6 ms·

Usborne 1980s Computer Books

187 points by ngram 4mo ago

lelanthran 4mo ago
Man, I just posted this in a recent thread :-) Still think my comment applies: they need to be updated for a modern platform (not Python).
- fredrickleo 4mo ago
  Heh, I've been working on an interpreter to run them https://github.com/fredrick-pennachi/OldBasic https://github.com/fredrick-pennachi/OldBasic It's not quite finished yet but it can run the programs I've typed out here https://github.com/fredrick-pennachi/BASIC-programs https://github.com/fredrick-pennachi/BASIC-programs
- chb 4mo ago
  What “modern platform” would you suggest?
  - lelanthran 4mo ago
    > What “modern platform” would you suggest? I can't really think of a suitable one TBH; Python's completely out of the running, Java and C# have a lot of unnecessary (for this goal) boilerplate, Pascal is not a bad choice. Maybe Javascript? The books can then instruct "type this into an HTML file". In my mind, a more modern platform would be a simulated one that has its own machine language (byte-code compiled, perhaps) so that these books, which take you all the way into machine language, would make sense.
  - contingencies 4mo ago
    Lua/Love2D?
- aperrien 4mo ago
  Why not python? It's pretty simple for kids to understand.
  - lelanthran 4mo ago
    > Why not python? It's pretty simple for kids to understand. Not for the book type format - the kids will be typing the code in, not copying + pasting them. Significant whitespace is a killer in printed form; so Python is not even in the running.
    - egypturnash 4mo ago
      [picture of Tips Kitty] Don't forget! Every time you see " ⦙ " in the listing, press the [Tab] key on your keyboard. See page 23 to learn why this is important. And page 23 teaches you about significant whitespace, and how to configure several text editors that a kid's likely to have available to actually show it like that. Heck, I use Panic's Nova for my text editing and it does that out of the box with no configuration needed.
      - redwall_hp 4mo ago
        Python is also already all over the Raspberry Pi and MicroPython/CircuitPython spheres, so there's an easy road into SBCs and microcontrollers. Education has already chosen Python as the preferred language for this sort of thing. It has some unfortunate bits, but it's certainly a more ergonomic language than BASIC. Counting tabs is less arduous than messing with line numbers and GOSUB.
        Symbiote 4mo ago
        The modern Usborne book uses Python. https://usborne.com/row/books/browse-by-category/science-and-technology/computers-and-coding https://usborne.com/row/books/browse-by-category/science-and...
      - lelanthran 4mo ago
        > [picture of Tips Kitty] Don't forget! Every time you see " ⦙ " in the listing, press the [Tab] key on your keyboard. See page 23 to learn why this is important. I don't think you actually used those books :-/ No one linearly writes code, from the start of the file to the end; they edit it. They move blocks around if they missed a page, they navigate around putting in missing if statements and removing incorrectly-added loops. Those programs were very much not one-and-done, they were heavily modified by the kids. Your proposal of "Tell them to configure their editor for Python" and "add in unicode symbols to represent whitespace" is the exact opposite of what those books were about. The books were about removing superfluous barriers, not adding them! Using Python would result in a whole lot of incidental complexity for literally no gain.
ArchieScrivener 4mo ago
[flagged]
- tcbawo 4mo ago
  There isn't a lot of money in 40 year old computer books targeted at children
- nephihaha 4mo ago
  These books are well out of date, hence they're being offered free.
redwall_hp 4mo ago
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.
- flir 4mo ago
  If my school's library had had Machine Code for Beginners, my career might have been very different. (I'm actually a bit annoyed; I didn't know that existed). I definitely remember Creepy, Battle and Space.
  - lelanthran 4mo ago
    > If my school's library had had Machine Code for Beginners, my career might have been very different. (I'm actually a bit annoyed; I didn't know that existed). It's actually very good. I remember reading it at age 11 or so, and coming away knowing much more low-level stuff about computers than even the 18yo in the final year of school who were literally studying the stuff. Things like "each instruction is a number", and registers like the PC, overflow, etc. I went through a period (and a forest of pages) trying to write an entire game in machine code alone (with a small basic shim to load it). It's a very approachable book.
  - antod 4mo ago
    Same with me. As a 12yr old I failed learning Z80 on my spectrum with the one book I could find. I had a bunch of other Usborne BASIC books, but their machine code book(s) would've been the link I needed to bridge the gap to where I could understand other material.
- xp84 4mo ago
  That’s super cool. I’m actually surprised if you had a PC in 2001 that it didn’t have QBASIC on it though. I think that was being shipped with Windows at least through Windows 98. But of course, your solution to that was twice as good for your education than if you’d learned only BASIC so that’s good. My experience was kind of similar except I was learning in the mid 90s and only had access to various flavors of BASIC, because all the computers my school had were from 1980-1987 or so. When I saw modern GUI computers though, I couldn’t understand how what I’d learned in the character-based world could be applied to the GUI paradigm, so I gave up on programming until the Web and PHP gave me a usable mental model to get back into it.
klez 4mo ago
Uhm... My browser is redirected to https://usborne.com/it/books/computer-and-coding-books https://usborne.com/it/books/computer-and-coding-books which 404s.
- layer8 4mo ago
  You need to first switch to English/United States in the top left.
mymacbook 4mo ago
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. :)
simonw 4mo ago
