clipka wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> And not because of any of the dozens of *actual* reasons that have been
>> described over the years.  No, just a conspiracy by the elite to make you,
>> David Burns, feel bad that programming is hard. <plonk>
> 
> Hmm, I think plonking him is a bit too extreme a reaction...
> 
> 

What's "plonk"? Or maybe I don't won't to know. ;)

David

Post a reply to this message

clipka wrote:

> 
> (Yes, you *definitely* should spend more time with Wikipedia - she's your friend
> ;))

I'm beginning to see that. I see that there's a group working on a "QB64".

David

Post a reply to this message

On 27-7-2009 21:20, David H. Burns wrote:
> clipka wrote:
>> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>> And not because of any of the dozens of *actual* reasons that have been
>>> described over the years.  No, just a conspiracy by the elite to make 
>>> you,
>>> David Burns, feel bad that programming is hard. <plonk>
>>
>> Hmm, I think plonking him is a bit too extreme a reaction...
>>
>>
> 
> What's "plonk"? Or maybe I don't won't to know. ;)

plonk is the sound made when someone is dropped in a kill-file

http://catb.org/jargon/html/P/plonk.html
http://catb.org/jargon/html/K/kill-file.html

in short he said he is going to arrange that he won't see any message 
from you again. Even shorter, he decided you are a troll.

BTW I agree with clipka, it is a bit of overreacting. It is also a bit 
out of character for Darren, so I guess he was just tired.

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 10:30:54 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Welllll... I wouldn't go that far. It was acknowledged as simplified, in
> much the same way that DOS BAT files are simplified or editor macros are
> simplified. It was designed as a beginner's language, so it wasn't
> really frowned upon any more than LOGO or PILOT is frowned upon.

+1.  BASIC was used as a good entry level way to teach programming logic 
(just like LOGO and PILOT) back in my early days programming.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:47:32 +0200, andrel wrote:


> BTW I agree with clipka, it is a bit of overreacting. It is also a bit
> out of character for Darren, so I guess he was just tired.

+1, I haven't followed the discussion that closely, but I didn't see any 
place where DHB seemed to be attacking Darren, definitely seems out of 
character to me, too.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

"clipka" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
[snip basic info]

For BASIC fans, the Rolls-Royce of traditional BASIC:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_BASIC

This is the language in which I first learnt programming. Only available on
1980s-1990s Acorn computers in the UK (and parts of Europe), unfortunately, so
not widely known. However, on those 8-bit and 32-bit platforms, it was a very
complete inbuilt language, practically part of the OS. As well as named
functions, procedures, debugging tools and a built-in assembler, it had very
powerful graphics and sound abilities courtesy of its close alliance with the
OS. There were even keywords for directly poking and peeking to memory
(although that probably makes most people shudder these days!). It was often the
easiest tool for writing multitasking desktop apps too... :)

Post a reply to this message

On 27-7-2009 21:57, Jim Henderson wrote:

> +1

seen this more often recently here. Yet another cross fertilization of 
the internet, I assume.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> clipka wrote:
> > For quite a while you didn't get any programming language for free with
> > IMB-compatible PCs when they replaced home computers as the private man's
>
> I'm pretty sure you still had GWBasic in ROM.

That was true for some genuine IBM machines (except I'm not sure about the
dialect). The clones didn't have it though, nor did later IBM's as far as I'm
aware.

And the IBM machines were prohibitively expensive at that time, so they never
got any big market share in the hobbyists mass market that had previously been
dominated by home computers.

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> +1.  BASIC was used as a good entry level way to teach programming logic 
> (just like LOGO and PILOT) back in my early days programming.

  I wonder if that's the reason why it feels like the majority of programmers
is incompetent... ;)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

David H. Burns <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> it was *very* useful at work and at play! And by it, I learned that even 
> I can program,

  No offence, but I think that's one of the big problems: So many people
*think* that they know how to program because they have written some simple
scripts with BASIC or whatever, and then clueless employers hire them based
solely on the fact that they *claim* they know how to program, after which
you get horrible programs which are huge, full of kludges, full of bugs and
basically unmaintainable.

