No Starch Press discounts for Pi users (now 40% off – see below for update)
A few notices: if you’re at BETT this week, come to Stand B240 to meet one of the Robs, Clive and a bunch of impaled Jelly Babies.
Pete Lomas is at Campus Party in Sao Paolo, Brazil. He’ll be giving a talk on Friday at 5.30pm; if you’re in town, go and hear what he has to say!
Finally, Eben and I are flying out for some meetings in the US today; we’ll be incommunicado until the weekend.
Update, Feb 1: I just had mail from the folks at No Starch Press, who say:
We heard from a couple customers that they were a little stretched by the price of the books and the international shipping costs, so we decided to bump the coupon value to 40% off to make it easier on everyone. We’re applying the 40% discount to anyone who already used the code, so they’ll have the best price, too.
—
We were sent copies of two books from No Starch Press last week. Super Scratch Programming Adventure and Python for Kids are terrific; they’re colourful, engaging and just the sort of thing we think kids are going to respond to.
We enjoyed both books, but in particular, we really think the authors of Super Scratch Programming Adventure are on to something: what kid doesn’t enjoy pyramids full of treasure; and what kid doesn’t want to write a game about them? As well as introducing them to Scratch itself, and to programmatic thinking, the book’s a great introduction to game design. Kids will start building games from the first page. And we loved the presentation; this thing is part comic, part storybook.
No Starch have an offer for Raspberry Pi users: if you enter RPi at the checkout on their website, you’ll get 30% off both of the books (either purchased separately or together). Print book purchases come with free ebook editions, and the code will work for ebooks alone, too, so you don’t need to fork out for shipping if you don’t want to. Click on the books to order.
14 comments
Alistair Marshall
I read that as Starch Press discounts are not available for pi users… couldn’t work out why you were so excited about it.
Stu
And me!, tagline would have been better as:-
“No Starch Press” gives discounts for Pi users
Stewart Watkiss
Looks good. I’m going to get the Scratch book for my daughter.
Discount is good, particularly for the ebook, but the shipping charges from US to the UK are very expensive.
For the hardcopy only it is much cheaper to buy from a supplier in the UK, if you want both then it may work out cheaper to buy the hardcopy from the UK and the ebook from the publishers.
If you are looking for the ebook (as with several other technical publishers) I’d recommend going direct to the publishers, as well as being cheaper they are DRM free – so you can read on your Raspberry Pi as well as PC and ebook reader – which is is not normally the case when buying from a reseller.
Steve Farr
Super Scratch Programming Adventure features a project using a Pico board which allows programs to be controlled by external sensory input. Pico boards are currently supported by Windows PC and Mac.
Hey it would be great if both Scratch and the Pico board were fully supported on the Raspberry Pi! So if any one out there has any kind of success doing that, i’m sure everyone would love to hear about it – all together this could make a great end-to-end solution for teaching kids age 8+ how to program, and get them on the right road to better things.
bwims
Agree, only any good in the UK for ebooks.
Ken MacIver
The Scratch Adventure approach reminds me of a book on Delphi I bought yonks ago.
As well as the standard explanation of the language, it contained a spoof 40’s style Private Eye\Noir story with a twist. Instead of a Private Eye our hero ‘Ace Breakpoint’ (honest) was an independent programmer trying to write a system against the clock and a big business competitor, using RAD and Delphi of course.
HIlarious and instructive.
clive
The Scratch book is superb. My six year-old son has been poring over it for the last few days and using ideas from it in his own games — he even reads it in the car on the way to school :)
The adventure comic book motif is engaging, great fun and an excellent way to start learning what is a brilliant programming language.
montekuri
I’ll take a look at Campus Party :-)
liz
Brilliant! Mention to Pete that Liz said you’re someone he should *particularly* spend some time talking to, and that you’ve been posting here for…all this time you’ve been posting here. (And tell him I’m still waiting to find out where his stair carpet is from.)
Montekuri
Now I see he will only talk on Friday, at my work time. I was going on saturday at my free time.
Sad :(
Gustavo Feuerstein
São Paulo* d:
Kevin.B.W.Lee
Good!!. I’ll translate to Korean that books for my kids.
Angel Padilla
My son got the Super Scratch for Christmas and he loves it. I like the comic style of getting kids interrested in programming.
Alan
So, I bought the book with the lesser discount.
Its stating that the new discount is being applied to people who have already purchased, may i ask how? does this mean i will be receiving a partial discount?
Alan
Comments are closed