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This is amazing, what a great project. Psion has a special place in my heart! My grandfather gifted 12-year-old me his 3c, when he upgraded to a BlackBerry. I
by jw1224 2y ago
This is amazing, what a great project. Psion has a special place in my heart!
My grandfather gifted 12-year-old me his 3c, when he upgraded to a BlackBerry.
I used OPL [1] on that Psion to write my first ever line of code.
Here I am now, a professional software engineer, 20 years later. Who’d have thought it :)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Programming_Language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Programming_Language
- lproven 2y agoThere really should be a FOSS re-implementation of OPL. Better still, one that could run on modern phones.
- pjmlp 2y agoFor modern phones, I guess Python is a better option, e.g. Pydroid.
- grishka 2y agoYou can also install Termux and use just about anything that runs on Linux.
- pjmlp 2y agoIn rooted phones, or sideloaded since it no longer satisfies Play Store security rules, given that many Linux syscalls aren't officially supported on Android.
- sans_souse 2y agoyou don't need root to download packages from a git repo.
- pjmlp 2y agoNote the or on my comment.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoOkay, but you did bring up root; why?
- pjmlp 2y agoAnd you stop reading after the comma, why?
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoI clearly didn't, since I'm arguing with you about everything after the comma in another thread. Why are you avoiding the question? Did you make a mistake bringing up root and just don't want to say so?
- anthk 2y agoTermux doesn't need root. Just get FDroid.
- pjmlp 2y agoAnother one with problems reading the full length of my comment. That comma really breaks English parsing in certain individuals.
- anthk 2y agoInstalling F-Droid is not rocket science.
- pjmlp 2y agoApparently English reading comprehension skills are.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoYou don't need to side-load termux; it comes from an app store. And I can't think of any case where you would need root, so I'm curious why you even mentioned that.
- pjmlp 2y agoNot from PlayStore, but apparently everyone has English reading comprehension problems and wants to write a comment anyway. https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/wiki/Termux-and-Android-10 https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/wiki/Termux-and-An...
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoYou seem to have ignored half my comment; per your standards this means I am entitled to insult you and then ignore your claims. (Which I'm going to try and avoid because it's impolite, but I wanted to take a moment to both call out hypocrisy and that you seem to be ignoring every single question about what rooting has to do with anything.) Anyways, yes, I can read, have spent a good deal of time on that exact page, am intimately familiar with sideloading (and rooting, if that were in scope), understand what an app store is, and maintain that Termux is best installed from an app store (F-Droid) rather than being sideloaded (though grabbing APKs straight from GitHub and sideloading them isn't that bad as a second option). I would suggest that if everyone appears to misunderstand you, then the most likely options are that 1. they understand you just fine, or 2. you need to communicate better. FWIW I think it's the former.
- lproven 2y agoPersonally I find Python vastly overrated and nowhere near as easy as its proponents claim. I think Python looks like an easy, simple, clear language if you grew up with Unix and C derivatives. I didn't. I am older than that, and when I was a teenager, Unix was a vastly expensive OS for high-end workstations. I never saw a physical Unix machine until I was about 17 and didn't get to try one until I was 20. (An IBM RT-PC running AIX 1.) I come from an era of simpler, clearer OSes and languages, more user-focused and less aimed at developers. I preferred BASIC, Fortran and Pascal to the curly-braces family of languages. I only wrote very simple programs in OPL in the early 1990s, but I found it much easier and more productive than Python, then or now.
- gbu 2y agoI had an almost identical start to programming. I didn’t have any OPL manual but there were a few short examples in the regular user guide somewhere. I can’t count how many times I read those few pages trying to glean more secrets about OPL!
- dotBen 2y agoThis was also MY start to programming. I won a Psion 3c when I was 12 or 13 and built shareware apps for it. I did my work experience at Psion's HQ in West London when I was 15, became a software engineer, director of engineering, startup founder, exited that startup, blah blah, venture capital investor today. All from programming on my Psion (and Acorn computers).