10 ms·

Early Nintendo programmer worked without a keyboard

204 points by msh 10y ago

vanderZwan 10y ago
> As reported by Game Watch (and wonderfully translated by the Patreon-supported Source Gaming) I know this should be the default and not deserve a compliment, but I really appreciate it when an article on a website does proper sourcing.
- 6stringmerc 10y ago
  If I were you, I'd go to the source and skip Ars Technica based on its habitual record of getting basic shit wrong or otherwise intentionally starting political flame wars, because it is a garbage publication.
- komali2 10y ago
  It's always nice to know about the little ways passionate organizations like Source Gaming are doing their part to deliver information around the world.
  - CM30 10y ago
    And for the people who want to read their original article about this (with the full translation), here's the link: http://sourcegaming.info/2017/04/19/kirbys-development-secrets/ http://sourcegaming.info/2017/04/19/kirbys-development-secre...
aendruk 10y ago
Seemed like an interesting article, but while I was reading it disappeared from view and was replaced by a photo of a resort or something. Oh well.
- dvcrn 10y ago
  These are the moments when the reader mode in Safari really shines
- sevensor 10y ago
  Ars used to be a decent computer-enthusiast website. A little less hardcore than anandtech or [H]ardOCP. Somewhat helpful forums, but often offtopic. Obsessed with water-cooling your overclocked Celerons. But that was 1.5e-1 centuries ago, before the Condé Nast acquisition.
- Touche 10y ago
  https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/
- thraway2016 10y ago
  DNS by PiHole and uBlock Origin combine to do a damn fine job of preventing the behavior you describe.
- Safety1stClyde 10y ago
  I have JavaShit switched off everywhere except where I explicitly allow it, so I never encounter these problems. The solution to most of these woes is as simple as not allowing other people to run arbitrary programs on your computer, which even Nintendo programmers from way back when probably understood but seems to elude many today.
atemerev 10y ago
You still can do it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6eY73sLV0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6eY73sLV0
GuiA 10y ago
This is very cool. Constraints are definitely the mother of all creativity, even in indirect ways. This reminds me of my first few years of programming as a pre-teen, on a TI-82 calculator (I had no computer at home at the time), where I'd input code directly with the tiny keyboard. You didn't type keywords (if, else, etc.) directly - instead you would pick them from a menu system and the editor would insert them in your code. You could use the number keys as shortcuts in the menu system; after a while you'd develop pretty good muscle memory and type relatively fast on the machine. When I graduated to assembly, it was a whole other ordeal. I also remember drawing sprites for my game on graph paper, and then painstakingly inputting the coordinates for on pixels in the source. It's funny how every programmer who got into programming before the age of ubiquitous laptops/tablets/phones/etc. has stories like that to tell; one of my old boss's favorite stories is deleting the boot sector accidentally while programming an old DOS machine, and having to rewrite by hand and from memory while the computer was still powered. When he restarted the machine, everything worked, which was pretty much a miracle. On one hand I wonder if programmers who had to face this kind of drastic challenges end up having a stronger understanding of their craft and tooling compared to the new generation, learning languages and machines with very strong guard rails, never having to learn the deep insides of what they're working with; on the other hand, every generation bemoans the fact that the one before doesn't get things quite the way they do, but things usually turn out fine.
- westoncb 10y ago
  Whoa, that's interesting. Your description of the input scheme for the TI-82 sounds very similar to something I started building for a program editor meant to be used with motion sensors (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tztmgCcZaM4&feature=youtu.be&t=1m32s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tztmgCcZaM4&feature=youtu.be...). My plan was to always present a 3x3 grid with cells containing whichever language constructs were available from the current cursor position: after selecting one, the cursor position updates, and the options available in the cells update. I've tried to imagine using it many many times, but haven't been able to definitely conclude whether it would be usable or not...
  - derefr 10y ago
AdamSC1 10y ago
And employees complain today if they don't have a fridge stocked with free Jamba Juice!
- cryowaffle 10y ago
  Managers beg you "what can I put in the fridge?!" It's not a one way street because manager is just as fearful of losing engineers as engineers enjoy the perks.
shubhamjain 10y ago
