Unrelated: I still get an unreasonable bit of joy whenever I see a picture of the manuals for Turbo Pascal and Turbo C.
(Which you can read online if you're so inclined: https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_borlandturReferenceGuide1988_19310204)
@craigmaloney I still have the tattered TI Extended BASIC manual on my shelf that I learned to program with when I was 5-6
I don’t think I’ll ever let it go, even though the computer itself has been lost
@zigg Would you believe I have a shelf of old computer manuals, including the Atari Basic manual and tutorial from my first computer?
Something powerful about those old manuals.
@craigmaloney Oh, I would totally believe that. These are formative things, they left an outsized impression on us.
I’ve flipped the pages on occasion and am transported back to learning hex so I could create sprites…
@zigg @craigmaloney as a Brit, I similarly remember those for the BBC/Acorn computers and the ZX Spectrum (although to be fair *all*
These manuals seemed to be better written those days, often served as tutorials as well as just documentation and consider that its likely we were then all young teenagers..
@craigmaloney @zigg there was a bit missing from my toot which was supposed to say "*all* the manuals of that era" were readable and usable i.e including American ones (in spite of language differences), Although the associated machines were less common here - USA companies often put a price premium on 230V/PAL models of computers that were capable of being be used with TV-sets as display (perhaps not totally unreasonable as it often did mean significant design changes were required)
@zigg @vfrmedia Yeah, the manuals were really well written back then. I've picked up a lot of Sinclair manuals / books and they're still a joy to read compared with today's terse and serious manuals.
There was a sense of joy in those manuals, as though someone was about to begin teaching you something they truly enjoyed.