4 ms·

IIRC, in the early days of the Commodore PET, it used a method of keeping track of strings that was fine in an 8k machine but was too slow in a 32k machine. The

IIRC, in the early days of the Commodore PET, it used a method of keeping track of strings that was fine in an 8k machine but was too slow in a 32k machine. They had to make a change that avoided quadratic time on the larger machine. So string handling in BASIC wasn't always that simple.

867-5309 6y ago
+1 for the PET mention since it was my first "computer". much overlooked in favour of the 64
- tlavoie 6y ago
  Ah, yes. I recall the luxury of a Commodore of my very own (a C128), after using PETs in school. We had a whole three of them at the time, with a shared, dual-floppy drive for the set. Naturally, our teacher wisely pushed hard on figuring what you could out on paper first.
  - dotancohen 6y ago
    > Naturally, our teacher wisely pushed hard on figuring what > you could out on paper first. Specifically in the case of the Commodores (I grew up on a C128) I find this observation backwards. Sure, if you only had three machines for twenty students then time on the machine was valuable. But on those machines there was so much to explore with poke (and peek to know what to put back). From changing the colours of the display to changing the behaviour of the interpreter. I think that I discovered the for loop at eight years old just to poke faster!
ajuc 6y ago
It always blows my mind when I remember 8-bit computers had garbage-collected strings.