Back in the 1980s I got my hands on several of the consumer computers that were available. We had a Sinclair ZX Spectrum as a family computer and a fair amount of time was spent playing games, loaded from cassette tapes with screeching noise and flashing borders displayed on screen.

It wasn’t all play though and I also got an early foundation in programming. I didn’t get to a point of real expertise but I got a few simple programmes working and I’m sure it laid the foundations for key skills I have developed during my career to date. Today, if I get stuck on a programming problem, I normally turn to the Internet but back then it was magazines and books that were my reference sources.

I was delighted to discover recently that Usbourne has put some of its programming books online for free. I won’t be using them as a reference – my days of programming simple games in BASIC are probably behind me – but it was fascinating to spend a little time remembering my logical roots.