F√ 16.ИП7 17.× 18.XY 19.С/П 20.П9 21.П8 22.П2 23.÷ 24.ИПД 25.ИП8 26.- 27.Fx≥0 28.00 29.ПД 30.ИП5 31.+ 32.÷ 33.ИП6 34.× 35.П8 36.ИП0 37.ИП8 38.ИП9 39.Fsin 40.× 41.ИПВ 42./-/ 43.ПП 44.89 45.+ 46.П0 47.ПП 48.93 49.9 50.0 51.× 52.Fπ 53.÷ 54.ИПА 55.÷ 56.ИПС 57.+ 58.ПС 59.Fcos 60.Fx<0 61.61 62.Fx≥0 63.63 64.С/П 65.ИПВ 66.ИП8 67.ИП9 68.Fcos 69.× 70.ИП7 71.ИПА 72.÷ 73.Fx2 74.ИП4 75.× 76.- 77.ИП0 78.ПП 79.89 80.+ 81.ПВ 82.ПП 83.93 84.2 85.÷ 86.ИПА 87.+ 88.В/О 89.ИП0 90.× 91.ИПА 92.÷ 93.+ 94.ИП2 95.× 96.В/О
And a story which tells what it's about:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-revolution/ho...