  You just have to read TheDailyWTF to see actual examples.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:29:04 +0200, andrel wrote:

> On 27-7-2009 21:57, Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
>> +1
> 
> seen this more often recently here. Yet another cross fertilization of
> the internet, I assume.

Yep, IIRC it comes from Slashdot's moderation system.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:24:20 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> +1.  BASIC was used as a good entry level way to teach programming
>> logic (just like LOGO and PILOT) back in my early days programming.
> 
>   I wonder if that's the reason why it feels like the majority of
>   programmers
> is incompetent... ;)

Nah, I think it's more that they went from there to machine language (not 
assembler) without working through some intermediaries.  ;-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On 07/27/09 11:56, Warp wrote:
>    Even if we took goto as barely acceptable, its original implementation was
> very ascetic. AFAIK the original BASIC did not support named labels, but
> instead every line of code was numbered (by hand by the programmer), and
> gotos always jumped to a specified line number. AFAIK the numbering of each
> line was mandatory. Naturally this made it quite problematic to insert code
> between existing lines. While it was customary to number the lines in
> multiples of ten, this only gives the possibility of inserting 9 lines
> of code between any existing lines. If you run out of line numbers, you
> will have to start renumbering. And good luck trying not to break existing
> gotos if you start renumbering. (Some later BASIC text editors supported
> automatic renumbering, including all gotos, but naturally no such editors
> existed back then, when even having an interactive text editor in the first
> place was luxury.)

	I wonder when such editors came around. Ever since I used BASIC, there 
was the RENUM command. Of course, I _started_ using BASIC long, long 
after its invention.

-- 
ASCII and ye shall receive.

Post a reply to this message

On 07/27/09 11:07, clipka wrote:
>> QuickBasic was it's highest development.
>
> Just out of curiosity: Did they ever introduce such things as structs (records
> in Pascal)? That was the thing that bothered me most about BASIC ever since I
> first wanted to store a list of data tuples. Using a separate array for each
> "dimension" of the tuple just didn't feel right.

	I've forgotten, actually.

>> I was able to display an image and VBnet seemed to promise good image
>> handling capabilities if one could only figure them out.
>
> If graphics (or any other non-textual user interaction, for that matter) is what
> you want to do, it comes as no surprise to me that you don't like modern
> computer languages. The major problem, however, is not an inherent feature of

	I can sympathize with David. As a kid, graphics was one of the fun 
things about BASIC/QuickBasic. For someone new to programming, there are 
a lot of things you can do using language concepts with graphics, and 
it's a lot more interesting than writing a silly calculator program.

	I think that's what kept me and many away from "serious" languages like 
C/C++ for a long time. No book I picked up covered what I thought should 
be straightforward: How do I color a pixel on the screen. Doing graphics 
seemed to be a lot more complicated.

	I didn't have Internet access, nor did I know anyone who knew much 
programming, so no one pointed me to better ways to do graphics in C, 
nor was I aware of other languages where it may be easier.


-- 
ASCII and ye shall receive.

Post a reply to this message

On 07/27/09 15:29, andrel wrote:
> On 27-7-2009 21:57, Jim Henderson wrote:
>
>> +1
>
> seen this more often recently here. Yet another cross fertilization of
> the internet, I assume.

++

-- 
ASCII and ye shall receive.

Post a reply to this message

On 07/27/09 11:58, clipka wrote:
> I think it was not before DOS 5.0 that Microsoft started to bundle BASIC again
> with DOS, possibly in an attempt to revive the dwindling popularity of BASIC;
> still it was not as omnipresent as it had been in the home computer era, so it
> didn't manage to attract as many new enthusiasts.

	Not 100% sure, but I think every version of DOS I had had either qbasic 
or gwbasic or basica.

-- 
ASCII and ye shall receive.

