Warp wrote:
>   (Another tidbit says that he once has said that the best way to learn
> programming is to take program source code which others have written and
> study them. IMO this is approximately the *worst* possible way to learn
> programming.)

Yup, there's me when I was 11 years old, looking at JS code from websites
and copying all of the bad practices.

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Warp wrote:

>   (Another tidbit says that he once has said that the best way to learn
> programming is to take program source code which others have written and
> study them. IMO this is approximately the *worst* possible way to learn
> programming.)

Doesn't this rather depend on whether the examples you're studying are 
good or bad?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Not hard to write one of those really. I could manage it, and frankly, I 
> am not that great a programmer.

It's not hard to do it poorly. It can be quite tricky to do it well, 
especially on unforgiving hardware (i.e., slow and small) to the point 
where it's better than the competition.

> DOS and the rest didn't need to be well designed, efficient, 
> complex, or even smart 

You *are* aware that DOS was *supposed* to be source-compatible with 
CP/M, basically, right?

Not that I'm saying Gates was a great programmer or anything. Just that 
saying "evidence he was a bad programmer is that PC-DOS was compatible 
with its predecessors" is illogical.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Warp wrote:
>   He was definitely a programming nerd back in the 70's.

It wasn't hard to be a highly skilled programming nerd back in the 70s, 
any more than it was hard to be a hot-shot pilot in 1905. :-)  What 
would be mediocre today could be amazing 35 years ago.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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On Fri, 16 May 2008 16:34:08 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> So Gates didn't invent BASIC
> 
>   I never said he did. I just said that he wrote a BASIC interpreter
> (without "stealing" it from anywhere).

I never said you said that.  Don't be so touchy.  Sheesh. :-)

Jim

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Warp wrote:

> >   (Another tidbit says that he once has said that the best way to learn
> > programming is to take program source code which others have written and
> > study them. IMO this is approximately the *worst* possible way to learn
> > programming.)

> Doesn't this rather depend on whether the examples you're studying are 
> good or bad?

  It doesn't matter.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>>   (Another tidbit says that he once has said that the best way to learn
>> programming is to take program source code which others have written and
>> study them. IMO this is approximately the *worst* possible way to learn
>> programming.)
>
> Yup, there's me when I was 11 years old, looking at JS code from websites
> and copying all of the bad practices.

At least you had websites! When I was learning to program I was too young to 
afford many books, the library only had 1 programming book on generic BASIC, 
so the *only* way was to hack apart programs from magazine discs etc to see 
what OS functions they were calling to do stuff.

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scott wrote:
>>>   (Another tidbit says that he once has said that the best way to learn
>>> programming is to take program source code which others have written and
>>> study them. IMO this is approximately the *worst* possible way to learn
>>> programming.)
>>
>> Yup, there's me when I was 11 years old, looking at JS code from websites
>> and copying all of the bad practices.
> 
> At least you had websites! When I was learning to program I was too 
> young to afford many books, the library only had 1 programming book on 
> generic BASIC, so the *only* way was to hack apart programs from 
> magazine discs etc to see what OS functions they were calling to do stuff.

I thought you were another Acorn veteran? IIRC the BBC Micro series, as 
well as the Archimedes, all shipped with full manuals, including a BASIC 
programming guide and a full list of BASIC-accessible OS calls. I think 
you had to buy the assembly-language stuff and the complete OS reference 
manual separately, though.

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> I thought you were another Acorn veteran? IIRC the BBC Micro series, as 
> well as the Archimedes, all shipped with full manuals, including a BASIC 
> programming guide and a full list of BASIC-accessible OS calls.

They all had the BASIC manual, but IIRC not the accessible OS calls (all OS 
calls were accessible from BASIC, weren't they, isn't that what SYS did?). 
The manual did not tell you how to swap screen buffers, create Windows, read 
from template files, create icons etc - all pretty important for more than 
text based programs.

Later on, !StrongHelp came along, which was a vast reference of all OS 
calls.

> I think you had to buy the assembly-language stuff

I picked up a 2nd hand copy of an assembly programming book at some computer 
show, it was more of a reference manual, but I still taught myself assembler 
from it.

> and the complete OS reference manual separately, though.

Unfortunately yes, and they were very pricey, like 100 pounds I think.  Way 
too much for someone at school to spend.  Maybe if I had bought them I would 
have got on my feet much quicker with programming.

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scott wrote:
>> I thought you were another Acorn veteran? IIRC the BBC Micro series, 
>> as well as the Archimedes, all shipped with full manuals, including a 
>> BASIC programming guide and a full list of BASIC-accessible OS calls.
> 
> They all had the BASIC manual, but IIRC not the accessible OS calls (all 
> OS calls were accessible from BASIC, weren't they, isn't that what SYS 
> did?).

I think so; on the Arc, I think any SWI could be called using SYS from 
BASIC, but I was also thinking of the graphics commands and VDU 
statements and things like that (some of which were equivalent to SYS 
calls, I think).

> The manual did not tell you how to swap screen buffers, create 
> Windows, read from template files, create icons etc - all pretty 
> important for more than text based programs.

Yes, true, I think there was a separate guide again for desktop 
programming. Although building applications (as well as the icons etc) 
was something you could do just by looking at existing programs; almost 
no programming necessary except for setting system variables etc. As you 
say, the magazines were also very helpful explaining these concepts.

>> I think you had to buy the assembly-language stuff
> I picked up a 2nd hand copy of an assembly programming book at some 
> computer show, it was more of a reference manual, but I still taught 
> myself assembler from it.

Ditto. Hardly remember any of it now though ;)

>> and the complete OS reference manual separately, though.
> Unfortunately yes, and they were very pricey, like 100 pounds I think.  
> Way too much for someone at school to spend.  Maybe if I had bought them 
> I would have got on my feet much quicker with programming.

I've still got a copy of the four-volume version (RO 3.1 I think, so 
that wouldn't cover the extensions in RO 3.5+), but I can't remember 
where I got it - hardly used it either!

Happy days... :)

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