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Comment by rkagerer | Hacker News Reader

Here's a TRS-80 era one that when I see the cover, I can still smell the parchment aroma that came from cracking open the book:

Getting Started With Extended Color Basic https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Manuals/Hard...

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Odd. I remember all of the exercises in this book, but in Dutch for a monochrome version. (Over four decades ago, I was about 7 or 8.)

It's strange how the first exercises still haven't changed a lot, if you compare this with more modern curricula.

I'm wondering how we'll end up in a decade or 2, when AI has raised the bar for abstraction... Will we still start out with these kind of exercises, or will today's programming languages feel like today's assembly by then?

Nice memory. That book was included with the Coco2 I bought in late '83. Part of the lack of fun I had was not having a dedicated TV to use with it--I had to share with the siblings--and it was a black and white console. Still I learned a lot but should've done more. Oh well, I gave the whole works away in the mid '90s and it's probably in a landfill in NW Oklahoma.

Sometime around 1990 is when I got my first computer, and it was one of those. Came with the wonderfully audible cassette recorder, boxy 5-1/4" disk drive, pair of joysticks and a couple cartridges. My parents bought it secondhand off someone. You never know, maybe your machine went to some kid, sparked a passion they turned into a career, and is still in some closet cherished to this day.

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