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:41:09 -0500, Neeum Zawan wrote:

> On 07/27/09 15:29, andrel wrote:
>> On 27-7-2009 21:57, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>
>>> +1
>>
>> seen this more often recently here. Yet another cross fertilization of
>> the internet, I assume.
> 
> ++

LOL

Post a reply to this message

On 27-7-2009 23:24, Warp wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> +1.  BASIC was used as a good entry level way to teach programming logic 
>> (just like LOGO and PILOT) back in my early days programming.
> 
>   I wonder if that's the reason why it feels like the majority of programmers
> is incompetent... ;)
> 
Have you met the majority of programmers?

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:43:02 -0500, Neeum Zawan wrote:

> On 07/27/09 11:58, clipka wrote:
>> I think it was not before DOS 5.0 that Microsoft started to bundle
>> BASIC again with DOS, possibly in an attempt to revive the dwindling
>> popularity of BASIC; still it was not as omnipresent as it had been in
>> the home computer era, so it didn't manage to attract as many new
>> enthusiasts.
> 
> 	Not 100% sure, but I think every version of DOS I had had either 
qbasic
> or gwbasic or basica.

I vaguely remember there being a BASIC interpreter in MS-DOS 3.3...

Jim

Post a reply to this message

"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

Post a reply to this message

Neeum Zawan <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
>         I think that's what kept me and many away from "serious" languages like 
> C/C++ for a long time. No book I picked up covered what I thought should 
> be straightforward: How do I color a pixel on the screen. Doing graphics 
> seemed to be a lot more complicated.

>         I didn't have Internet access, nor did I know anyone who knew much 
> programming, so no one pointed me to better ways to do graphics in C, 
> nor was I aware of other languages where it may be easier.

  It's funny that even today graphics in C/C++ development (and in fact quite
many other languages) is a difficult issue.

  What makes it ironic is that a large part of C/C++ programs out there are
heavily graphical (most prominently the computer games), and seems like
everybody just somehow manages to get the graphics done, but when you ask
for a simple way of getting graphics, they will usually shrug and say that
it's a bit complicated... (Because it *is* a bit complicated.)

  Also, rather curiously, most programming languages which have integrated
graphics routines, are usually the most inefficient ones, and thus the least
adept for making eg. heavily-graphical games. There are a few exceptions
(such as ActionScript, although its capabilities for making games is quite
limited, as it's not the most efficient of languages around), but they often
tend to be a bit inaccessible (such as precisely ActionScript).

  The reason why in older computers it was easier to draw graphics was that
the language was very integrated to the system in question and didn't need
to be portable to a wide range of different systems. You had one fixed OS
(no updates or anything), one fixed hardware (no different graphics chips,
CPUs, amounts of RAM, etc) and one fixed scripting language which was tied
to that precise system.

  Immediately when you started having different users with different
hardware setups, the whole graphics programming stumbled on a huge problem.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> On 27-7-2009 23:24, Warp wrote:
> > Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> >> +1.  BASIC was used as a good entry level way to teach programming logic 
> >> (just like LOGO and PILOT) back in my early days programming.
> > 
> >   I wonder if that's the reason why it feels like the majority of programmers
> > is incompetent... ;)
> > 
> Have you met the majority of programmers?

  I have seen quite a lot of programs. :P

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:

>   I wonder if that's the reason why it feels like the majority of programmers
> is incompetent... ;)
> 

A convenient excuse anyway. "Everybody needs someone to look down on. If you
ain't got nobody else, well help yo'self to me!" -Kris Kristofferson 
(quoted from
memory) :)

David

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> David H. Burns <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
>> it was *very* useful at work and at play! And by it, I learned that even 
>> I can program,
> 
>   No offence, but I think that's one of the big problems: So many people
> *think* that they know how to program because they have written some simple
> scripts with BASIC or whatever, and then clueless employers hire them based
> solely on the fact that they *claim* they know how to program, after which
> you get horrible programs which are huge, full of kludges, full of bugs and
> basically unmaintainable.
> 
>   You just have to read TheDailyWTF to see actual examples.
> 
Ah, maybe this little monkey should just snope away and play in his own 
tree and
not bother the *real* men at work. ;)

