ikari_pl

17 ms·

181.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
I tried to answer it in the article that someone recently posted to HN as well - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38743062 spoilers: There was no GOSUB in the version Dijkstra commented on. There was not even anything e
182.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38743062 - starts with this quote and checks whether it even applied to the BASIC we talk about here. Points out at least a few of the advantages of the integrated BASIC environ
183.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
That's not something the Locomotive BASIC of Amstrad or the C64 basic support, seems like at least these two require a literal line number (probably also because how else would `RENUM` work?)
184.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
I've dug deep into that quote and it wasn't even so much about the BASIC we know from the 8-bits. ;-) He also criticized every other major language at the time, except Pascal and (slowly emerging) C. https://news.ycombi
185.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
Awesome, thank you! Appreciated :) (Amstrad community is the main reason I am thinking of learning German and Spanish :D)
186.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
> PS: also important to note that not all CPC models came with the AMSDOS ROM or builtin floppy drive, so the actual operating system and Right, technically correct! On the other hand, the command to return to BASIC from CP/M was &q
187.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
on the Amstrad computers, and that's the context, BASIC was an interpreter on top of AMSDOS, which is a DOS, and an OS (just without any UI) indeed. It's AMSDOS that provided hardware and disk handling, while BASIC could focus on
188.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
And Amstrad PCW had boot code in the printer controller, to save on ROM prices :D, and booted from a floppy only (by default to a CP/M as well)
189.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
which BASIC for CP/M did you use? (there's a few, and there was no standard, so feature parity is not guaranteed)
190.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
It's hard to compare these, it's like comparing a shovel to an excavator. If a browser had to be implemented in 16 KB of binary, and use at most 48kB of RAM when running, many of the APIs you enjoy having would not be there. And i
191.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
And all of your BASIC was in the manual, taught to you as soon as you bought the computer.
192.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
Thank you :-) The author, being born in 1987, while interested in how things came to be the way they are, only had an 8-bit and PCs, and needed to base it on some archive digging, and it was really satisfying. I have corrected the Fortran r
193.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
It only used to be a progrem if you use more than one editor for your code. Set everything to 4 spaces and be merry! For where you have to put a newline and an indent, I tend to think of it like the mandatory "only good" formatt
194.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
When I saw the title, and the picture, my thought chain was going fast! * Is it electrical? No, impossible, dry spaghetti is not a good conductor * Is it optical? It could make sense, maybe spaghetti behaves like an optic fiber, trapping th
195.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
While solids are transmitting sound waves much faster than air, spaghetti is also very prone to mechanical destruction. A dense metal rod would do better, but at the cost of requiring more actuation force.
196.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
> most people are not disciplined Abstracting from programming languages alone, this is the reason why good software design makes doing the wrong thing either impossible, or at least very hard, while making the right use very easy. I am
197.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
I took the liberty of quoting the first sentence of your comment as the first sentence of the article intro. I couldn't agree more with you :) It's all about picking the right tool for the job, and the language itself, as it evolv
198.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
Could they have been unnecessary at the time ? Not all applications (in the literal English sense of this word) need this, and I think it's something we embrace as we advance. After BASIC (which was obviously also my first, if I didn&
199.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
I posted the wrong (PL/I) link above, my bad! I checked again. It seems indeed like Fortran 70 was a spec that wasn't in use until fortran 77 in 1978. Thanks again @vajrabum, I've update the article with your example!
200.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
That's because it's mimicking Delphi, which was mimicking Visual Basic (the first one). Just like Eclipse was one of the first of its kind. People hate changes, even the slightest UI color changes are booed down. I can imagine red
201.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
"which BASIC" is the first question the article answers. Turns out it was Dartmouth BASIC, much simpler than the ones on C64, CPC, XL/XE or a ZX.
202.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
A programmer can learn it, but if it's a bank that has to implement a change in a core system, I think they simply avoid developers with zero years of Cobol experience
203.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
Can we ask for some context? Was it the first language you tried? Was it a PC or an 8-bit home computer? ...and weren't line numbers a parallel to memory addresses? Not named, of course.
204.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
Curious author here. For me, Logo was a curiosity covered in chapter 6 of the manual. I wonder what the experience of learning it first was. Was it mostly like vector art fun, or did they teach more advanced concepts too?
205.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
I agree, partially. It's a terrible language to solve complex problems with, because of the reasons you mentioned. In the article, I mentioned trying to do Advent of Code in it, and at some point the loops through strings, and GOSUBs
206.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
I (the author) am Polish :) Bajtek was a treasure, the best pre-internet source of all kinds of information, also the advanced stuff (like a multi-issue series with a list of system calls on an Amstrad!). I didn't have access to any o
207.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
that's what the first post was about:) https://retrofun.pl/2021/05/18/hobbyarding/
208.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
That's a good point. I focused on this aspect in a much earlier post, so tried to stick to my BASIC vs alternatives investigation here. The fact that the home computers used to be READY to be programmed within a second from powering up
209.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
Thank you! I tried to look up examples from that time exactly. I missed linking to it in the article, but here it is: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/pli/GC33-0009-4_PLI_Che... page 92. It's 19
210.
by ikari_pl 3y ago
which was also what limited their practical applications at the time

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