Ben Forta
Educator · Author · Lecturer · Technologist

Turning curiosity into skills,
and skills into careers.

Passionate educator. Sought-after speaker and lecturer. Author of 40+ books with over a million copies in print across 16 languages. Adobe's Senior Director of Education Initiatives.

Featured books

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Captain Code: Unleash Your Coding Superpower with Python

Captain Code: Unleash Your Coding Superpower with Python

The intro-to-coding for the young (aged 10-18 or so) and young-at-heart. Learn by creating and playing games, starting small, and rapidly becoming increasingly sophisticated. Creating these games will help you learn how to code, but that’s not enough. We’re also going to help you learn how to think like a coder, analyze problems like a coder, plan like a coder, progressively iterate like a coder, craft elegant solutions like a coder, even talk like a coder. Because becoming a coder is all fun and games! (Note: we've created top-secret extra resources for educators who are using this book in the classroom).

Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes
Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes (Fifth Edition)

The 5th edition of the best selling SQL book of all time, used by individuals, organizations, and as courseware by dozens of academic institutions the world over. Includes coverage of all major DBMSs.

Learning Regular Expressions
Learning Regular Expressions

Regular expression are an incredibly powerful tool that can be used to perform all sorts of powerful text processing and manipulation in just about every language and on every platform. With this book, RegEx power is available to all.

Recent posts

Apr 27, 2026 Stuff
Bringing Back "On The Road"

In honor of the upcoming ColdFusion Summit I've brought back the On The Road archive, a treasure trove of nostalgia free for the browsing.

Apr 26, 2026 Stuff
The New (and Hopefully Improved) forta.com

This site is 29 years old. It goes through a complete tech overhaul every 5 years or so. This is the latest revision.

Apr 7, 2026 AdobeEducation
Introducing Student Spaces

Today we announced the beta of Student Spaces, a new free AI based way to study.

Sep 15, 2025 EducationAI
On AI In Education

Adobe's Mala Sharma has posted thoughts in AI in education and the White House’s Pledge to America’s Youth.

Aug 28, 2025 CodingEducation
Should We Still Teach Kids To Code?

I hear this question almost daily now: "With AI here, should we teach kids to code?" I was reminded of the following from our book, Captain Code , that teaches coding to kids. The intro asks kids "Why learn to code?".

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By the numbers

40+
Books published
Beginner guides, step-by-step tutorials, reference manuals, a fun intro to coding designed specifically for the young (and young at heart), and the best-selling SQL series of all time — some of which have been translated into 16 languages
30+
Years teaching
Coding and robotics classroom teacher, youth mentor, sought-after speaker and lecturer, and technical author who has helped more than a million people develop their coding skills and discover new opportunities
1M+
Copies in print
Readers in offices, homes, and classrooms worldwide, and an important campus presence where titles have been adopted as computing textbooks in leading colleges and universities
2,000+
Presentations
Keynotes, speeches, lectures, and demos delivered at events and venues around the world (and approaching 5,000,000 miles flown in the process)