Post a reply to this message

David H. Burns <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > David H. Burns <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> >> it was *very* useful at work and at play! And by it, I learned that even 
> >> I can program,
> > 
> >   No offence, but I think that's one of the big problems: So many people
> > *think* that they know how to program because they have written some simple
> > scripts with BASIC or whatever, and then clueless employers hire them based
> > solely on the fact that they *claim* they know how to program, after which
> > you get horrible programs which are huge, full of kludges, full of bugs and
> > basically unmaintainable.
> > 
> >   You just have to read TheDailyWTF to see actual examples.
> > 
> Ah, maybe this little monkey should just snope away and play in his own 
> tree and
> not bother the *real* men at work. ;)

  That kind of mocking attitude isn't really helpful.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Neeum Zawan wrote:

>     I wonder when such editors came around. Ever since I used BASIC, 
> there was the RENUM command. Of course, I _started_ using BASIC long, 
> long after its invention.
> 

Me to some of these guys must be _old_!

Post a reply to this message

"David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> What's "plonk"? Or maybe I don't won't to know. ;)

WIYF - Wikipedia is your friend ;)

--------
Plonk is a Usenet jargon term for adding a particular poster to one's kill file
such that the poster's future postings are completely ignored. It was first
used in 1989 and by 1994[1] was a commonly used term on Usenet regarding kill
file additions.

The word is an example of onomatopoeia, intended to humorously represent the
supposed sound[2] of the user hitting the kill file. It is also sometimes given
as an acronym standing for Please Log Off, Net Kook, though this is likely a
backronym. Other used expressions are "put lamer on killfile" [3] and Please
Leave Our Newsgroup: Killfile!
--------

Not really polite unless the other party is really gone out of control (in which
case it's not polite either, just a good deal more adequate).

Post a reply to this message

clipka wrote:

> 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.

Fortunately perhaps. The Commodore PET was one of those desk tops with
a built in monitor. It had, I guess, a 16K ROM and 16K of RAM. (That's 
K) and
programs we stored on a cassette tape.
> 
>> 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.
>

In those days MS wasn't trying to hog the market (or lacked the 
resources to try),
didn't have a monopoly, and didn't rely on advertising hype for sales. 
And they hadn't
come up with idea of letting their users. Today I avoid everything 
Microsoft that I
can. To my regret, I let price influence me to by another Windows 
machine about a
year ago. I've kicked myself ever since!


>> 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.

What you say maybe true. Also writing good documentation may be a difficult
poorly paid, and thankless task.

> 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) 

I have several graphics "packages" which use the "Mode 13h" but programs 
compiled
with them, even pre-compiled examples don't work with XP (and I suspect 
the graphics
card I have is also incompatible). The graphics routines in John Beales 
wonderful
heightfield programs don't work, though the rest of the program does.


>> 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

I didn't and there's no danger of it now, but I can see how it might be 
easy.
> 
> 

:)David

Post a reply to this message

Neeum Zawan wrote:

>     I can sympathize with David. As a kid, graphics was one of the fun 
> things about BASIC/QuickBasic. 

I'm still kid and hope to remain one eternally. But in the work I did in 
science
and engineering,graphical and image displays were almost essential!

> 
  No book I picked up covered what I thought should be straightforward: 
How do I
color a pixel on the screen.

Yes!! My experience exactly, except that I have never found out how to 
plot a pixel colored
or not on XP. (It was easy enough in DOS). But it can be done, is done, 
all the time. Pov-Ray
does, but so far I haven't been able to find anyone who can tell me how.
> 
>     I didn't have Internet access, nor did I know anyone who knew much 
> programming, so no one pointed me to better ways to do graphics in C, 
> nor was I aware of other languages where it may be easier.