> Sakurai, who was 20 at the time, says he simply thought this keyboard-free programming environment was "the way it was done," and he coded an entire functional test product using just the trackball. Maybe ten years from now, I can recount the horrid tales of writing code in notepad that didn't even have Ctrl+S shortcut, let alone code highlighting. :) Joking aside, I revere veteran programmers who wrote without keyboards, and coded mostly in assembly but I can't help think if it was pretty normal because that's the way things were done at that time. There is a opinion I hit on every now and then—of programming, especially web development, getting ridiculously easier compared to the past. It has, to a great extent, considering the tools and the computing power we have now, but the complexity of software is also pacing at the same speed, briskly consuming that efficiency. The real question that should be asked is: was programming in the past inordinately difficult when seen in perspective of software complexity the market demanded? Is software development easier today because the gain in programming efficiency is more than the complexity of software that needs to be made?
- iliketosleep 10y ago
  I think you’ll find that the average programmer of decades ago would have been significantly more competent that the average programmer of today. Why? Because programming wasn’t nearly as popular back then, so it was mainly people with genuine aptitude or interest in programming who pursued that path. These days, programming is more fashionable and quite a number of mediocre people have jumped on the bandwagon thus pulling down the average.
  - vvanders 10y ago
    Is that a bad thing? I think we should celebrate the diversity of developers and perspectives that they bring. Esoteric things are great but you'll never find that they reach critical mass in a way that's meaningful. I love ham radio but I don't think you'll ever see a day where everyone has a 2m transceiver in their car/house :).
    - iliketosleep 10y ago
jasonkostempski 10y ago
My brain couldn't even grasp the thought of it, I read the title as "worked out with a keyboard" 5 times and expected to see some sort of crazy exercise equipment when I opened the article. I even thought that ugly trackball mouse was some kind of workout machine until I finally read the first paragraph. That had to really mess with his hand programming that way.
- elldoubleyew 10y ago
  Ironically you are correct [0]. Sakurais health has become a bit of a meme in the Super Smash Bros. community over the last few years. I can't be 100% sure that his issues were related to track-ball-programming or not but I am sure it didn't help. [0] http://www.polygon.com/2013/2/27/4035046/why-masahiro-sakurais-bum-right-arm-is-hindering-work-on-the-new http://www.polygon.com/2013/2/27/4035046/why-masahiro-sakura...
  - jasonkostempski 10y ago
    Trackball for normal mouse use alone could play a big part. I really liked them but I haven't used one since the late 90's because the fatigue was very noticeable, especially on the top of my hand, my hands feel weird just thinking about using one again.
sehugg 10y ago
I kinda thought the article was going to be about programmers that marked up a line printer output and handed it off to someone that keyed the changes into a line editor (or punchcards)
gdubs 10y ago
Something so tight and elegant about the construction of games back then. Just look at the sprite sheets. Nothing wasted. I think it was Woz who said that an advantage of the generation of programmers who grew up in the 8 bit era was that they could have a mental model of the entire machine, which allowed them to squeeze out every last drop of performance and do some mind blowing things with very limited power by today's standards.
linux2647 10y ago
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/378/ https://xkcd.com/378/
jamespitts 10y ago
Amazing dedication! What struck me about this person's situation is: why didn't he and other engineers there work together and jerry-rig something with a PC to interact with the Twin Famicom and on-screen keyboard using the trackball's protocol? Perhaps they eventually did!
danso 10y ago
> As if the limited power wasn't bad enough, Sakurai revealed that the Twin Famicom testbed they were using "didn’t even have keyboard support, meaning values had to be input using a trackball and an on-screen keyboard." Those kinds of visual programming languages may be fashionable now, but having a physical keyboard to type in values or edit instructions would have probably still been welcome back in the early '90s. Leaving aside the contention whether visual programming languages have ever been fashionable, the author has a very deformed view of programming if he thinks typing out code via an on-screen keyboard is the difference between traditional programming and "visual" programming.
sbierwagen 10y ago
Blogspam. Source is http://sourcegaming.info/2017/04/19/kirbys-development-secrets/ http://sourcegaming.info/2017/04/19/kirbys-development-secre...
kstenerud 10y ago
Most primitive system I ever programmed on had a hexadecimal number pad and an LED display. You punched in an address, hit "addr", and it showed the current value at that address. There were also "next" and "prev" buttons. You could then enter a new value on the hex pad and hit "enter". Once you were satisfied, you'd point the reset vector to your program, and hit "reset" to start the chip going.
cube00 10y ago
I'll never complain about Centura again.

