Post AKx9UicQJ6DR93HEX2 by feoh@cybre.space
(DIR) More posts by feoh@cybre.space
(DIR) Post #AKSGoFrAatP4uk1b8a by feoh@cybre.space
2022-06-11T18:44:19Z
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Picking up #basic again really is like riding a bike.It's not the prettiest #programming language, or the most elegant - not by a long shot, but working in it again I'm reminded of what an incredible gateway drug it was for so many of us to a life long love of computing.There's something super powerful at play here beyond #retro. I do think there are things we could learn from it in modern designs.
(DIR) Post #AKSGoGDrEXYG36diV6 by feoh@cybre.space
2022-06-11T18:49:03Z
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Just a tiny teaser example. I wrote this ugly bugger simple drawing program in < 10m:---
(DIR) Post #AKSGoGltC0m1keYtXs by living8bit@mastodon.social
2022-06-13T00:07:18Z
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@feoh What system is that? "Graphics 5" and Plot, say #C128, but "stick" and "strig" rule it out.
(DIR) Post #AKSGoHNouz7BeIJBfU by feoh@cybre.space
2022-06-13T01:10:26Z
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@living8bit Atari 8 bit BASIC. The original version, not any of the nicer XL, XE, or Turbo varieties :)
(DIR) Post #AKSGu0OoybqmiCVV0y by comchia@mastodon.social
2022-06-13T02:26:29Z
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@feoh I took some time to learn some Atari BASIC this past winter, and I found that it helped me understand some concepts more easily in a later Udemy Python class that I took. BASIC was my first language I messed with at all as a kid.
(DIR) Post #AKSGu0qpIUFg73brfM by lopta@mastodon.social
2022-06-13T14:49:31Z
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@comchia @feoh I like BASIC.
(DIR) Post #AKSGu1I7f05PTiNfDE by Wintermute_BBS@oldbytes.space
2022-06-13T15:21:33Z
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@lopta @comchia @feoh me too!
(DIR) Post #AKSGu1d2PEogWaAMoS by feoh@cybre.space
2022-06-13T15:40:19Z
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@Wintermute_BBS Microsoft BASIC I'd guess given your pinned tweet. I'd never heard of the RC2014 before. That little board looks VERY neat!
(DIR) Post #AKSGu20R0FX1h973HU by Wintermute_BBS@oldbytes.space
2022-06-13T15:43:45Z
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@feoh it is a fantastic, modular platform. you can turn a simple starter kit into a full blown CP/M beast with sound and graphics capabilities if you so wish. there are plenty of official and 3rd party expansion modules for it.#rc2014
(DIR) Post #AKSgrkeFALye5bJ4K0 by feoh@cybre.space
2022-06-13T15:48:39Z
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@Wintermute_BBS Yeah I also don't know that a lot of people know just how deep the CP/M ecosystem was back in the day. I never had a CP/M machine, but I read a *LOT* about them, including Jerry Pournelle's CP/M boxes - named Zeke and I can't rremember what the other was :) in I think Byte or Doctor Dobbs Journal :)
(DIR) Post #AKSgrmQUYSAJbWt7AG by hairylarry@mastodon.social
2022-06-13T19:28:19Z
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@feoh @Wintermute_BBS I read that stuff. I like to blame microsoft for using the backslash when forward slash was already the standard but I've been told that it was cp/m's fault and microsoft inherited it from them.Still, no excuse.
(DIR) Post #AKSgrn4Y9WCxbld6bQ by feoh@cybre.space
2022-06-13T20:06:11Z
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@hairylarry Being angry at MSFT in 2022 for decisions they made in 1980 just makes me chortle :)Sure, I'd have liked it if everyone embraced The One True filesystem / directory structure and The One True POSIX API but, you know, like, life happens and I can't personally be bothered to sweat that level of detail *40 years later* :)
(DIR) Post #AKSgrnbs9crZH7DiXg by vfrmedia@social.tchncs.de
2022-06-13T20:33:23Z
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@feoh @hairylarry TBH for those of us who grew up outside USA (and/or maybe are slightly younger?) even seeing a CP/M machine was rare, you often only got to use machines with hard drives (or even floppies!) at high school, and there were *multiple* different file system standards (Acorn used a dot as a separator for directories, files didn't have any extension). BBC Basic was very powerful (and the built in assembler was a bonus)
(DIR) Post #AKSgro7mF0Nqs49CGu by lopta@mastodon.social
2022-06-13T23:33:43Z
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@vfrmedia @feoh @hairylarry Plenty of CP/M machines in the U.K: Logica VTS, Comart, RM, Amstrad CPC/PCW etc.
(DIR) Post #AKSgroUSseX20QlJdQ by feoh@cybre.space
2022-06-13T23:42:19Z
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@lopta @vfrmedia @hairylarry For what it’s worth I have never personally laid hands on a CP/M machine myself. I’ve just been reading about them for years and I find them kind of fascinating :-)
(DIR) Post #AKSgroqRYw736b2rtQ by vfrmedia@social.tchncs.de
2022-06-13T23:46:31Z
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@feoh @lopta @hairylarry first one I saw was at work experience at British Telecom in 1987, not 100% sure what it was, was a modular S100 bus type machine. I was at high school until 1990, so would not have seen many "business" PCsI remember seeing Amstrads running CP/M by late 1980s, particularly the PCW was popular with small business owners/freelancers until MSDOS/Windows machines took over. By the time I was at my first full time job in 1992, the office computers were all IBM PS2..
