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There are numerous projects completed today for "retro" computers that run on unmodified hardware that would have been almost unimaginable "back in the day" and
by jlarcombe 2y ago
There are numerous projects completed today for "retro" computers that run on unmodified hardware that would have been almost unimaginable "back in the day" and the vastly more powerful development tools (running on today's hardware of course) is surely a big factor. The fact that you can debug a game for the BBC Micro, say, by emulating the entire system and seeing at a glance frame by frame what everything is doing makes some tricks feasible that would have been incredibly difficult to pull off in the machines hey day.
- Animats 2y agoIt wasn't hopeless back then. You just had to develop on bigger hardware than the target. Like most other engineering processes. AutoCAD for the Macintosh was developed on Sun workstations and cross-compiled, for example.
- jlarcombe 2y agoYes as was famously The Hobbit for the ZX Spectrum and all the Psion software (on a Vax I think). Not so achievable for the lone developer though.