I haven't been able to find it on the internet either.

David

Post a reply to this message

Neeum Zawan <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
>  I wonder when such editors came around. Ever since I used BASIC, there
> was the RENUM command. Of course, I _started_ using BASIC long, long
> after its invention.

IIRC one of the main factors of BASIC's popularity - the all-time famous C-64 -
did *not* have a "RENUM" command.

The first computer *I* used, the Amstrad CPC, *did* - hehe :P

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Neeum Zawan <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
>>         I think that's what kept me and many away from "serious" languages like 
>> C/C++ for a long time. No book I picked up covered what I thought should 
>> be straightforward: How do I color a pixel on the screen. Doing graphics 
>> seemed to be a lot more complicated.
> 
>>         I didn't have Internet access, nor did I know anyone who knew much 
>> programming, so no one pointed me to better ways to do graphics in C, 
>> nor was I aware of other languages where it may be easier.
> 
>   It's funny that even today graphics in C/C++ development (and in fact quite
> many other languages) is a difficult issue.
> 
>   What makes it ironic is that a large part of C/C++ programs out there are
> heavily graphical (most prominently the computer games), and seems like
> everybody just somehow manages to get the graphics done, but when you ask
> for a simple way of getting graphics, they will usually shrug and say that
> it's a bit complicated... (Because it *is* a bit complicated.)

If it is (and I can't believe that it's all that complicated), why is it??

> 
> 
>   Immediately when you started having different users with different
> hardware setups, the whole graphics programming stumbled on a huge problem.
> 
Maybe, but why are the graphics for Windows itself so complicated? It's a
single operating system running mainly on similar hardware. And again 
Pov-Ray does
it for images at lease. How does it do it? So it's complicated, even 
*hard*, surely
someone knows how it is done and can tell me, or tell me where to find 
out. *That*
was my original question on the programming news group which led to my 
original
post in this thread. Of course, the thread has been fun --and 
informative. :)

I've run on past suppertime! ;)

David


David

Post a reply to this message

Neeum Zawan <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
>  I can sympathize with David. As a kid, graphics was one of the fun
> things about BASIC/QuickBasic. For someone new to programming, there are
> a lot of things you can do using language concepts with graphics, and
> it's a lot more interesting than writing a silly calculator program.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about (although it was Turbo Pascal for me
later, which fortunately did have 2D pixel graphics, almost as easy as the
BASIC for my homecomputer).

>  I think that's what kept me and many away from "serious" languages like
> C/C++ for a long time. No book I picked up covered what I thought should
> be straightforward: How do I color a pixel on the screen. Doing graphics
> seemed to be a lot more complicated.

When I was learning C, there was a project I really wanted to do that required
2D graphics output. But how to? I had access to both Windows and Unix machines,
but I had not the slightest clue where to start researching how to do graphics
output on either Windows or X.

Fortunately, I happened to know a bit about the PostScript printer language - so
guess what I did :P

(I later went to save some paper and toner though by going for GhostScript for
test runs ;))

Post a reply to this message

Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   Immediately when you started having different users with different
> hardware setups, the whole graphics programming stumbled on a huge problem.

Yup. DOS times were even worse than nowadays, as there was no accepted standard
interface to graphics cards at all (except for standard CGA/EGA/VGA modes,
which later graphics cards tried their best to remain hardware compatible
with); so essentially each program came with its own proprietary set of
graphics drivers, which fully supported only a selection of SuperVGA graphics
cards available - and new graphics cards in turn would come with disks
providing graphics drivers for only the most popular graphics-hungry
applications.

High-quality graphics games in the VGA/SuperVGA era would almost invariably run
in the famous VGA mode 13h (320x200 pixels at 256 colors) anyway, which worked
fine on virtually all SuperVGA graphics cards, but didn't really max them out
of course.

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:27:19 -0400, Warp wrote:

>  That kind of mocking attitude isn't really helpful.

Nor is it particularly helpful to mock the abilities of someone you've 
only just met.