(DIR) Post #AKShpH1CSQsDZMQVP6 by Wintermute_BBS@oldbytes.space
2022-06-13T15:47:33Z
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@feoh ...and yes, usually the 8bit Microsoft BASIC although I am also familiar with the specialities of Sharp Pocket PC BASIC and have been doing some stuff with BlitzMax and PureBasic on #linux
(DIR) Post #AKSiOO9HwFsXorxCkq by feoh@cybre.space
2022-06-13T14:54:03Z
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@lopta @comchia Nice! Which variant is your favorite?
(DIR) Post #AKSiOOYoPMIN61taXQ by lopta@mastodon.social
2022-06-13T14:58:29Z
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@feoh @comchia Tough question. I think BBC BASIC is well-regarded but in recent years I've used bwbasic.
(DIR) Post #AKSiOOxcv692KzVPDU by feoh@cybre.space
2022-06-13T15:02:18Z
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@lopta @comchia You don't need to grasp for an 8 bit version just because that's what we've been chatting about! Modern variants are cool too :) Bywater looks pretty neat actually.
(DIR) Post #AKSiOPPdEyXvjqblrs by lopta@mastodon.social
2022-06-13T15:40:18Z
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@feoh @comchia I have used QBASIC and I think GEMBASIC in the past - "modern" variants with labels instead of line numbers and Pascal-style subroutines.
(DIR) Post #AKSiOPjU3AQSjPtcoK by feoh@cybre.space
2022-06-13T15:41:01Z
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@lopta Yeah dealing with the line editor and line numbers is definitely a throwback :) And there's no easy way to renumber either!
(DIR) Post #AKSiOQ6AgoZdrmVkAq by clacke@libranet.de
2022-06-14T00:07:04Z
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@feoh @lopta C128 had a renumbering command!
(DIR) Post #AKSiOQSVLmREz2xZz6 by lnxw37a2@pleroma.soykaf.com
2022-06-14T00:14:04.782689Z
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@clacke @feoh @lopta The TRS-80 also had a renumber command.
(DIR) Post #AKx07xEKutDeDK54Sm by emacsen@emacsen.net
2022-06-28T14:28:30Z
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@feoh My question is "Is it BASIC, or is it such direct access to the hardware?"For example, if Lua had been an option, would that have done the same?
(DIR) Post #AKx07xt6TJpSFl9d0S by feoh@cybre.space
2022-06-28T14:40:13Z
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@emacsen Actually thinking about it your choice of comparison to Lua is VERY apt and rather interesting. Lua is a simple language but one that can be incredibly expressive and powerful. So is BASIC, but we can't ignore the fact that Lua's designers had another 30 years of prior art to work from that BASIC's original creators did not :)In a sense, platforms like PICO-8 and TIC-80 are kind of what we're talking about here, even though they don't strictly speaking exist as hardware.
(DIR) Post #AKx07yLokYnVgoaYlM by emacsen@emacsen.net
2022-06-28T14:44:59Z
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@feoh I'm not dismissing the importance or innovation of BASIC, or LOGO (which is what I started with on the TI-99).I consider TIC-80 to be a bit of almost retro-futurism? It's the computer we wanted but never had.OTOH it doesn't have any kind of significant IO functionality- you can sort of almost hack it in if you bang the registers, but... no :)
(DIR) Post #AKx07ynp4RCP5fgvPk by veer66@mstdn.io
2022-06-28T14:53:37Z
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@emacsen I still miss LOGO. @feoh
(DIR) Post #AKx9UicQJ6DR93HEX2 by feoh@cybre.space
2022-06-28T16:39:06Z
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@veer66 @emacsen Atari LOGO was the first programming language to really truly blow my mind. Still amazed at the fact that I never ever saw anything like Dynaturtles in any other language and most don't know what I'm talking about when I mention them :)(You could change the turtle's shape and color and give them velocity & direction, as well as do collision detection between them and other turtles, pixels etc. It was awesome :)
(DIR) Post #AKxfIwFyyLiGV7Ctzk by scruss@mastodon.social
2022-06-28T22:35:31Z
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@veer66 @emacsen @feoh I was going to point you towards tef's amazing web logo thing, but I can't find it right nowmicrom8 takes Apple Logo to a mind-blowing voxel place by adding 3d commands. It starts off looking just like it's running on the Apple II, then it gets very weirducblogo is maintained again, and runs on most systems
(DIR) Post #AKxnT6cO6SGpAJ2upc by feoh@cybre.space
2022-06-28T14:36:58Z
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@emacsen It's a valid question. I think the answer is: maybe? Like I said in a previous reply to someone else, part of BASIC's charm is its REPL. I guess you could easily create a REPL in Lua as well.So yeah, if you gave me a Lua REPL with direct hardware access to an architecture simple enough to fit in my brain, then I'd probably love it just as much if not more. Got such a thing lying around? :)
(DIR) Post #AKxnT7CtuhTezY84kC by dan@brvt.telent.net
2022-06-28T15:59:44.285676Z
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@feoh @emacsen at some point I will get back to https://github.com/telent/chablon#readme but right now my side-projects stack overfloweth and that one's a couple deep
(DIR) Post #AKxnT7nlhcy4ptNWD2 by emacsen@emacsen.net
2022-06-29T00:03:58Z
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@dan @feoh > Today it's a Lua interpreter and a program that consumes almost all of the available RAM to draw rectangles on the display of a PineTime smart watch.A very honest README.