Company History
KIDWARE & BIBLEBYTES were founded in 1982 to publish a series of non-violent "family friendly" learning games for kids. Lou Tylee sold the KIDware Texas Instuments TI-99 learning games in "99er Home Computer Magazine" while the Conrods sold their TRS-80 Color Computer learning games through bookstores and conferences. Click here to view some of the original computer systems these games were developed on back in those early days of 8 bit micro-computer programming.
In 1983, the Conrods assembled the learning games they had written into an easy to use programming tutorial "textbook" which could be used by beginning programming students to learn BASIC computer programming. The book was designed to be used as a supplementary computer programming textbook in schools. Our first BASIC programming textbook was officially published on January 1, 1984 by Ac'cent Books for the Radio Shack TRS-80, Texas Instruments TI-99 and Timex Sinclair 8 bit micro-computer systems.
In 1984, the learning games were released on the Apple IIe, Commodore 64, Commodore VIC-20, and Microsoft Basic compatible computer sytems. The second BASIC computer programming textbook was published on July 1, 1984 by Ac'cent Books and it specifically covered Applesoft BASIC, Commodore BASIC, and 200 CP/M MBASIC compatible computer systems.
In 1985, Accent Books decides not to publish a 3rd computer programming textbook so Philip founded PC ENTERPRISES in 1986 to help market, publish, and distribute the new series of learning games for the fast growing IBM PC-DOS/MS-DOS platform. The PC-DOS/MS-DOS learning games were distributed on Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) including our own Wildcat and PCBoard BBS system.
In 1989, Philip relocated to Washinton State, where he would eventually finish the third Microsoft GW-BASIC/QBASIC programming tutorial as a self- published eBook which was distributed on various BBS systems around the country.
In 1998, we launched www.KIDWARESOFTWARE.COM on the rapidly growing Internet to help market and distribute our newly developed Microsoft Visual Basic computer programming tutorials. LEARN VISUAL BASIC 5 was published as a Beginning Visual Basic programming course for Colleges and Universities. The Learn Visual Basic courseware was successfully taught by Lou in a major Washington State University's introductory programming course over the next decade.
VISUAL BASIC FOR KIDS 5 and BEGINNING VISUAL BASIC 5 were both developed as beginning Visual Basic programming tutorials. In late 1998, each of these programming tutorials were updated to Visual Basic 6.
In 1999, VISUAL BASIC 5/6 AND DATABASES was developed as an intermediate college-level course for using Access and Microsoft SQL Database technologies.
In 2002, VISUAL BASIC .NET FOR KIDS and BEGINNING VISUAL BASIC .NET were both written for the Visual Basic.NET 2002 environment.
In 2003, JAVA FOR KIDS, BEGINNING JAVA, LEARN JAVA GUI APPLICATIONS were all written for the Sun Java development environment.
In 2004, VISUAL C# .NET FOR KIDS and BEGINNING VISUAL C# .NET were written for the Visual C# .NET 2002 environment. VISUAL BASIC .NET AND DATABASES was developed as an intermediate college-level course for Visual Basic .NET using Access and Microsoft SQL Database technologies.
In 2005, LEARN VISUAL BASIC was updated to Visual Basic 2005. KID GAMES WITH VISUAL BASIC EXPRESS was written for Microsoft Visual Basic Express 2005.
In 2006, the Seattle Times recognizes Lou's Introduction to Visual Basic course at the University of Washington.
In 2007, KID GAMES WITH VISUAL C# EXPRESS was written for Microsoft Visual C# Express 2005. LEARN VISUAL C# was developed for Visual C# 2005. VISUAL BASIC AND DATABASES and VISUAL C# AND DATABASES were both written as intermediate college-level courses for Visual Basic and C# applications using Microsoft Access and SQL Databases. Lou is also invited by Microsoft to write an article on Visual Basic Express forms development for the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN). Lou also taught a MSDN Online Webcast: Introduction to Windows Forms Applications Using Visual Basic Express Edition (Level 200) on Microsoft's MSDN World Wide Events.
In 2010, our Microsoft Visual Studio tutorials were updated to Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio Express 2010. SMALL BASIC FOR KIDS, BEGINNING MICROSOFT SMALL BASIC, KID GAMES WITH MICROSOFT SMALL BASIC, and HOME PROJECTS WITH MICRSOSOFT SMALL BASIC were all written for the Microsoft Small Basic development environment for beginners. We also updated all of our COMPUTER BIBLE GAMES programming tutorials for Microsoft Small Basic, Oracle Java and Visual Studio 2010. We also acquired the publishing rights to several classic BASIC computer programming books that were originally written by David H. Ahl and Edward H. Carson and updated them to Microsoft Small Basic 2010. We also published the very first Developer's Reference Guide to Microsoft Small Basic. We launched www.computerscienceForKids.com to showcase our new Microsoft Small Basic Tutorials.
In 2011, Microsoft licensed several chapters from several of our new Microsoft Small Basic Programming Digital Tutorials and cross published them on this Microsoft Developer Network website. We also updated all of our remaining Java courses to use Oracle Java v6 and Xinox JCreator v5.
Today, KIDWARE's products are used by teachers, parents and computer enthusiasts all over the world to introduce beginners to the wonderful world of programming. At last count, we estimated that our computer programming preview shareware tutorials have been downloaded over 1,000,000 times. Our programming textbooks are currently available for purchase at bookstores like Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com. For our 30th Anniversary in 2012, we would like to thank all our customers for allowing us to serve you for 30 wonderful years!
