These 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 a Commodore 64 on eBay some time later.
It was similar for me, a little later in the '00s. I didn't have access to any computers at the time, BASIC interpreter or otherwise. Some years later I got access to Visual Basic on the family computer which unfortunately had very little in common!
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. :)
I learned to program with some of these books. Usborne also quickly published them in Spanish, and I was lucky that some editorial companies used to go to my school to sell their books. I grabbed the machine code and adventure programs. That was 1985 and I was 10 years old. Still looking at the drawings brings me good memories and goosebumps.
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.
I grew up with these just as they were beginning to age and part of the challenge was getting the dated Basic to run on newer machines. The blend of clear instruction and evocative old-school art remains fantastic and I want to write updated ones.
Pico-8 or Lua more generally might be a good language target. But I rather think a bespoke environment/interpreter would be the right way to go for the project.
See also the Usborne world of the future, ghosts, monsters etc. they were all magical!
I 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 book in the gift shop at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, on a school field trip. Just getting access to the initial information was almost random.
Then one of the most obvious components -- the motors with the right gearing and power requirements and weight properties -- weren't at Radio Shack, and not something you were likely to be able to cannibalize from a yard sale.
So first you needed to order a catalog from a company known to sell the motors in single quantities. Then, once it arrived, weeks later (eons in kid perception of time), you needed to convince parents that it's a good idea to write a check or use their credit card, to order these expensive parts from some weird mail-order company they've never heard of. (And probably none of their friends have their kids doing this.)
And there are no forums where you can talk to other people doing this. And no influencer YouTube channels showing other people succeeding at it. All you have is this one book, and dubious parents.
Then you needed a bunch of hobby-shop supplies, like various sheets of balsa wood, rods, etc.
In absence of printable STL files, and cutting patterns, and PCB layouts you can send off, and affiliate links, or parts kits, if you stick with it, you eventually scrap a lot of supplies building the mechanics to something that looks minimally viable.
And you eventually risk plugging in your first soldered circuit board into the family's only home computer (no, you don't have a hobby/educational microcontroller SBC). And if it zaps, you might not have anything to program on for a long time.
If it doesn't zap the family computer, then you try to get the mechanics not to rip themselves apart.
So a kid of that era who embarked on the project might never get a working robot, but they would learn a lot about a breadth of things, in the process of trying.
Stumbling on the Usborne "Introduction to Computer Programming - Basic for Beginners" book in the library bookmobile that came to my school was probably the first domino that set off the rest of my life in computing. I owe a lot to that book. When I had the book checked out my family didn't have a computer at home so I had to imagine what it'd be like to do the things in my head until I managed to get some time in the school computer lab to try out some of the exercises in the book. Being able to tell the computer what to do just felt so powerful to me.
I also had one of their intro books before having a computer available. But it had a paper based simulator of the program counter and variables so you could run through without a computer (I was saving up for one though, but that took years).
I remember these very well from when they first came out, I particularly liked Keyboards and Computer Music and would spend ages working out what synth/drum machine that they had tried to draw as they somewhat abstracted the design away.
Loved them and they really did spark an interest in taking music and computing more seriously.
The "Practice your BASIC" book was in my school library, and in the spring of 1989, I was able to take said book to the computer room at lunch breaks and for a donation of 40p to charity (Cafod, it was a Catholic school), I could do what I wanted on the computers. I learned to code. Most of the other kids played games.
That book started a remarkable journey. By 1996 I was at University studying Software Engineering, already proficient in C. Ten years later I was running my own software consultancy. Ten years after that I had been CTO for three startups and moved to London.
I often like to haunt a bookshop or library, and check out the programming books there. No 11 year old would be able to get started the way I did today in that context. I love the Raspberry Pi project and its goals, it's the closest we have to that opportunity. I do - and will continue to - support it multiple ways, and hope others do too.