This thread needs a whole lot of "lighten up, folks!".  Seriously.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:56:03 -0500, David H. Burns wrote:

> The Commodore PET was one of those desk tops with a built in monitor. It
> had, I guess, a 16K ROM and 16K of RAM. (That's K) and
> programs we stored on a cassette tape.

The earliest PET computers had 2K of RAM in them, not sure what the ROM 
size was, but it wasn't big.

Those older models also had the "chicklet" keyboard - good for elementary 
students (which I was at the time), not so good for people with "grown 
up" hands.

Jim

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"David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> A convenient excuse anyway. "Everybody needs someone to look down on. If you
> ain't got nobody else, well help yo'self to me!" -Kris Kristofferson
> (quoted from
> memory) :)

"Jesus was a capricorn"

(Identified from memory... man, it's been ages since I've last heard that song.)

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Bill Pragnell wrote:
> "clipka" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> [snip basic info]
> 
> For BASIC fans, the Rolls-Royce of traditional BASIC:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_BASIC
> 
> This is the language in which I first learnt programming. Only available on
> 1980s-1990s Acorn computers in the UK (and parts of Europe), unfortunately, so
> not widely known. However, on those 8-bit and 32-bit platforms, it was a very
> complete inbuilt language, practically part of the OS. As well as named
> functions, procedures, debugging tools and a built-in assembler, it had very
> powerful graphics and sound abilities courtesy of its close alliance with the
> OS. There were even keywords for directly poking and peeking to memory
> (although that probably makes most people shudder these days!). It was often the
> easiest tool for writing multitasking desktop apps too... :)
> 
> 
> 
Thanks it sound to me like it was the way programming should have gone, 
I'll look it up.
A peek function would still be useful, but a poke function on a multi 
tasking system where
the operating system is in RAM ... well at best, you might reboot a lot.

BTW the PET instruction manual warned if you poked into the wrong area 
you might have to
reboot the computer. At that time, I had no idea what this meant and 
stayed away from poking
around until I realized all rebooting invoved was pressing the reset button.

David


David

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clipka wrote:
> "David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
>> A convenient excuse anyway. "Everybody needs someone to look down on. If you
>> ain't got nobody else, well help yo'self to me!" -Kris Kristofferson
>> (quoted from
>> memory) :)
> 
> "Jesus was a capricorn"
> 
> (Identified from memory... man, it's been ages since I've last heard that song.)
> 
> 
Me too. I have it somewhere on a reel to reel tape. I wonder how long it 
would take
me to find it.:)

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Warp wrote:

>> Ah, maybe this little monkey should just snope away and play in his own 
>> tree and
>> not bother the *real* men at work. ;)
> 
>   That kind of mocking attitude isn't really helpful.
If you really take it as mocking, I'm sorry. Of course it was tongue in 
cheek and
referenced earlier posts. :)

David

>

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:27:19 -0400, Warp wrote:
> 
>>  That kind of mocking attitude isn't really helpful.
> 
> Nor is it particularly helpful to mock the abilities of someone you've 
> only just met.
> 
> This thread needs a whole lot of "lighten up, folks!".  Seriously.
> 
> Jim
I *thought* my monkey comment was light. Maybe we have just harped on 
this same,
rather tangled, thread to long. :)

I ought to apologize for my typos and irregular lines. The keyboard on 
this Timex Sinclair
is rather small and my tail keeps getting in the way.

David

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:56:03 -0500, David H. Burns wrote:
> 
>> The Commodore PET was one of those desk tops with a built in monitor. It
>> had, I guess, a 16K ROM and 16K of RAM. (That's K) and
>> programs we stored on a cassette tape.
> 
> The earliest PET computers had 2K of RAM in them, not sure what the ROM 
> size was, but it wasn't big.

