4 ms·

LOCS: Language developed at age 9 in Z80 machine code (1988)

81 points by nanochess 3y ago

juancn 3y ago
Neat, I built one language when I was 12 or so, it was a ripoff of basic (and it was written in basic). Parsing was hard, so commands were a single letter. The cool thing about it was that it supported windows and multi tasking (but no synchronization primitives). It was rough and incomplete, but I always remember the moment I realized I could run one statement of each task to run more than one at the same time. I can still picture the first time I run two programs side by side in two windows. Literature and information was scarce when I was a kid, so it was a true discovery (all my programming resources were basically the C64 manual). I could never get my hands on any lower level programming resources, many things I just found out by literally POKE-ing around the memory of the C64. I still have a tape with the last version of it lying around somewhere, I called it LSP (Lenguaje Simplificado de Programación), not sure if it's still readable though.
- MenhirMike 3y ago
  > (all my programming resources were basically the C64 manual) Real talk though, those Commodore manuals were AWESOME because of how comprehensive they were. Even the 1541 Disk Drive had a complete manual on how to use it's features from Basic. And if you got ahold of the Programmer's Reference, you were golden: https://archive.org/details/c64-programmer-ref https://archive.org/details/c64-programmer-ref
shermantanktop 3y ago
I had a VIC20 and at 12 wrote an Asteroids clone - that’s how I realized what a game loop was. And also that I didn’t know how to write one in BASIC. But drawing those sprites on graph paper was hours of fun.
esafak 3y ago
This is what I mean when I say that the older generation knew their computers. Middle schoolers writing assembly was not extraordinary.
- kazinator 3y ago
  Yes it was, though.
  - Swizec 3y ago
    As a middle schooler blindly copypasting assembly to make the mouse work in my Turbo Pascal programs, can confirm that this was extremely rare in the mid 90’s. Just having a computer at home was rare enough, the fact that you were into programming? There were like 5 of us seriously into it in the whole school of about 1000 pupils. Even now there are only about 27 million professional software engineers[1] in the world. That’s 0.3% of the population. Looking at USA alone, 1.4% of the population are software engineers. We are extremely rare. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demograph...
    - jhbadger 3y ago
      I think it was more common in the 1980s for amateur programmers (including young people as I was then) to know assembly than it was in the 1990s and later for several reasons. First of all there was the need for it -- while there were compilers you could run on 8-bits, the limited memory space meant that the compiler often ended up taking too much of the memory you needed for your program, and so when people realized that BASIC was too slow/limited for what they wanted to write, assembly language was the obvious alternative. Secondly, the assembly languages of 8-bits was generally 6502 or Z80. These are relatively simple processors and learning these architectures (as I did myself) wasn't that hard. Once x86 machines took over in the 1990s, assembly because less attractive both because compilers were more practical because of larger memory and because x86 assembly is frankly a nightmare.
      - andrewshadura 3y ago
        Also for Z80 you could translate the assembly code into machine code by hand quite easily. With 8086, not so much.
  - 3y ago
smingo 3y ago
[flagged]
- I_am_uncreative 3y ago
  Yet another person who blames their problems on being born.
KingOfCoders 3y ago
"but it wasn't so good for teaching programming because no home computer came with Logo, it was expensive" 1. My 8bit Amstrad CPC464 (1984) with disc drive came with LOGO [0] 2. I've used LOGO to teach programming (and C, Python, Java) and LOGO is easily the best (Scratch). [0] https://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/System_Disk#CPC464_.28DDI-1.29 https://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/System_Disk#CPC464_.28DDI-1... https://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Dr._Logo https://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Dr._Logo
- nanochess 3y ago
  Cool! I've added a mention of this to the article.
  - KingOfCoders 3y ago
    Cool!
anonzzzies 3y ago
When I was that age I tried to copy games; first in Basic and then in hybrid Basic/ASM (data 3e,00,cd,...; I never actually used an assembler). Like the OP, also on a MSX. I wanted to know how they worked ; I always found it boring playing them (still find it boring), but how they work under the hood always was interesting to me. It's also how I learned about hardware; I wanted to expand my machine so started meeting up with (to me extremely old) guys who knew how everything worked. The MSX I had came with schematics in the box, so that was fun.
ngcc_hk 3y ago
Can this be run on ti calc I wonder ?
- tempodox 3y ago
  In theory it might, but connecting a Z80 TI to anything for uploading the binary is probably super weird and expensive. Does anyone know the executable format to begin with?