Honestly, without those introductory guides to coding, I don't know what would have happened to me, but the odds say, considering what happened to my classmates from that school, drug overdose or prison were on the cards.
Thanks Usborne. Thanks BASIC. Thanks to that computing teacher who had that idea.
Check out 'Coding for Beginners Using Python' by Osborne.
Also have a look at 'Coding Projects in Python' by DK books.
Both these books are excellent and would enable a smart and determined 11 year old to learn to code.
To be honest these books teach coding in a way that is much easier than it was in your day. You can also jump on many, many websites and teach yourself how to code.
You're also an exception. Many, many kids read those old Osborne books and only a very tiny fraction like yourself became coders and an even smaller fraction became as successful as yourself.
I had a book which was published by Usborne which was part of their "Monsters" series. It was the Monsters teaching BASIC. There were several program listings and a "porting guide" which told you how to convert from APPLE BASIC (and other variants) to GW-BASIC (which is what I used). Doing the porting and implementing this really gave me a lot of perspective.
Apparently people aren't aware that not everybody lives in the US, but some may want to see the US page of the website anyway. Auto-redirecting people to the local version is incredibly stupid, particularly when it ends in a 404.
There 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.
I 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.
I learned about machine code and two's complement from the Machine Code for Beginners book. It gave me a head start in college 10 years later. With it, I got my Amstrad CPC 464 to run a loop maybe 100 faster than BASIC, and I was enlightened.
The Usborne books were the single strongest teacher I had getting into coding. I never owned any; I relied on the library.
In the earliest days, I didn't have a computer either. I'd read an Usborne book, then hang around computer stores poking at the 4+ years out of date Commodore 64s and CPC 464s and even the Acorn Archimedes (fanciest most capable BASIC), putting what I learned into practice. I'd even practice on VTech devices with two monochrome LCD lines of text, in toy shops, to get my fix.
I don't think I'd be where I am today without those books.
I got handed down some of these from somebody in grade three or four at school (I think they had belonged to one of my teacher's sons and since she knew I was into computers, she gave them to my mum for me to have). This was around 1999-2000 kind of time so they were a bit out of date, but it was a good learning experience trying to port some of the programs into QBasic!
I was fascinated with these and read them many times cover to cover over the years. Practical Things to Do with your Microcomputer was always my favourite, as well as the robotics one. I also found the machine code one interesting but never really grasped it until later.
I think the ideas in them (as well as some other computer books and magazines I had) really helped steer my interests from just being interested in computers and software to being more interested in hardware and embedded systems, which is where I work today. These were very important in hindsight in shaping my interests!
Thanks for this. When I was growing up the local library and the school one both had a lot of Usborne books on what seemed like every subject under the sun. I particularly remember them having very good artwork. One of my mother's friends was a direct seller of their books, so I got a few that was as well.
We had some of this books translated into Portuguese.
As kid, starting at the age of 10 years old, I was devouring the Timex 2068 manual and two other programming books my father gave to me.
Then it was computer magazines and the local library.
We had a very famous collection, some of the books were Osborne translations, and books from this collection are still sold today on portuguese ebay, OLX.
34 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 49.8 ms ] threadStill think my comment applies: they need to be updated for a modern platform (not Python).
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 a Commodore 64 on eBay some time later.
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. :)
Just had Claude port one of my favorite one of these games as a kid to HTML+JS, from the 1983 "Creepy Computer Games" book: https://tools.simonwillison.net/usborne-mad-house
Osborne Introduction to microcomputers, Volume 0 https://archive.org/details/an-introduction-to-microcomputer...
Osborne Introduction to microcomputers, Volume 1 https://www.rsp-italy.it/IT/Books/_contents/Osborne-An%20Int...
There is volume 2 in the series 2, too
I have originals of these books and his books on 6800 6502, 6809 and 68000 programming.
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
Pico-8 or Lua more generally might be a good language target. But I rather think a bespoke environment/interpreter would be the right way to go for the project.