Wow! I actually took those numbers from my TRS 80 Model III. They did a 
lot with a little
memory in those days. The PET I had had a full-sized normal keyboard, 
IIRC (If I
remember correctly).
> 
> Those older models also had the "chicklet" keyboard - good for elementary 
> students (which I was at the time), not so good for people with "grown 
> up" hands.
> 
> Jim

David

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"David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> > 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)
>
> I have several graphics "packages" which use the "Mode 13h" but programs
> compiled
> with them, even pre-compiled examples don't work with XP (and I suspect
> the graphics
> card I have is also incompatible).

I guess the graphics card would be perfectly fine with it - even today's
graphics card still include backwards compatibility with VGA, if only for
booting and just in case someone decided to run some old DOS.

XP (for good reason) doesn't allow you to access the graphics card directly
(just guess what happened if every application you have running on your
computer - say, browser, calculator, Windows Explorer and your own home-brewn
program - would try to poke around at the graphics hardware, maybe even trying
to run in different modes... perfect chaos.

But a suitable driver might provide a frame buffer of, say, 640x480 pixels for
you to use freely, and do the interfacing to Windows (including event handling)
for you, instead of directly accessing real hardware.


> The graphics routines in John Beales wonderful
> heightfield programs don't work, though the rest of the program does.

The name doesn't ring a bell.

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clipka wrote:
> (just guess what happened if every application you have running on your
> computer - say, browser, calculator, Windows Explorer and your own home-brewn
> program - would try to poke around at the graphics hardware, maybe even trying
> to run in different modes... 

They call that SunView / OpenWindows. That's what SunOS used before X was 
around.  Linux still allows this stuff, too, as in the Linux FrameBuffer.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 19:54:32 -0500, David H. Burns wrote:

> Wow! I actually took those numbers from my TRS 80 Model III. They did a
> lot with a little
> memory in those days. The PET I had had a full-sized normal keyboard,
> IIRC

Yeah, the later models of PET used a full-sized keyboard - the 8K model I 
remember certainly did, as did some variants of the 4K model IIRC.

That really takes me back, though....

Jim

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On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:00:10 -0400, clipka wrote:

> "Jesus was a capricorn"

Jesus was Jewish! -- Avenue Q Soundtrack

Jim

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On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 19:47:14 -0500, David H. Burns wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:27:19 -0400, Warp wrote:
>> 
>>>  That kind of mocking attitude isn't really helpful.
>> 
>> Nor is it particularly helpful to mock the abilities of someone you've
>> only just met.
>> 
>> This thread needs a whole lot of "lighten up, folks!".  Seriously.
>> 
>> Jim
> I *thought* my monkey comment was light. Maybe we have just harped on
> this same,
> rather tangled, thread to long. :)

Oh, there have been much longer threads in here.... :-)

> I ought to apologize for my typos and irregular lines. The keyboard on
> this Timex Sinclair
> is rather small and my tail keeps getting in the way.

Ah, the ZX-81?  Had to use a rubber band to hold the 16 K expansion pack 
on mine. ;-)

Jim

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clipka wrote:

> XP (for good reason) doesn't allow you to access the graphics card directly
> (just guess what happened if every application you have running on your
> computer - say, browser, calculator, Windows Explorer and your own home-brewn
> program - would try to poke around at the graphics hardware, maybe even trying
> to run in different modes... perfect chaos.
> 
> But a suitable driver might provide a frame buffer of, say, 640x480 pixels for
> you to use freely, and do the interfacing to Windows (including event handling)
> for you, instead of directly accessing real hardware. 
>
I can appreciate that it might be wise to restrict access to the video 
card. But it is possible to
display images somehow. Pov-Ray does it and in a whole host of 
resolutions. Maybe displaying
graphics is very hard but it can't be impossible!!

> The graphics routines in John Beales wonderful
>> heightfield programs don't work, though the rest of the program does.
> 
> The name doesn't ring a bell.
> 

You took me aback! I had to call up Pov-Ray links to make sure had had 
the name right.
Have you every played with heightfields? I can't imagine anyone who has 
not being familiar
with John Beale's "Gforge".

