Blast from the Past: Cool Programmer Books

On December 10, 2009, in Misc, by Mitch Milam

The other day, I was reading Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar: How Self-Education and the Pursuit of Passion Can Lead to a Lifetime of Success by James Marcus Bach.  It is an interesting book and one that I’ll write more about it in other post. 

Anyway, James discussed a book, 6502 Assembly Language Programming, that his father gave him so he could write low-level programs for his Apple II.  ( Yep, this was a while ago. ) James also explained what this book meant to him and how it changed his life.

Here is that book for me:

norton-programming-book-2

Circa 1985.  This was the one that started it all.  I absolutely devoured the contents of this book to the point that it basically fell apart.  It told me everything that I needed to know about how a PC worked on the inside.  That was a really big deal back then and I used that book for years doing everything from assembly language, to BASIC, to Turbo Pascal, to WordPerfect macros.

I sold most of my early computer programming books back in the mid-90’s so I no longer have much from my early programming days.  But, while reading James’ book I remembered just how fun that book was and how it made me feel, and I got all nostalgic. I tracked one down on Amazon.com and for a mere $8 plus shipping, it again resides in my library.

Yee ha!