"David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:

> I remember right the first "real program" I ever wrote was a program to
> calculate ozone
> concentration on a Commadore Pet. It was the first computer I ever dealt
> with
> and after a *very* short time playing with it I was able to write a
> program to replace
> the one we had been using on a TI55(?) calculator (the one with the card
> reader --remember
> that?)

Unfortunately not - I started my computing career no earlier than in the
mid-80s, after having seen (and toyed around with) a C64 somewhere; and I
wasn't older than 12 back then.

> If I remember right, the QuickBASIC and QuickC
> IDE's were models of what a good simple IDE should be. Microsoft was
> good in those days!

They're not bad these days either. It's just that the typical scale of
applications and desired UI paradigm has changed a lot.

> Yes access to Windows graphic functions seem unnecessarily complicated and
> poorly documented. I can't see any good reason for this.

As for being poorly documented, I'm not sure. Might be one of those cases of
documentation written for people already familiar with the concepts. As for
unnecessarily complicated, I'm quite sure this was originally due to
performance constraints in the advents of GUIs, and later due to compatibility
issues.

> I don't understand a lot of what you say, but it fascinates me, I may
> have to learn OOP
> and more about modern programming just for the fun of it.

Go ahead :)

> > Speaking of Borland, maybe they still come with the good old "graph" library and
> > the BGI graphics driver format, in which case I'd expect them to include a BGI
> > to interface to Windows, too.
>
> Maybe it does, if so I haven't be able to find it--or recognize it. The
> old "graphic.h" was for DOS and
> won't work on XP, anyway, and I think the routines are incompatible with
> modern graphic
> cards.

Turbo Pascal - and I think Turbo C/C++ as well - did not use hard-coded routines
to access graphics, but proprietary graphics card driver ("BGI" = "Borland
Graphocs Interface") modules, in order actually access the graphics hardware.
There were drivers at least for CGA, EGA, Hercules, 16-color VGA, and IBM
8514/A, and there was also some 3rd-party 256-color VGA driver available for
the famous "Mode 13h".

I wouldn't be too surprised if people found a way to provide a BGI driver that
could open a window of a particular size and use it as a canvas. Heck, I even
personally wrote a driver for the SuperVGA modes of my own Trident TVGA 8900
card (except for the blitting operations which I found I didn't need) =B)


> > C is really not a pretty language, by the way.
>
> No, but it's fascinating, and in my little experience addictive.

Don't get *too* addicted to it - it has some bad habits, and its own share of
being frowned upon :P

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