I had a few of these. They were excellent. Fantastic cover art too. 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 https://tools.simonwillison.net/usborne-mad-house
- nephihaha 4mo ago
  Usborne books often had fun artwork in them. I can understand the nostalgia here.
zabzonk 4mo ago
Is there some relationship between Usborne and Osborne books? And of course the Osborne portable computer?
- nephihaha 4mo ago
  No, just different variants of the same surname.
pjbk 4mo ago
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.
asdefghyk 4mo ago
When you mention, Osborne computer books, and 1980s I think of these (different ) books Osborne Introduction to microcomputers, Volume 0 https://archive.org/details/an-introduction-to-microcomputers-volume-0-the-beginners-book-2nd-edition/page/n9/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/an-introduction-to-microcomputer... Osborne Introduction to microcomputers, Volume 1 https://www.rsp-italy.it/IT/Books/_contents/Osborne-An%20Introduction%20To%20Microcomputers%20Volume1.pdf 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.
- robin_reala 4mo ago
  Wrong vowel, this is Usborne.
AndrewStephens 4mo ago
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. [0] https://sheep.horse/2017/2/usborne_computer_books.html https://sheep.horse/2017/2/usborne_computer_books.html
- pjbk 4mo ago
  I copied the code from the book and then did my own mods. I also ended up rewriting the engine with 6502 assembly macros. That made me realize, and appreciate, high level languages that had first order functions and very different approaches to computing and data structures, in contrast with BASIC arrays, gotos and gosubs. At the same time I was learning to program in Logo, which, without being aware of, introduced me to the world of Lispy languages and what computing really is. That tainted me a bit and left me a bit frustrated when I moved on to C and, much later in the 90s, to C++.
beschizza 4mo ago
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!
neilv 4mo ago
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.
- joehosteny 4mo ago
  I loved this book as a kid, and I built this robot as a kid for a science fair. And, despite having built a lot of balsa wood R/C airplanes, it was challenging. It kick started an interest in robotics for me though. I now work for my second robotics startup company!
polpo 4mo ago
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.
- antod 4mo ago
  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).
timc3 4mo ago
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.
PaulRobinson 4mo ago
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.
- sien 4mo ago
  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.
  - PaulRobinson 4mo ago
    Right place, right time, right level of curiosity. Back then, I didn't really have a choice: there weren't any other books in my school library, I didn't want to spend lunchtimes in the playground (I was being bullied), I knew programming would be potentially useful (my Dad had switched from being an accountant to something I heard was called a "systems analyst", which I knew had something to do with computers, and had allowed him to emigrate with his new family), and well, I was a bit of a mess. I have seen some of the newer projects, and like I say, the Raspberry Pi stuff makes programmable computing accessible to a kid without much, I just don't think the bar overall is as low as it was for me. And yeah, survivorship bias, and a weird population skew with me: I was literally the only kid in that computer room determined to learn how to code.
noufalibrahim 4mo ago
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.
wazoox 4mo ago
The page is redirected to https://usborne.com/fr/books/computer-and-coding-books https://usborne.com/fr/books/computer-and-coding-books which is 404, and there is no way around it. That's quite maddening when a website does this kind of things.
- wazoox 4mo ago
  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.
  - Symbiote 4mo ago
    It's a British publisher, so they're not unaware, just incompetent. Maybe the global page would work better than the US page which is the HN link. https://usborne.com/row/books/computer-and-coding-books https://usborne.com/row/books/computer-and-coding-books
    - wazoox 4mo ago
      Nope, also redirect to the "fr" version if you're using a French browser, even when using a VPN connection localised in UK...
NoMoreNicksLeft 4mo ago
Thanks OP. Would've never found these without your link.
AdmiralAsshat 4mo ago
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.
defaultcompany 4mo ago
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.
barrkel 4mo ago
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.
stephen_g 4mo ago
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!
vrighter 4mo ago
i have learned so much from these books. I owe my current carreer to them, probably
nephihaha 4mo ago
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.
pjmlp 4mo ago
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. https://m.olx.pt/d/anuncio/revista-informtica-crebro-IDHVcvg.html?isPreviewActive=1 https://m.olx.pt/d/anuncio/revista-informtica-crebro-IDHVcvg... https://m.olx.pt/d/anuncio/n1-2-e-3-da-revista-informtica-videospectrum-anos-80-IDI5N8D.html?isPreviewActive=1 https://m.olx.pt/d/anuncio/n1-2-e-3-da-revista-informtica-vi... https://m.olx.pt/d/anuncio/o-meu-primeiro-livro-do-zx-spectrum-IDJcL5g.html?isPreviewActive=1 https://m.olx.pt/d/anuncio/o-meu-primeiro-livro-do-zx-spectr... https://m.olx.pt/d/anuncio/livro-zx-spectrum-cdigo-de-mquina-para-principiantes-IDIL4xV.html?isPreviewActive=1 https://m.olx.pt/d/anuncio/livro-zx-spectrum-cdigo-de-mquina...
liampulles 4mo ago
As a millenial, I first got into something-like-programming by playing around with Game Maker. A few of my colleagues have said similar. I'm curious to see where others in my cohort started...
orsenthil 4mo ago
How cool it will be to pick up some interesting book from this, and give me to llm and direct it to make it a modern multiplayer game. Has anyone tried this?