See also the Usborne world of the future, ghosts, monsters etc. they were all magical!
This was pre-Web, and it involved mail-order adventures, and you were kinda alone.
IIRC, he got the book in the gift shop at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, on a school field trip. Just getting access to the initial information was almost random.
Then one of the most obvious components -- the motors with the right gearing and power requirements and weight properties -- weren't at Radio Shack, and not something you were likely to be able to cannibalize from a yard sale.
So first you needed to order a catalog from a company known to sell the motors in single quantities. Then, once it arrived, weeks later (eons in kid perception of time), you needed to convince parents that it's a good idea to write a check or use their credit card, to order these expensive parts from some weird mail-order company they've never heard of. (And probably none of their friends have their kids doing this.)
And there are no forums where you can talk to other people doing this. And no influencer YouTube channels showing other people succeeding at it. All you have is this one book, and dubious parents.
Then you needed a bunch of hobby-shop supplies, like various sheets of balsa wood, rods, etc.
In absence of printable STL files, and cutting patterns, and PCB layouts you can send off, and affiliate links, or parts kits, if you stick with it, you eventually scrap a lot of supplies building the mechanics to something that looks minimally viable.
And you eventually risk plugging in your first soldered circuit board into the family's only home computer (no, you don't have a hobby/educational microcontroller SBC). And if it zaps, you might not have anything to program on for a long time.
If it doesn't zap the family computer, then you try to get the mechanics not to rip themselves apart.
So a kid of that era who embarked on the project might never get a working robot, but they would learn a lot about a breadth of things, in the process of trying.
Loved them and they really did spark an interest in taking music and computing more seriously.
That book started a remarkable journey. By 1996 I was at University studying Software Engineering, already proficient in C. Ten years later I was running my own software consultancy. Ten years after that I had been CTO for three startups and moved to London.
I often like to haunt a bookshop or library, and check out the programming books there. No 11 year old would be able to get started the way I did today in that context. I love the Raspberry Pi project and its goals, it's the closest we have to that opportunity. I do - and will continue to - support it multiple ways, and hope others do too.
Honestly, without those introductory guides to coding, I don't know what would have happened to me, but the odds say, considering what happened to my classmates from that school, drug overdose or prison were on the cards.
Thanks Usborne. Thanks BASIC. Thanks to that computing teacher who had that idea.
Also have a look at 'Coding Projects in Python' by DK books.
Both these books are excellent and would enable a smart and determined 11 year old to learn to code.
To be honest these books teach coding in a way that is much easier than it was in your day. You can also jump on many, many websites and teach yourself how to code.
You're also an exception. Many, many kids read those old Osborne books and only a very tiny fraction like yourself became coders and an even smaller fraction became as successful as yourself.
The Usborne books were the single strongest teacher I had getting into coding. I never owned any; I relied on the library.
In the earliest days, I didn't have a computer either. I'd read an Usborne book, then hang around computer stores poking at the 4+ years out of date Commodore 64s and CPC 464s and even the Acorn Archimedes (fanciest most capable BASIC), putting what I learned into practice. I'd even practice on VTech devices with two monochrome LCD lines of text, in toy shops, to get my fix.
I don't think I'd be where I am today without those books.
I was fascinated with these and read them many times cover to cover over the years. Practical Things to Do with your Microcomputer was always my favourite, as well as the robotics one. I also found the machine code one interesting but never really grasped it until later.
I think the ideas in them (as well as some other computer books and magazines I had) really helped steer my interests from just being interested in computers and software to being more interested in hardware and embedded systems, which is where I work today. These were very important in hindsight in shaping my interests!
As kid, starting at the age of 10 years old, I was devouring the Timex 2068 manual and two other programming books my father gave to me.
Then it was computer magazines and the local library.
We had a very famous collection, some of the books were Osborne translations, and books from this collection are still sold today on portuguese ebay, OLX.
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