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Thursday, September 14, 2006 12:00 AM

Why Johnny can't code

BASIC used to be on every computer a child touched -- but today there's no easy way for kids to get hooked on programming.
By David Brin

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  • Thursday, September 14, 2006 06:00 AM

    Horowitz & Hill?

    There's a great lab manual that goes with the classic introduction to Electronics by Horowitz and Hill.

    Over a series of lab projects you build a small computer more or less from scratch. The "final" is to program your computer in machine language (motorola 6800) to do something useful.

    You more or less learn exactly how a computer works.

    After you finish, move to a higher level language like python. You'll appreciate it's sophistication but you'll understand how it all works underneath.

    —Anonymous

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