{"id":49071,"date":"2025-08-29T16:23:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T20:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=49071"},"modified":"2025-09-04T08:45:24","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T12:45:24","slug":"vintage-macintosh-programming-book-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/29\/vintage-macintosh-programming-book-library\/","title":{"rendered":"Vintage Macintosh Programming Book Library"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/vintageapple.org\/macprogramming\/index_year.html\">VintageApple<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/vintageapple.org\/macprogramming\/index_year.html\"><p>Nick R. was generous enough to send me his entire vintage Mac programming library to\nbe destructively scanned and shared with the community. We&rsquo;ve added a few of our own\nfor a pretty huge collection (over 150) of vintage Mac programming related books.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/taoofmac.com\/space\/links\/2025\/07\/24\/2130\">Rui Carmo<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/taoofmac.com\/space\/links\/2025\/07\/24\/2130\">\n<p>[This] is a great resource for people interested in vintage Mac programming, including the original Think Pascal and Think C books I used when I was hacking away at 68k Mac apps.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>The books are mostly from the 1980s and 1990s, so it doesn&rsquo;t have the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Rhapsody-Developers-Guide-Jesse-Feiler\/dp\/0122513347\">Rhapsody Developer&rsquo;s Guide<\/a> or the early books on Carbon, Cocoa, and the other technologies from NeXT.<\/p>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/01\/scott-knaster-occasionally-misses-expectations\/\">Scott Knaster Occasionally Misses Expectations<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/29\/vintage-macworld-magazine-library\/\">Vintage Macworld Magazine Library<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"vintage-macintosh-programming-book-library-update-2025-09-02\">Update (<a href=\"#vintage-macintosh-programming-book-library-update-2025-09-02\">2025-09-02<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/daringfireball.net\/linked\/2025\/08\/31\/vintage-macintosh-programming-book-library\">John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/daringfireball.net\/linked\/2025\/08\/31\/vintage-macintosh-programming-book-library\">\n<p>These evoke nostalgia both for the classic Mac era <em>and<\/em> for the entire notion of &ldquo;programming books&rdquo;.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Dave Mark&rsquo;s 1989 <em>Learn C on the Macintosh<\/em> was, I think, the first book I read about Mac programming.<\/p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@daringfireball\/115124038721213643\">Ken Kocienda<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@daringfireball\/115124038721213643\">\n<p>A nostalgic list of books for me. I was first learning to write programs in the middle of this era, a time before programming documentation or open source code was available online. Books were it. Printed material was my only way to learn, and it wasn&rsquo;t easy. In the early 1990s, I wanted to be a programmer, but I wasn&rsquo;t, and I struggled with that hard truth. That was a long time ago, but I remember, and I kept a few of my old books because I couldn&rsquo;t bear parting with them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"vintage-macintosh-programming-book-library-update-2025-09-04\">Update (<a href=\"#vintage-macintosh-programming-book-library-update-2025-09-04\">2025-09-04<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@eschaton\/115132987811442465\">Chris Hanson<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@eschaton\/115132987811442465\"><p>In addition to scans of Mac programming books, VintageApple.org has a <a href=\"https:\/\/vintageapple.org\/develop\/\">complete archive of Apple&rsquo;s <em>develop<\/em> magazine<\/a>, which is exemplar of how a platform vendor should communicate with developers.<\/p><p>Between being run by Caroline Rose and Louella Pizzuti and featuring articles about system technologies written by the system software engineers and developer technical support engineers directly responsible for them, it really was an incredible publication.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/29\/vintage-macintosh-programming-book-library\/#comment-4302587\">Chris Hanson<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/29\/vintage-macintosh-programming-book-library\/#comment-4302587\"><p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/lispm.de\/docs\/prefix-dylan\/book.annotated\/\">original Dylan book<\/a> was actually converted to HTML back in the very early days of the web. Rainer Joswig has an archive of it as well as an archive of the <a href=\"http:\/\/lispm.de\/docs\/prefix-dylan\/design-notes\/\">Dylan Design Notes<\/a> that clarify, amend, and clean up the language (at least before its syntax was ruined to make it palatable to developers who would never use it anyway).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/20\/thank-you-caroline-rose\/\">Thank You, Caroline Rose<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/28\/dylan-and-newton-history\/\">Dylan and Newton History<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/22\/dylan-programming-guide\/\">Dylan Programming Guide<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2003\/11\/06\/mac_developer_journal\/\">Mac Developer Journal<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>VintageApple: Nick R. was generous enough to send me his entire vintage Mac programming library to be destructively scanned and shared with the community. We&rsquo;ve added a few of our own for a pretty huge collection (over 150) of vintage Mac programming related books. Via Rui Carmo: [This] is a great resource for people interested [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-08-29T20:23:14Z","apple_news_api_id":"2553d6f6-9444-49dd-8ed0-068aa332862e","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-09-04T12:45:10Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAg==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AJVPW9pRESd2O0AaKozKGLg","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[38,63,45,296,295,30,923,924,330,71,922],"class_list":["post-49071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-programming-category","tag-apple","tag-book","tag-c","tag-dylan","tag-history","tag-mac","tag-mac-os-8","tag-mac-os-9","tag-pascal","tag-programming","tag-system-7"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49071"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49141,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49071\/revisions\/49141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}