3 ms·
As a kid in 1999ish in the US, my elementary school library had a book on computers that got me into programming, and I've been trying to find the book again si
by AgentME 4y ago
As a kid in 1999ish in the US, my elementary school library had a book on computers that got me into programming, and I've been trying to find the book again since then. I think the book was just titled "Computers". The book had many pictures and diagrams about lots of computer-related things, but it definitely wasn't aimed at only young kids. Among many things, it talked about computers being used by NASA, it speculated about future computers and the internet (mostly as a future thing), and it also had classic diagrams of CPUs, logic gates, and the half-adder like out of college textbooks. I'd trace out copies of half-adders in my notebook and execute it on paper to see that it added numbers correctly. One page in an aside had a small example BASIC program that immediately got me obsessed with programming when I realized how simple it was to follow.
In previous searches for the book, I found this site, and I realized the book had many similarities with the Usborne books, but I can't find it in any listing of them. I don't understand how, but the book "The Usborne Young Scientist: Computers" (1992) has some of the same content as the book I remember but it's missing a lot while also having some content I'm completely unfamiliar with. Maybe there was another lesser-known Usborne title that repackaged some of its content? If this sounds familiar at all to anyone, I have a few more notes on my memories and search for the book at https://tildes.net/~talk/is4/whats_one_thing_you_havent_been_able_to_find_online_no_matter_how_hard_you_tried#comment-446k https://tildes.net/~talk/is4/whats_one_thing_you_havent_been... and I'd appreciate any pointers.