3 ms·

Why don't we bring back pages of 6pt font hex codes from the back of Byte magazine too?

• musicale 6y ago
  I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but I think I'm all for it! :D Ancient computer magazines seem like magical treasure troves. I recently linked to an issue of Creative Computing which included the source listing for the Oregon Trail game that you could type in and run, as well as an article describing the game and a transcript of someone playing (and actually winning, haha.) I'd say that's pretty interesting and educational because the code has to go through your brain and out your fingers, and then you have to debug it afterward. It cracks the black box open and shows you the inside components inside; even if you might not fully understand them immediately you can see what they are made of and how they work at a micro level. And limited system memory, page count, and and finger endurance seem to have kept source listings reasonably short and manageable, while still enabling interesting and non-trivial applications. There may also be more incentive to explore both the gameplay and its implementation in some detail since you put so much effort into it, rather than just clicking on the next opaque binary download. That being said... github is also a magical treasure trove, but usually without the friendly magazine articles explaining the software, so the onramp is steeper even if you don't have to type the code in yourself. I'd like to see a github index of short-form, relatively self-contained software of this sort. Ideally with accompanying articles. ;-) I'd also like to see more modern magazines like the MagPi.