Important news about HackSpace

We have some important news to share about HackSpace: Issue 81 was the last issue of HackSpace as a standalone magazine, and HackSpace has become part of The MagPi, the official Raspberry Pi magazine. Starting with issue 145, We’ll be adding pages to The MagPi to make room for the stories and tutorials you’ve come to expect from HackSpace.

Book Review: Code the Classics

By Ben Everard. Posted

The history of computing is sometimes told as a history of serious analytical progress where scientists, businessmen, and engineers worked together to push electrons through silicon to aid societal advancement. This is total and utter tosh. The history of computing is the history of computer games.

Just as today, the most powerful computer systems ever devised are being used to share pictures of cats, previously, the majority of computer time was spent running, jumping, firing, and punching animated creatures around virtual worlds.

Code the Classics tells this real history of computing, or at least a part of it. We start with a look at Pong, the first computer game to achieve any sort of widespread success, and progress through the years to Sensible Soccer, a classic of the early 1990s.

In this 30-year timespan, computers went from being obscure machines in universities and the back rooms of larger businesses, to a common sight in homes, and it’s thanks to games like the ones covered in Code the Classics that this happened.

With each game, the authors (which include luminaries of the computing world past and present) look at what made the game special and recreate it using a more modern approach. Each game includes a full listing, so you can get it up and running and relive (or experience for the first time) these classic games on modern computing hardware.

Code the Classics is essential reading for anyone interested in game design, computing history, or learning to program.

Verdict: 10 out of 10

Learn the history of computing by recreating it.


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