187 points by ngram 4mo ago

Man, I just posted this in a recent thread :-) Still think my comment applies: they need to be updated for a modern platform (not Python).

fredrickleo 4mo ago
Heh, I've been working on an interpreter to run them https://github.com/fredrick-pennachi/OldBasic https://github.com/fredrick-pennachi/OldBasic It's not quite finished yet but it can run the programs I've typed out here https://github.com/fredrick-pennachi/BASIC-programs https://github.com/fredrick-pennachi/BASIC-programs
chb 4mo ago
What “modern platform” would you suggest?
- lelanthran 4mo ago
  > What “modern platform” would you suggest? I can't really think of a suitable one TBH; Python's completely out of the running, Java and C# have a lot of unnecessary (for this goal) boilerplate, Pascal is not a bad choice. Maybe Javascript? The books can then instruct "type this into an HTML file". In my mind, a more modern platform would be a simulated one that has its own machine language (byte-code compiled, perhaps) so that these books, which take you all the way into machine language, would make sense.
- contingencies 4mo ago
  Lua/Love2D?
aperrien 4mo ago
Why not python? It's pretty simple for kids to understand.
- lelanthran 4mo ago
  > Why not python? It's pretty simple for kids to understand. Not for the book type format - the kids will be typing the code in, not copying + pasting them. Significant whitespace is a killer in printed form; so Python is not even in the running.
  - egypturnash 4mo ago
    [picture of Tips Kitty] Don't forget! Every time you see " ⦙ " in the listing, press the [Tab] key on your keyboard. See page 23 to learn why this is important. And page 23 teaches you about significant whitespace, and how to configure several text editors that a kid's likely to have available to actually show it like that. Heck, I use Panic's Nova for my text editing and it does that out of the box with no configuration needed.
    - redwall_hp 4mo ago
      Python is also already all over the Raspberry Pi and MicroPython/CircuitPython spheres, so there's an easy road into SBCs and microcontrollers. Education has already chosen Python as the preferred language for this sort of thing. It has some unfortunate bits, but it's certainly a more ergonomic language than BASIC. Counting tabs is less arduous than messing with line numbers and GOSUB.
      - Symbiote 4mo ago
        The modern Usborne book uses Python. https://usborne.com/row/books/browse-by-category/science-and-technology/computers-and-coding https://usborne.com/row/books/browse-by-category/science-and...
    - lelanthran 4mo ago
      > [picture of Tips Kitty] Don't forget! Every time you see " ⦙ " in the listing, press the [Tab] key on your keyboard. See page 23 to learn why this is important. I don't think you actually used those books :-/ No one linearly writes code, from the start of the file to the end; they edit it. They move blocks around if they missed a page, they navigate around putting in missing if statements and removing incorrectly-added loops. Those programs were very much not one-and-done, they were heavily modified by the kids. Your proposal of "Tell them to configure their editor for Python" and "add in unicode symbols to represent whitespace" is the exact opposite of what those books were about. The books were about removing superfluous barriers, not adding them! Using Python would result in a whole lot of incidental complexity for literally no gain.