David

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Jim Henderson wrote:

>> I ought to apologize for my typos and irregular lines. The keyboard on
>> this Timex Sinclair
>> is rather small and my tail keeps getting in the way.
> 
> Ah, the ZX-81?  Had to use a rubber band to hold the 16 K expansion pack 
> on mine. ;-)
> 
> Jim

You go farther back than me. I wasn't lucky enough to get one of those. 
The Timex-Sinclair
is a latter version.

David

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Warp wrote:
>   Immediately when you started having different users with different
> hardware setups, the whole graphics programming stumbled on a huge problem.

I don't think it's really even just graphics, altho graphics are the main 
source of problems.

I think having libraries (or, more particularly, "components") is a 
difficult thing to do efficiently.  I've been looking at bunches of code for 
high-efficiency programming lately, and I've started remembering what I hate 
about C and C++ and the ilk.

The problem with all the low-level languages like C and C++ and such is that 
they don't really come with the libraries you need to do modern stuff. 
There's nothing built in for threading, graphics, sound, IPC, etc. That's 
all left to libraries developed well after the language was standardized.

With C it isn't too bad, but C doesn't support things at a high-enough level 
that I can take (say) an MPEG decoder library or a media streaming library 
and just use it. Most of the time the author either invents a whole bunch of 
routines to handle logging, strings, async I/O, header parsing, etc. Nobody 
really writes a sophisticated library relying on a minimum of outside 
non-standard libraries any more. *Most* systems have their own names for 
integers, strings, whole complex hierarchies of header files, etc. There's 
nothing even coming close to UNIX pipes or something where you plug things 
together without having to fix a bunch of stuff inside. For example, 
everyone has different logging libraries, instead of just writing to stderr 
like the libraries were originally designed to handle. If you want to use an 
XML parser, an HTTP client, a multimedia stream receiver, and a graphics 
framebuffer library, you're going to wind up with four different logging 
mechanisms probably more than one resource manager.

C++ is a lot better, in that at least people seem to avoid rewriting 
malloc() and such, and Boost (if you use it) has a bunch of handy libraries 
handling stuff everyone needs but everyone reinvents. Which is great if all 
the projects use the same version, and all your code is in C++. But just try 
to (say) use Qt from a language other than C++, and watch the pain-fest 
begin. If you can do everything from scratch in C++, you're in good shape, 
but if you're putting together a bunch of third-party stuff, you're pretty 
well screwed unless you can cut it into separate processes.

High-level languages designed to solve this problem (like C#, say) have the 
problem that they solve it by giving you huge libraries, so if not all your 
code is .NET, you're basically screwed again. At least you can go out and 
buy the components you want. The problem here seems to be that building such 
a framework properly requires a whole bunch of design on a huge library and 
runtime system, but people don't want to pay for that. Plus, if it doesn't 
come from someone that's essentially already a monopoly, getting everyone to 
use it is problematic. It doesn't matter how complete .NET's libraries are 
if you can't find the piece of code you're looking for except in some 
baroque conglomeration of twisty C++ classes. And it doesn't matter how 
complete .NET's libraries are if you can't use them on the machine you 
happen to be programming.

Sadly, I don't really see this getting better. Either your language is 
sufficiently low-level that it works everywhere you need it, or it is 
powerful enough that it has bunches of good code already developed for it 
(either as standard libraries or built into the language) that you can just 
plug in and use.

I don't think we're quite there yet, but I think the fact that languages 
evolve much more slowly than hardware does might make this less of a problem 
in the future.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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David H. Burns wrote:
> You took me aback! I had to call up Pov-Ray links to make sure had had 
> the name right.
> Have you every played with heightfields? I can't imagine anyone who has 
> not being familiar
> with John Beale's "Gforge".

(Warning!  Thread is becoming dangerously on-topic! :) ).

I'm aware of it, but I never used it.  I prefer making my height fields 
with POV-Ray instead :)

-- 
Chambers

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