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Ask HN: Was the c64 better than the Amiga for hobbyist programmers?

6 points by amichail 11y ago

Programming the Amiga was much more complex and it didn't help that its multitasking did not have process protection. So the Amiga was a step backwards for hobbyist programmers?

zerohp 11y ago
The Amiga was a huge leap forward once ARexx became popular. It was an easy to use scripting language that allowed you to receive events and instruct the OS and applications to run commands and functions. After the release of AmigaOS 2 it became a standard feature of applications to support ARexx. It allowed you to extract a lot more functionality from your applications and was approachable for hobbyists that weren't ready to become systems programmers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARexx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARexx
tired_man 11y ago
It's been quite a time since I recall anyone discussing commodore vs. amiga. As far as the C64 goes, it was left in the dust by the Atari ST. I used the 64 and the later 128 right up until I got my ST. The programming tools (compilers, etc.) available for the ST were words better than the 64/128's toolsets. I used the Amiga for only a month. Housefire :-(
LarryMade2 11y ago
It certainly added a whole lot more cost and complexity. 64 was pretty inexpensive and very open and well known software and circuit wise. If you just wanted to do single task work - the 64 was ready with a flip of the power switch. Then again it depended on what hobby things you were going into; hi-res graphics, music, and especially video. that's where the Amiga had a definite advantages. I would say disk storage Amiga was at a disadvantage (at least until the 600), hard to get basic HDD controllers, floppies sometimes were problematic (this is back in the day where every system had their own proprietary disk format)
icedchai 11y ago
The Amiga came with AmigaBasic, up until AmigaOS 2.x, , which was way more advanced than the C64 basic. There were also other commercially available basics (AMOS for example.) The Amiga had commercial C compilers (Lattice/SAS and Aztec), as well as freely available ones like DICE (not sure of license.) This was certainly better for "advanced" programmers (I taught myself C on an Amiga when I was 14.)
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6 points by amichail 11y ago

Programming the Amiga was much more complex and it didn't help that its multitasking did not have process protection. So the Amiga was a step backwards for hobbyist programmers?

zerohp 11y ago

The Amiga was a huge leap forward once ARexx became popular. It was an easy to use scripting language that allowed you to receive events and instruct the OS and applications to run commands and functions. After the release of AmigaOS 2 it became a standard feature of applications to support ARexx. It allowed you to extract a lot more functionality from your applications and was approachable for hobbyists that weren't ready to become systems programmers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARexx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARexx

tired_man 11y ago

It's been quite a time since I recall anyone discussing commodore vs. amiga. As far as the C64 goes, it was left in the dust by the Atari ST. I used the 64 and the later 128 right up until I got my ST. The programming tools (compilers, etc.) available for the ST were words better than the 64/128's toolsets. I used the Amiga for only a month. Housefire :-(

LarryMade2 11y ago

It certainly added a whole lot more cost and complexity. 64 was pretty inexpensive and very open and well known software and circuit wise. If you just wanted to do single task work - the 64 was ready with a flip of the power switch. Then again it depended on what hobby things you were going into; hi-res graphics, music, and especially video. that's where the Amiga had a definite advantages. I would say disk storage Amiga was at a disadvantage (at least until the 600), hard to get basic HDD controllers, floppies sometimes were problematic (this is back in the day where every system had their own proprietary disk format)

icedchai 11y ago

The Amiga came with AmigaBasic, up until AmigaOS 2.x, , which was way more advanced than the C64 basic. There were also other commercially available basics (AMOS for example.) The Amiga had commercial C compilers (Lattice/SAS and Aztec), as well as freely available ones like DICE (not sure of license.) This was certainly better for "advanced" programmers (I taught myself C on an Amiga when I was 14.)

deleted 11y ago

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