204 points by msh 10y ago

> As reported by Game Watch (and wonderfully translated by the Patreon-supported Source Gaming) I know this should be the default and not deserve a compliment, but I really appreciate it when an article on a website does proper sourcing.

6stringmerc 10y ago
If I were you, I'd go to the source and skip Ars Technica based on its habitual record of getting basic shit wrong or otherwise intentionally starting political flame wars, because it is a garbage publication.
komali2 10y ago
It's always nice to know about the little ways passionate organizations like Source Gaming are doing their part to deliver information around the world.
- CM30 10y ago
  And for the people who want to read their original article about this (with the full translation), here's the link: http://sourcegaming.info/2017/04/19/kirbys-development-secrets/ http://sourcegaming.info/2017/04/19/kirbys-development-secre...

aendruk 10y ago

Seemed like an interesting article, but while I was reading it disappeared from view and was replaced by a photo of a resort or something. Oh well.

dvcrn 10y ago
These are the moments when the reader mode in Safari really shines
sevensor 10y ago
Ars used to be a decent computer-enthusiast website. A little less hardcore than anandtech or [H]ardOCP. Somewhat helpful forums, but often offtopic. Obsessed with water-cooling your overclocked Celerons. But that was 1.5e-1 centuries ago, before the Condé Nast acquisition.
Touche 10y ago
https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/
thraway2016 10y ago
DNS by PiHole and uBlock Origin combine to do a damn fine job of preventing the behavior you describe.
Safety1stClyde 10y ago
I have JavaShit switched off everywhere except where I explicitly allow it, so I never encounter these problems. The solution to most of these woes is as simple as not allowing other people to run arbitrary programs on your computer, which even Nintendo programmers from way back when probably understood but seems to elude many today.

atemerev 10y ago

You still can do it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6eY73sLV0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6eY73sLV0

GuiA 10y ago

This is very cool. Constraints are definitely the mother of all creativity, even in indirect ways. This reminds me of my first few years of programming as a pre-teen, on a TI-82 calculator (I had no computer at home at the time), where I'd input code directly with the tiny keyboard. You didn't type keywords (if, else, etc.) directly - instead you would pick them from a menu system and the editor would insert them in your code. You could use the number keys as shortcuts in the menu system; after a while you'd develop pretty good muscle memory and type relatively fast on the machine. When I graduated to assembly, it was a whole other ordeal. I also remember drawing sprites for my game on graph paper, and then painstakingly inputting the coordinates for on pixels in the source. It's funny how every programmer who got into programming before the age of ubiquitous laptops/tablets/phones/etc. has stories like that to tell; one of my old boss's favorite stories is deleting the boot sector accidentally while programming an old DOS machine, and having to rewrite by hand and from memory while the computer was still powered. When he restarted the machine, everything worked, which was pretty much a miracle. On one hand I wonder if programmers who had to face this kind of drastic challenges end up having a stronger understanding of their craft and tooling compared to the new generation, learning languages and machines with very strong guard rails, never having to learn the deep insides of what they're working with; on the other hand, every generation bemoans the fact that the one before doesn't get things quite the way they do, but things usually turn out fine.

westoncb 10y ago
Whoa, that's interesting. Your description of the input scheme for the TI-82 sounds very similar to something I started building for a program editor meant to be used with motion sensors (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tztmgCcZaM4&feature=youtu.be&t=1m32s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tztmgCcZaM4&feature=youtu.be...). My plan was to always present a 3x3 grid with cells containing whichever language constructs were available from the current cursor position: after selecting one, the cursor position updates, and the options available in the cells update. I've tried to imagine using it many many times, but haven't been able to definitely conclude whether it would be usable or not...
- derefr 10y ago

AdamSC1 10y ago

And employees complain today if they don't have a fridge stocked with free Jamba Juice!

cryowaffle 10y ago
Managers beg you "what can I put in the fridge?!" It's not a one way street because manager is just as fearful of losing engineers as engineers enjoy the perks.

