What was the deal with serious programming books for the spectrum?
Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2017 7:52 am
Back in the day I had the basic books, and in fairness they would usually do what they said on the tin. But I notice while reading through the assembly books for the spectrum that.. they are mostly written by wide boys and autists. The classic books seem to spend chapters explaining basic computer science concepts (input output, cpu...), of course counting in binary.. talk about the z80 registers But then you get to the examples and unless I am taking crazy pills 90% of them are useless. Why would you write a book about a subject then not give an example for the guy that bought your book to try from the jump start?
There had to be a book, or a magazine series, secret society that informed commercial machine code programmers how to get busy and actually create a working program. Not some trivial register additions.
It seems bizarre that you had basic books that would go through a design process for a game project step by step and build up a readers skill throughout the book. But when it comes to these assembly titles they seem to be just a bunch of generalism, some very shallow commentary taken from the Z80 Sibex book and a bunch of trivial examples.
The Complete Spectrum ROM Disassembly was useful, but for the most part the books seem to be useless. How did anyone learn from these things back in the day?
There had to be a book, or a magazine series, secret society that informed commercial machine code programmers how to get busy and actually create a working program. Not some trivial register additions.
It seems bizarre that you had basic books that would go through a design process for a game project step by step and build up a readers skill throughout the book. But when it comes to these assembly titles they seem to be just a bunch of generalism, some very shallow commentary taken from the Z80 Sibex book and a bunch of trivial examples.
The Complete Spectrum ROM Disassembly was useful, but for the most part the books seem to be useless. How did anyone learn from these things back in the day?