ArchieScrivener 4mo ago

[flagged]

tcbawo 4mo ago
There isn't a lot of money in 40 year old computer books targeted at children
nephihaha 4mo ago
These books are well out of date, hence they're being offered free.

redwall_hp 4mo ago

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.

flir 4mo ago
If my school's library had had Machine Code for Beginners, my career might have been very different. (I'm actually a bit annoyed; I didn't know that existed). I definitely remember Creepy, Battle and Space.
- lelanthran 4mo ago
  > If my school's library had had Machine Code for Beginners, my career might have been very different. (I'm actually a bit annoyed; I didn't know that existed). It's actually very good. I remember reading it at age 11 or so, and coming away knowing much more low-level stuff about computers than even the 18yo in the final year of school who were literally studying the stuff. Things like "each instruction is a number", and registers like the PC, overflow, etc. I went through a period (and a forest of pages) trying to write an entire game in machine code alone (with a small basic shim to load it). It's a very approachable book.
- antod 4mo ago
  Same with me. As a 12yr old I failed learning Z80 on my spectrum with the one book I could find. I had a bunch of other Usborne BASIC books, but their machine code book(s) would've been the link I needed to bridge the gap to where I could understand other material.
xp84 4mo ago
That’s super cool. I’m actually surprised if you had a PC in 2001 that it didn’t have QBASIC on it though. I think that was being shipped with Windows at least through Windows 98. But of course, your solution to that was twice as good for your education than if you’d learned only BASIC so that’s good. My experience was kind of similar except I was learning in the mid 90s and only had access to various flavors of BASIC, because all the computers my school had were from 1980-1987 or so. When I saw modern GUI computers though, I couldn’t understand how what I’d learned in the character-based world could be applied to the GUI paradigm, so I gave up on programming until the Web and PHP gave me a usable mental model to get back into it.

klez 4mo ago

Uhm... My browser is redirected to https://usborne.com/it/books/computer-and-coding-books https://usborne.com/it/books/computer-and-coding-books which 404s.

layer8 4mo ago
You need to first switch to English/United States in the top left.

mymacbook 4mo ago

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. :)

simonw 4mo ago

I had a few of these. They were excellent. Fantastic cover art too. 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 https://tools.simonwillison.net/usborne-mad-house

nephihaha 4mo ago
Usborne books often had fun artwork in them. I can understand the nostalgia here.

zabzonk 4mo ago

Is there some relationship between Usborne and Osborne books? And of course the Osborne portable computer?

nephihaha 4mo ago
No, just different variants of the same surname.

pjbk 4mo ago

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.

asdefghyk 4mo ago

When you mention, Osborne computer books, and 1980s I think of these (different ) books Osborne Introduction to microcomputers, Volume 0 https://archive.org/details/an-introduction-to-microcomputers-volume-0-the-beginners-book-2nd-edition/page/n9/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/an-introduction-to-microcomputer... Osborne Introduction to microcomputers, Volume 1 https://www.rsp-italy.it/IT/Books/_contents/Osborne-An%20Introduction%20To%20Microcomputers%20Volume1.pdf 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.

robin_reala 4mo ago
Wrong vowel, this is Usborne.