shubhamjain 10y ago

> Sakurai, who was 20 at the time, says he simply thought this keyboard-free programming environment was "the way it was done," and he coded an entire functional test product using just the trackball. Maybe ten years from now, I can recount the horrid tales of writing code in notepad that didn't even have Ctrl+S shortcut, let alone code highlighting. :) Joking aside, I revere veteran programmers who wrote without keyboards, and coded mostly in assembly but I can't help think if it was pretty normal because that's the way things were done at that time. There is a opinion I hit on every now and then—of programming, especially web development, getting ridiculously easier compared to the past. It has, to a great extent, considering the tools and the computing power we have now, but the complexity of software is also pacing at the same speed, briskly consuming that efficiency. The real question that should be asked is: was programming in the past inordinately difficult when seen in perspective of software complexity the market demanded? Is software development easier today because the gain in programming efficiency is more than the complexity of software that needs to be made?

iliketosleep 10y ago
I think you’ll find that the average programmer of decades ago would have been significantly more competent that the average programmer of today. Why? Because programming wasn’t nearly as popular back then, so it was mainly people with genuine aptitude or interest in programming who pursued that path. These days, programming is more fashionable and quite a number of mediocre people have jumped on the bandwagon thus pulling down the average.
- vvanders 10y ago
  Is that a bad thing? I think we should celebrate the diversity of developers and perspectives that they bring. Esoteric things are great but you'll never find that they reach critical mass in a way that's meaningful. I love ham radio but I don't think you'll ever see a day where everyone has a 2m transceiver in their car/house :).
  - iliketosleep 10y ago

jasonkostempski 10y ago

My brain couldn't even grasp the thought of it, I read the title as "worked out with a keyboard" 5 times and expected to see some sort of crazy exercise equipment when I opened the article. I even thought that ugly trackball mouse was some kind of workout machine until I finally read the first paragraph. That had to really mess with his hand programming that way.

elldoubleyew 10y ago
Ironically you are correct [0]. Sakurais health has become a bit of a meme in the Super Smash Bros. community over the last few years. I can't be 100% sure that his issues were related to track-ball-programming or not but I am sure it didn't help. [0] http://www.polygon.com/2013/2/27/4035046/why-masahiro-sakurais-bum-right-arm-is-hindering-work-on-the-new http://www.polygon.com/2013/2/27/4035046/why-masahiro-sakura...
- jasonkostempski 10y ago
  Trackball for normal mouse use alone could play a big part. I really liked them but I haven't used one since the late 90's because the fatigue was very noticeable, especially on the top of my hand, my hands feel weird just thinking about using one again.

sehugg 10y ago

I kinda thought the article was going to be about programmers that marked up a line printer output and handed it off to someone that keyed the changes into a line editor (or punchcards)

gdubs 10y ago

Something so tight and elegant about the construction of games back then. Just look at the sprite sheets. Nothing wasted. I think it was Woz who said that an advantage of the generation of programmers who grew up in the 8 bit era was that they could have a mental model of the entire machine, which allowed them to squeeze out every last drop of performance and do some mind blowing things with very limited power by today's standards.

linux2647 10y ago

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/378/ https://xkcd.com/378/

jamespitts 10y ago

Amazing dedication! What struck me about this person's situation is: why didn't he and other engineers there work together and jerry-rig something with a PC to interact with the Twin Famicom and on-screen keyboard using the trackball's protocol? Perhaps they eventually did!

danso 10y ago

> As if the limited power wasn't bad enough, Sakurai revealed that the Twin Famicom testbed they were using "didn’t even have keyboard support, meaning values had to be input using a trackball and an on-screen keyboard." Those kinds of visual programming languages may be fashionable now, but having a physical keyboard to type in values or edit instructions would have probably still been welcome back in the early '90s. Leaving aside the contention whether visual programming languages have ever been fashionable, the author has a very deformed view of programming if he thinks typing out code via an on-screen keyboard is the difference between traditional programming and "visual" programming.

sbierwagen 10y ago

Blogspam. Source is http://sourcegaming.info/2017/04/19/kirbys-development-secrets/ http://sourcegaming.info/2017/04/19/kirbys-development-secre...

kstenerud 10y ago

Most primitive system I ever programmed on had a hexadecimal number pad and an LED display. You punched in an address, hit "addr", and it showed the current value at that address. There were also "next" and "prev" buttons. You could then enter a new value on the hex pad and hit "enter". Once you were satisfied, you'd point the reset vector to your program, and hit "reset" to start the chip going.

cube00 10y ago

I'll never complain about Centura again.