81 points by nanochess 3y ago

Neat, I built one language when I was 12 or so, it was a ripoff of basic (and it was written in basic). Parsing was hard, so commands were a single letter. The cool thing about it was that it supported windows and multi tasking (but no synchronization primitives). It was rough and incomplete, but I always remember the moment I realized I could run one statement of each task to run more than one at the same time. I can still picture the first time I run two programs side by side in two windows. Literature and information was scarce when I was a kid, so it was a true discovery (all my programming resources were basically the C64 manual). I could never get my hands on any lower level programming resources, many things I just found out by literally POKE-ing around the memory of the C64. I still have a tape with the last version of it lying around somewhere, I called it LSP (Lenguaje Simplificado de Programación), not sure if it's still readable though.

MenhirMike 3y ago
> (all my programming resources were basically the C64 manual) Real talk though, those Commodore manuals were AWESOME because of how comprehensive they were. Even the 1541 Disk Drive had a complete manual on how to use it's features from Basic. And if you got ahold of the Programmer's Reference, you were golden: https://archive.org/details/c64-programmer-ref https://archive.org/details/c64-programmer-ref

shermantanktop 3y ago

I had a VIC20 and at 12 wrote an Asteroids clone - that’s how I realized what a game loop was. And also that I didn’t know how to write one in BASIC. But drawing those sprites on graph paper was hours of fun.

esafak 3y ago

This is what I mean when I say that the older generation knew their computers. Middle schoolers writing assembly was not extraordinary.

kazinator 3y ago
Yes it was, though.
- Swizec 3y ago
  As a middle schooler blindly copypasting assembly to make the mouse work in my Turbo Pascal programs, can confirm that this was extremely rare in the mid 90’s. Just having a computer at home was rare enough, the fact that you were into programming? There were like 5 of us seriously into it in the whole school of about 1000 pupils. Even now there are only about 27 million professional software engineers[1] in the world. That’s 0.3% of the population. Looking at USA alone, 1.4% of the population are software engineers. We are extremely rare. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demograph...
  - jhbadger 3y ago
    I think it was more common in the 1980s for amateur programmers (including young people as I was then) to know assembly than it was in the 1990s and later for several reasons. First of all there was the need for it -- while there were compilers you could run on 8-bits, the limited memory space meant that the compiler often ended up taking too much of the memory you needed for your program, and so when people realized that BASIC was too slow/limited for what they wanted to write, assembly language was the obvious alternative. Secondly, the assembly languages of 8-bits was generally 6502 or Z80. These are relatively simple processors and learning these architectures (as I did myself) wasn't that hard. Once x86 machines took over in the 1990s, assembly because less attractive both because compilers were more practical because of larger memory and because x86 assembly is frankly a nightmare.
    - andrewshadura 3y ago
      Also for Z80 you could translate the assembly code into machine code by hand quite easily. With 8086, not so much.
- 3y ago

smingo 3y ago

[flagged]

I_am_uncreative 3y ago
Yet another person who blames their problems on being born.

KingOfCoders 3y ago

"but it wasn't so good for teaching programming because no home computer came with Logo, it was expensive" 1. My 8bit Amstrad CPC464 (1984) with disc drive came with LOGO [0] 2. I've used LOGO to teach programming (and C, Python, Java) and LOGO is easily the best (Scratch). [0] https://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/System_Disk#CPC464_.28DDI-1.29 https://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/System_Disk#CPC464_.28DDI-1... https://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Dr._Logo https://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Dr._Logo

nanochess 3y ago
Cool! I've added a mention of this to the article.
- KingOfCoders 3y ago
  Cool!

anonzzzies 3y ago

When I was that age I tried to copy games; first in Basic and then in hybrid Basic/ASM (data 3e,00,cd,...; I never actually used an assembler). Like the OP, also on a MSX. I wanted to know how they worked ; I always found it boring playing them (still find it boring), but how they work under the hood always was interesting to me. It's also how I learned about hardware; I wanted to expand my machine so started meeting up with (to me extremely old) guys who knew how everything worked. The MSX I had came with schematics in the box, so that was fun.

ngcc_hk 3y ago

Can this be run on ti calc I wonder ?

tempodox 3y ago
In theory it might, but connecting a Z80 TI to anything for uploading the binary is probably super weird and expensive. Does anyone know the executable format to begin with?