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Oh my GOD I have to comment. This is how I learned to program as a kid. I found a copy of "Write Your Own Adventure Programs" (1983 - Usborne: https://colorcom
by makmanalp 2y ago
Oh my GOD I have to comment. This is how I learned to program as a kid.
I found a copy of "Write Your Own Adventure Programs" (1983 - Usborne: https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Books/Write%20Your%20Own%20Adventure%20Programs%20%281983%29%28Usborne%29.pdf https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Books/Write%...) as a kid in my primary school's bookshelf. I remember the code was written in BASIC and my family didn't really own a computer back then.
Fast forward a few years later I saw this "Visual Basic" thing and thought it would be similar ... it was, but only sort of. I had no book to learn from at first so I remember clicking through every single menu and button available to see what it did. Then I remember using our dialup to download every possible 3rd party VB form control and throwing them in a Form to see what they did. I don't know why I found this entertaining enough to keep doing it.
Eventually by copy pasting and changing stuff I was able to write some basic "homework helper" programs: calculate the area of a circle and stuff like that. Soon after I tried to look up tutorials which taught me basic win32 programming to do things like have an icon in the status area next to the clock, and then hiding my window to run in the background and make annoying sounds so I could build a silly little prank program to install on my friend's computers which was fun but often would fail because they were missing some .dll file which wouldn't fit on the same floppy.
It could be frustrating at times but also I feel so blessed to have lucked myself into learning programming this way and my parents pretty much just letting me do whatever I wanted to this expensive device that probably was not a small thing for us to afford at the time.
Even tutorials felt more fun at the time, it'd be "hypnoMan37's windows registry tutorial!!! HEyyeyeyy Guuyzs :-)))) gzgzgz to my irc channel #blabla on EFNet! so first you call RegistryCreateNewKey32(...." because god knows I did not have an MSDN CD either.
Learning via a code camp feels way more efficient but also so much more dry in comparison. I wonder if there isn't a substantial cost to boring the newbies to death.
- cruffle_duffle 2y agoAh those custom controls. Everything I wrote as a kid was beveled to the max. Good times.
- calimoro78 2y agoThis! I want my kids to do the same but are really unclear as to how this is done today without BASIC. I am not psyched about tools that help you merely build platformers with WYSIWYG. Any ideas?
- magospietato 2y agoThis is the smartest intentioned educational device I've found. https://microbit.org/ https://microbit.org/ It's rough around the edges, but what it does well is offer a wide array of sensor inputs, and very simple text output. And wraps it in a simple API. You can compute temperature, direction, orientation, do GPIO, network via Bluetooth or direct radio, and drive it with a simple two button and marquee text UI.
- cruffle_duffle 2y agoEsp32 with micropython?
- recursive 2y agoA text editor and index.html with <script src="hello.js"> You can get everything you need without paying any money or even driving to Circuit City.
- philiplu 2y agoMy kid (15 yo) keeps producing games in Python on his iPhone using Pythonista. Latest one is a Tetris clone with load/save game, music, animations on removing a line. I offer to help if he runs into problems but he prefers to hack away and learn on his own. Proud dad here :-)
- arresin 2y agoDamn great parenting!
- dr_kiszonka 2y agoHow did you get your child to start programming? I had some success with Scratch, but it is not something my 9 year old would do for fun. (He likes 3D printing, but it is mostly just dragging stuff around.)
- jonah-archive 2y ago> Then I remember using our dialup to download every possible 3rd party VB form control and throwing them in a Form to see what they did. I don't know why I found this entertaining enough to keep doing it. Wow, that takes me back. My local library also had a copy of "Visual Basic How-To: The Definitive Vb3 Problem Solver" and at some point I'd renewed my loan of it so many times they told me I couldn't anymore. I remember building a working interface based on the "Peanut Computer" interface from the beginning of _Out of this World_.
- galkk 2y agoSame thing was with random turbopascal libraries and, later, Delphi’s vcl controls. Damn Borland with their in-between library version incompatibilities. To this day I think it was the reason of their downfall. > which taught me basic win32 programming to do things like have an icon in the status area next to the clock, On one of programming Fido groups one guy literally had tagline “to put an icon in the area where the clock is you should use ShellNotifyIcon”
- makmanalp 2y agoI remember Delphi being the one that people lamented the loss of when VB was gaining in popularity. And ShellNotifyIcon - how could I forget? :D
- memsom 2y agoVB beat Delphi to market by a number of years. I remember Delphi 1 arriving in about 95. VB was on version 3 (though I honestly don't remember the prior 2 versions.) I do remember a lecturer in University saying that he was excited for Delphi, because it was going to shift the dominance of VB in the RAD programming arena.
- pshc 2y agoMine was "How to Create Adventure Games" by Christopher Lampton (1986) at my municipal library. BASIC code that I entered into my dad's computer, which had QBASIC pre-installed.
- makmanalp 2y agoLook! https://ia902300.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/4/items/World_of_Spectrum_June_2017_Mirror/World%20of%20Spectrum%20June%202017%20Mirror.zip&file=World%20of%20Spectrum%20June%202017%20Mirror/sinclair/books/h/HowToCreateAdventureGames.pdf https://ia902300.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/4/...
- pshc 2y agoYup, that's the one. I have a hard copy on my shelf :)
- rd07 2y agoWe have similar experience with VB6, though I was the opposite. Instead of reading a book about BASIC, I was reading a book about VB.NET. My first interaction with Visual Basic was through VBA in MS Word. The first time I opened it, I know that it was a place to code, but I don't know what kind of code I have to type. I don't know any programming language at that time. And then sometimes later, I found a VB.NET book at a bookstore. I was overjoyed at that time, and immediately tried it on VBA to be dejected because the code didn't run at all. I still remember how I several times, until I swear that if the last trial I do also didn't run, I will give up. Fortunately, it does run!!! Turns out, I didn't know that the VBA on MS Word in my computer is based on VB 6 while my book is about VB.NET. The code is a little different, and that's why my code didn't run. After that, I bought every book I can find about VB 6. I also somehow stumble upon a VB 6 IDE installation on my relatives CD stash, and installed it on my computer. And till today, I still think that VB 6 GUI Builder is the best I have ever tried.
- mmerlin 2y agotwinBasic.com is a revamp of VB6 using current tech
- 1oooqooq 2y agowhy all those products keep backwards compatibility with vb6?!? it's this a niche for some industry? or all those products are aimed at people's nostalgia of running their old programs?
- sigzero 2y agoMaybe. I have a friend that only does VB6 programming support even today. He seems to be doing okay with it.
- wvenable 2y agoVB6 is arguably the most popular and influential version of Basic it only makes sense to keep backwards compatibility with it. Why would anyone not want that from their Visual Basic clone?
- rescbr 2y agoI had the EXACT same experience as a kid. Found a GW-BASIC book on my parent's bookshelf, found out that QBASIC was bundled with Windows and it ran most sample code that were in that book and it went downhill from there. When I was bored I loved reading the MS-DOS 6 manual cover to cover. Back when Internet access wasn't readily available the quality of documentation and sample codes were impressive.
- sixothree 2y agoI've literally never seen this book before. This would have been a really good one to have when I was younger. Thank you for sharing!
- vrighter 2y agoI have that book too! It taught me a lot back in my qbasic days