Hacker News

Previous topic - Next topic

MrPlow

Hi Guys

An article I wrote last week about 80s BASIC - and how I rediscovered it is trending as a top story on Hacker News :)

Maaad! But great!

https://news.ycombinator.com/

https://hckrnews.com/
Comp:
Speccy-48k, Speccy-128k, Amigas, PCs

Moru


Moru

That book looks great, is there any way of buying it that isn't on Amazon? Prefferably as an ebook.

MrPlow

Quote from: Moru on 2019-Feb-26
That book looks great, is there any way of buying it that isn't on Amazon? Prefferably as an ebook.

There is kindle version of both my books :)
Comp:
Speccy-48k, Speccy-128k, Amigas, PCs

bigsofty

Cheers,

Ian.

"It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC.  As potential programmers, they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
(E. W. Dijkstra)

Moru

Kindle is also Amazon sadly :-)

MrPlow

No worries - I tried convert a long time ago to epub format for another service - but it was a mess - and the platform didn't generate any sales...plus the epub format had the downside of being DRM free and could be pirated all over the place.

So just stuck with kindle - i may look at kobo again - very hesitant to put on unsecured platforms.
Comp:
Speccy-48k, Speccy-128k, Amigas, PCs

Moru

I wouldn't put too much thought on DRM, it's not what it's made out to be. However I do mind how Amazon is behaving against society and their employees. There is no way I'm buying anything from there.

Just one (old) example:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/01/week-amazon-insider-feature-treatment-employees-work

MrPlow

#8
no worries - fully understand :)
The paperback is available (via ingram not amazon) on Barnes and Noble too
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/zx-spectrum-games-code-club-gary-plowman/1123159284

or blackwells.co.uk
Comp:
Speccy-48k, Speccy-128k, Amigas, PCs


MrPlow

Great stuff!
Which library did you find it listed with?
Comp:
Speccy-48k, Speccy-128k, Amigas, PCs

spacefractal

Genius.Greedy Mouse - Karma Miwa - Spot Race - CatchOut - PowerUp Elevation - The beagle Jam - Cave Heroes 2023 - https://spacefractal.itch.io/

Moru

It wasn't listed with them, I just asked if they could order it and today I got a message that I can get it at my local library 100 m from my house. Great service here :-)

I have asked for four books this year and all of them arrived within a couple of weeks, one was some obscure manga comic they only had books 2-8, missing the first one. That one took a bit longer to get here.

Our library is Umeå Stadsbibliotek in Sweden.

MrPlow

Excellent! I hope you enjoy the book - you can use with real 128k or emulator :)
Comp:
Speccy-48k, Speccy-128k, Amigas, PCs

Moru

We tried a bunch of emulators but they are all having some trouble with typing, is it normal that the spectrum misses keys all the time? Print becomes prnt and such. In general we wanted to just use the games for a stepping stone to learning GLBasic and general game programming for our daughter. It looks very nice so far and the explanations after the code is perfekt for understanding what we need to transfer into GLBasic. But we wanted to first try it on the emulator ofcourse :-)