101 Basic Computer Games by David H Ahl

At some point in the 1970s, I received an advert in the post for a book called "101 Basic Computer Games". I was blown away by the variety of games that were advertised. Here are some examples:

• Destroy a gunboat from your submarine
• Computer guesses animals and learns new ones from you
• You're the matador in a championship bullfight
• Locate 4 mugwumps hiding on a 4x4 grid
• Open a parachute at the last possible moment

I did not buy the book at the time (I was just a kid) but the game titles set my imagination on fire. I even loved the cover illustration.

Apparently it was the first computer book to sell a million copies.

I did get my hands on the book years later and I was able to marvel at how much could be accomplished with a small amount of code and a large amount of imagination.

And a extremely simple user interface!

You can read some of the programs here (from a later edition of the book).

I wonder what is going to get kids interested in programming these days? Most kids are much, much, much more interested in playing games than in writing them or understanding how they work.

Back in the 70s and 80s people all over the world were entering code from program listings into their personal computers and experiencing the joy of seeing them running for the first time. Happy times indeed!