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> I got my Beeb at the age of 10 and because of it (and without any formal CS education) my entire professional life has been in software. Exact same story and
by louthy 13y ago
> I got my Beeb at the age of 10 and because of it (and without any formal CS education) my entire professional life has been in software.
Exact same story and age here. I always thought there were two reasons why the BBC Micro created so many developers. One is the TV programme, the second is the manual. Pretty much the first page introduces programming, and within a dozen pages you're making a rocket fly up the screen. As a kid that was enough to make me think "I can make a game", and I was hooked.
EDIT Found a PDF of the manual:
http://bbc.nvg.org/doc/BBCUserGuide-1.00.pdf http://bbc.nvg.org/doc/BBCUserGuide-1.00.pdf
- CmdrKrool 13y ago524 pages! With chapters on assembly language towards the end. That's what I call getting your money's worth. I had a Spectrum myself. The pack-in manual for that wasn't quite as hefty at about half the number of pages but it was pretty hard to overlook the possibility of programming when the keyboard itself was festooned with BASIC keywords. While messing around with a Raspberry Pi recently and fidgeting with the board which by default does not come with a case I noted that - while not quite the same because just looking at a board isn't going to make you an electronic engineer - having such internals right there in your face does stoke some curiosity, even now that I'm an adult.