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An Apple II in 1982 has 256 Kb of RAM. My first computer, an Acorn Atom, had 12Kb of RAM with the expansion pack, and packed two programming languages into 1Kb
by marcus_holmes 4mo ago
An Apple II in 1982 has 256 Kb of RAM. My first computer, an Acorn Atom, had 12Kb of RAM with the expansion pack, and packed two programming languages into 1Kb of RAM. I used to write Assembler on it, and there were 3 registers and no paging at all.
I wrote an timesheet tracking system for my A-level in 1986 on my BBC micro (the Atom's big brother). It took me more than half an hour, but it worked and did useful things. I'm sure it had bugs in it.
So I remember this period you're describing. Your software chief was a dick, though turning up 30 mins late on your first day would be a firing offence in any job back then.
We learned how to code when coding was very simple. There were no GUIs, no mice, all professional software was menu-driven. Screens had one resolution. None of these systems were networked, you only ever had to deal with one user. Security was never an issue, there was no external interface at all. Performance was usually not an issue, because everything was so simple. The OS was tiny and did almost nothing [0]. You could write software quickly because everything was much, much, simpler back then.
I'm seeing people who have never coded before write useful apps in 2026, against our modern massively more complex and intricate tech stack, using LLMs. No it's not perfect, but it's improving. There is absolutely zero chance that they could write an app themselves, or learn how to do that in less than a year, like we did back in 80's, because everything is so much more complex now.
[0] yes there were systems that did do all these things, but they weren't on the machines we're talking about here.
- botfriendsarent 4mo agoMore useful than a working accounting system? Because of the disaster of screen resolutions, mobile form factors and all the previous dishonesty inherent in the past 30 years of software development? That must be really useful. The machines are not the problem. UI layout was solved 40 years ago on all windowed and non windowed platforms. Mobile breakpoints are not special. How about the browser as a "failed platform"? Seems to fit! Hardware is irrelevant.
- CyMonk 4mo ago> An Apple II in 1982 has 256 Kb of RAM. Just to nitpick, because this was my first computer. The Apple ][+ from 1982 featured an 8- bit 6502 processor capable of addressing max. 64 KB. If I remember correctly, the base model shipped with 16 KB and could be upgraded.
- marcus_holmes 4mo agonitpick gratefully accepted :) I never had one, so had to look it up and got it wrong. Thanks :)
- kazinator 4mo agoApple II's could be upgraded up to 48 kB. Then you could have a memory peripheral in one of the slots (I think restricted to slot 1?) that could provide another 16 kB of memory, which could be shadowed with the ROM are that occupied the upper 16 kB already. (Probably the first card like that was the Language Card which had not RAM, but a 16 kB ROM providing Wozniak's Integer Basic, which would replace/overlay the Microsoft-developed Applesoft Basic.) RAM cards featured more than 16 kB and could provide access to it via bank-selecting I/O registers. A friend of mine had a 128 kB card. It was used by disk copying software to snarf floppy into RAM. His board had a row of 3 LEDs on the PCB to indicate the bank currently selected: as the disk copying software was running, you could see the LEDs counting from 0 to 7 in binary.