4 ms·

When I was a kid other kids either had ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 or BBC Micros. (yeah - I knew one kid with a Dragon 32 poor sod. And someone with an Atari 400

When I was a kid other kids either had ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 or BBC Micros. (yeah - I knew one kid with a Dragon 32 poor sod. And someone with an Atari 400 or 800 where I was jealous of the hardware palette tricks and game cartridges) Anyway - The Commodore seemed the worst option in terms of habitability. Any graphics or sound programming largely consisted of poking random locations in memory. The included BASIC had no direct support for any of the interesting stuff. The quality of the BASIC was also poor. The Beeb probably had the best implementation at the time with the Spectrum coming second. So - I guess what I'm saying is the C64 is a strange role model.

LeoPanthera 6y ago
Until beaten by the Raspberry Pi, the Commodore 64 was the best selling single model of computer in history, Commodore having sold between 12 and 17 million units in its lifetime. So I imagine it is inspired, at least in part, by its ubiquity.
kiney 6y ago
yeah, I remember typing out basic listings full of peek and poke without understanding why and what they did with those memory locations. (on commodore plus4)
the_af 6y ago
The C64's BASIC was indeed very poor compared to the competition, but the hardware (and games) were pretty cool. People wrote games with assembler in all those early home computers.
- abiogenesis 6y ago
  The BASIC v2 was horrible, but still there were plenty of great games written in BASIC (Sid Meier's Pirates was mostly BASIC, for example).
  - the_af 6y ago
    Really!? Wow. I don't see how, will read about it. Do you have any link to read? (any excuse to read about Sid Meier's Pirates! and the C64 is good). In any case, C64's BASIC "programming" meant that for graphics and audio you were mostly POKEing and PEEKing, since its instruction set was very limited. And when you're mostly peeking and pooking directly at memory, you're barely writing BASIC, are you? ;) edit: I tracked down a 2014 comment from HN saying the same as you: that Pirates! was mostly written in BASIC. I'm amazed. Now I really want to see the source code and/or read a "making of".
    - abiogenesis 6y ago
      I don't remember if it was compiled BASIC or if you could actually freeze the game and print the listing. I do remember that it was mostly BASIC as I mentioned though, meaning that it resorted to ML routines when needed. Just found out that it wasn't even compiled BASIC: https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Pirates!#Miscellaneous https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Pirates!#Miscellaneous It is debatable if using PEEKs and POKEs for audio and video functions changes the fact that it is actually BASIC. You are only imitating LDA and STA opcodes, the rest is still BASIC.
      - the_af 6y ago
        Awesome. Thanks for the info! I'm really surprised by this. I didn't know you could do anything useful with C64's BASIC. I know I didn't. I waited till I had GW-BASIC on a PC XT to really learn how to program. If Pirates! was mostly high level BASIC, I wish the source code was available somewhere to read. Kind of like Broderbund, which released the assembly language code for some of its old games...
        abiogenesis 6y ago
        It should be pretty straightforward to extract it from the image file using the modern emulator/debuggers. I believe the comments (if any) will be scarce, but still...
sbuttgereit 6y ago
My first computer was the VIC-20 and grew up on C-64 and, today, I thank the stars that they didn't have that stuff in their BASIC implementation. Because I had to deal with the machine on its terms, rather than more comfortable terms, I believe I gained an understanding and intuition for digital logic and processing fundamentals. I think this early grounding in low level basics has allowed me to be flexible and adaptive in ways that many of my colleagues that have only ever had practical experience operating at high levels of abstraction seem to have trouble with. Naturally this is all anecdote and should be weighted accordingly, but my sense is that these experiences ultimately were formative in rather positive ways given my age and such at the time. And none of this is to disagree with your point... only to show that the primitive BASIC, coupled with for the time rather nice hardware for price, wasn't necessarily bad.

LeoPanthera 6y ago

Until beaten by the Raspberry Pi, the Commodore 64 was the best selling single model of computer in history, Commodore having sold between 12 and 17 million units in its lifetime. So I imagine it is inspired, at least in part, by its ubiquity.

kiney 6y ago

yeah, I remember typing out basic listings full of peek and poke without understanding why and what they did with those memory locations. (on commodore plus4)

the_af 6y ago

The C64's BASIC was indeed very poor compared to the competition, but the hardware (and games) were pretty cool. People wrote games with assembler in all those early home computers.

abiogenesis 6y ago
The BASIC v2 was horrible, but still there were plenty of great games written in BASIC (Sid Meier's Pirates was mostly BASIC, for example).
- the_af 6y ago
  Really!? Wow. I don't see how, will read about it. Do you have any link to read? (any excuse to read about Sid Meier's Pirates! and the C64 is good). In any case, C64's BASIC "programming" meant that for graphics and audio you were mostly POKEing and PEEKing, since its instruction set was very limited. And when you're mostly peeking and pooking directly at memory, you're barely writing BASIC, are you? ;) edit: I tracked down a 2014 comment from HN saying the same as you: that Pirates! was mostly written in BASIC. I'm amazed. Now I really want to see the source code and/or read a "making of".
  - abiogenesis 6y ago
    I don't remember if it was compiled BASIC or if you could actually freeze the game and print the listing. I do remember that it was mostly BASIC as I mentioned though, meaning that it resorted to ML routines when needed. Just found out that it wasn't even compiled BASIC: https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Pirates!#Miscellaneous https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Pirates!#Miscellaneous It is debatable if using PEEKs and POKEs for audio and video functions changes the fact that it is actually BASIC. You are only imitating LDA and STA opcodes, the rest is still BASIC.
    - the_af 6y ago
      Awesome. Thanks for the info! I'm really surprised by this. I didn't know you could do anything useful with C64's BASIC. I know I didn't. I waited till I had GW-BASIC on a PC XT to really learn how to program. If Pirates! was mostly high level BASIC, I wish the source code was available somewhere to read. Kind of like Broderbund, which released the assembly language code for some of its old games...
      - abiogenesis 6y ago
        It should be pretty straightforward to extract it from the image file using the modern emulator/debuggers. I believe the comments (if any) will be scarce, but still...

sbuttgereit 6y ago

My first computer was the VIC-20 and grew up on C-64 and, today, I thank the stars that they didn't have that stuff in their BASIC implementation. Because I had to deal with the machine on its terms, rather than more comfortable terms, I believe I gained an understanding and intuition for digital logic and processing fundamentals. I think this early grounding in low level basics has allowed me to be flexible and adaptive in ways that many of my colleagues that have only ever had practical experience operating at high levels of abstraction seem to have trouble with. Naturally this is all anecdote and should be weighted accordingly, but my sense is that these experiences ultimately were formative in rather positive ways given my age and such at the time. And none of this is to disagree with your point... only to show that the primitive BASIC, coupled with for the time rather nice hardware for price, wasn't necessarily bad.