First Computer Programming Book You Bought

[MWheatley]

The Algol 68-R User Manual in 1974 (or possibly '75).

But the next one was the ICL BASIC User Guide, bought in 1977. Which as investments go, has an ROI measured in the zillions of percent. I wouldn't be where I am today without that early acquisition of BASIC knowledge.

Malcolm

[James D Jarvis]

....
I would like to eventually make an interpreter in QB64, for my old TI99/4A BASIC creations (regular not Extended BASIC). It should be doable, except I'm not sure how you would emulate the sound commands....

My first computer was a TI-99/4A as well.

I was actually fiddling with doing TI style text and sprites in qb64 lastweek.   I started going crazy and adding features it didn't have. 


Hmmmm.... My first computer programming book? (That wasn't a manual that came with software) Was probably Tim Hartnell's Giant Book of Computer Games (or possibly an earlier book with a similar title).

My best early day purchase was the Secret Guide to Computers.

[JRace]

My friends and I got into computers in high school.  The room with all the microcomputers also had all of the beginner-oriented manuals that came with the machines, so we lucked out at the beginning.

The school required students to learn Fortran & Cobol on its old mainframe before moving on to Basic.  Meanwhile, we bootstrapped ourselves into Basic and Z80 assembly language on the school's TRS-80s.

My first purchase was either one of those low-cost Tab books with a gazillion Basic programs to type in, or... Fast Basic by George Gratzer.  That book is about using machine language subroutines to improve the performance of interpreted TRS-80 Basic programs, but that small book was PACKED with low-level information about those machines.  Ounce-for-ounce that may be the single most informative and useful microcomputer book I've ever owned.