AndrewStephens 4mo ago

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. [0] https://sheep.horse/2017/2/usborne_computer_books.html https://sheep.horse/2017/2/usborne_computer_books.html

pjbk 4mo ago
I copied the code from the book and then did my own mods. I also ended up rewriting the engine with 6502 assembly macros. That made me realize, and appreciate, high level languages that had first order functions and very different approaches to computing and data structures, in contrast with BASIC arrays, gotos and gosubs. At the same time I was learning to program in Logo, which, without being aware of, introduced me to the world of Lispy languages and what computing really is. That tainted me a bit and left me a bit frustrated when I moved on to C and, much later in the 90s, to C++.

beschizza 4mo ago

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!

neilv 4mo ago

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.

joehosteny 4mo ago
I loved this book as a kid, and I built this robot as a kid for a science fair. And, despite having built a lot of balsa wood R/C airplanes, it was challenging. It kick started an interest in robotics for me though. I now work for my second robotics startup company!

polpo 4mo ago

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.

antod 4mo ago
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).

timc3 4mo ago

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.

PaulRobinson 4mo ago

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.

sien 4mo ago
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.
- PaulRobinson 4mo ago
  Right place, right time, right level of curiosity. Back then, I didn't really have a choice: there weren't any other books in my school library, I didn't want to spend lunchtimes in the playground (I was being bullied), I knew programming would be potentially useful (my Dad had switched from being an accountant to something I heard was called a "systems analyst", which I knew had something to do with computers, and had allowed him to emigrate with his new family), and well, I was a bit of a mess. I have seen some of the newer projects, and like I say, the Raspberry Pi stuff makes programmable computing accessible to a kid without much, I just don't think the bar overall is as low as it was for me. And yeah, survivorship bias, and a weird population skew with me: I was literally the only kid in that computer room determined to learn how to code.

noufalibrahim 4mo ago

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.

wazoox 4mo ago

The page is redirected to https://usborne.com/fr/books/computer-and-coding-books https://usborne.com/fr/books/computer-and-coding-books which is 404, and there is no way around it. That's quite maddening when a website does this kind of things.

wazoox 4mo ago
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.
- Symbiote 4mo ago
  It's a British publisher, so they're not unaware, just incompetent. Maybe the global page would work better than the US page which is the HN link. https://usborne.com/row/books/computer-and-coding-books https://usborne.com/row/books/computer-and-coding-books
  - wazoox 4mo ago
    Nope, also redirect to the "fr" version if you're using a French browser, even when using a VPN connection localised in UK...

NoMoreNicksLeft 4mo ago

Thanks OP. Would've never found these without your link.

AdmiralAsshat 4mo ago

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.

defaultcompany 4mo ago

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.

barrkel 4mo ago

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.

stephen_g 4mo ago

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!

vrighter 4mo ago

i have learned so much from these books. I owe my current carreer to them, probably

nephihaha 4mo ago

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.

pjmlp 4mo ago

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. https://m.olx.pt/d/anuncio/revista-informtica-crebro-IDHVcvg.html?isPreviewActive=1 https://m.olx.pt/d/anuncio/revista-informtica-crebro-IDHVcvg... https://m.olx.pt/d/anuncio/n1-2-e-3-da-revista-informtica-videospectrum-anos-80-IDI5N8D.html?isPreviewActive=1 https://m.olx.pt/d/anuncio/n1-2-e-3-da-revista-informtica-vi... https://m.olx.pt/d/anuncio/o-meu-primeiro-livro-do-zx-spectrum-IDJcL5g.html?isPreviewActive=1 https://m.olx.pt/d/anuncio/o-meu-primeiro-livro-do-zx-spectr... https://m.olx.pt/d/anuncio/livro-zx-spectrum-cdigo-de-mquina-para-principiantes-IDIL4xV.html?isPreviewActive=1 https://m.olx.pt/d/anuncio/livro-zx-spectrum-cdigo-de-mquina...

liampulles 4mo ago

As a millenial, I first got into something-like-programming by playing around with Game Maker. A few of my colleagues have said similar. I'm curious to see where others in my cohort started...

orsenthil 4mo ago

How cool it will be to pick up some interesting book from this, and give me to llm and direct it to make it a modern multiplayer game. Has anyone tried this?