> I moved on from C64 BASIC to C64 assembler - or rather, machine code. I
> couldn't afford an actual assembler program. So I used to do it old
> skool - you know, with pencil and paper and a giant opcode table.

Ouch. Good job the instructions were only 8 bit then...

> Now the Acorn (or was it the Archimedes?) let you write assembler
> statements in-line, in the middle of your BASIC program. And it had a
> machine code debugger. Damn, that was nice...

Yes that's what I learnt on, but I don't remember using any debugger. 
Best I had was an error handler I wrote that caught any exceptions and 
then printed out the disassembly of the 10 or so instructions either 
side of the exception.

> All the time I was using BASIC, I kept reading scattered references to
> these "more powerful" languages like COBOL, FORTRAN, Pascal and C.

Oh I never heard of anything like that until there was a short series of 
articles in my Acorn magazine about programming in C. But then the C 
compiler was useless on the Acorn, it required more RAM than 99.9% of 
Acorns had at that time so you needed to use it with some buggy virtual 
memory program that was very slow.

> But I
> couldn't imagine what "more powerful" would actually look like. Then I
> read about Pascal, and it was instantly obvious what a massive, massive
> increase in power if offered. I had to wait years to actually try it out
> though. Heh.

I spent several years hacking around with C++ and Glide (the API for 
3Dfx cards), then DirectX. But I got really frustrated in that to do 
anything useful (ie windows, graphics, sound, network/database stuff) 
you needed to find libraries and because I'm not a professional 
programmer I always had problems getting them to work, or the 
documentation sucked.

I briefly used MS's managed C++ for a bit, but quickly moved onto C# and 
have been using that now for the last few years. It suits my needs 
perfectly, and even if I don't do any coding for several months I can 
get back into it pretty much instantly.

> Sure, I get where the name comes from. I don't get what the point is.

Surely you get the point in general, you mean you don't get the point of 
why installing an application on a phone or tablet might be useful? Most 
of the apps I have installed on mine are games, a few are just 
displaying data available on the web in a more convenient format (like 
share prices, adsense earnings, weather). All of them are free apps.

> How would I know?

You must have seen other people with phones, or at least heard of what a 
blackberry is? Or seen adverts from Samsapple about their products?

> (You will note, of course, that I am *always* sitting in front of a
> real, live computer. Why would I need a *phone* to access the Internet?)

Lots of people do other things though away from a computer, and having a 
phone allows you to read email within 1 second or look up something on 
google within 10 seconds without having to walk away and boot up a PC 
(if there is even one nearby).

> It's still news to me that you /can/ use a phone to read email or browse
> the net, but OK.

Most devices have wifi too now, so as long as your friends/family are 
happy to give you their key you can use that too, and there are plenty 
of public places that offer free wifi.

> I can see how a bigger screen would be beneficial. (I
> can't even imagine how the **** you would look at a web page on a screen
> that's less than an inch across...)

My phone's 800x480 I think (and about 4 inches across), and I spent many 
years staring at a 640x480 screen, so it does nicely :-) Also most web 
pages recognise you're on a mobile device and give a different layout to 
the desktop version. People have thought about this.

> On the other hand, you can't run any software on it. You can just browse
> the Internet.

Err no, you can install software, in fact I suspect that is where they 
make a lot of money from. On my Android phone I even downloaded the 
development stuff (for free) and made a simple program in Java, it took 
an afternoon or something to get setup (and I don't even know Java!) and 
works very easily - you have it hooked up via USB, and when you hit 
"run" in the IDE within 2 seconds it's compiled and running on your phone.

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