[HN Gopher] The Applesoft Compiler (TASC): We have the source co...
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       The Applesoft Compiler (TASC): We have the source code, in a sense
        
       Author : zdw
       Score  : 55 points
       Date   : 2022-04-23 20:31 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (devblogs.microsoft.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (devblogs.microsoft.com)
        
       | js2 wrote:
       | I'm confused about deleting comments and renaming variables
       | unless TASC itself written in Applesoft. Which seems crazy.
       | 
       | > As the author added features, he kept hitting the Apple ]['s
       | 48KB RAM limit
       | 
       | There was a language card that could replace the upper 16KB of
       | ROM with RAM, but of course, you'd still need to have the
       | interpreter somewhere.
       | 
       | I've never heard of TASC before, but Beagle Bros also had an
       | AppleSoft compiler (released in 1986):
       | 
       | https://archive.org/details/Beagle_Bros-Beagle_Compiler
       | 
       | Beagle Bros had an bevy of amazing software in general:
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_Bros
       | 
       | I feel bad now that I pirated so much of it as a teenager.
        
         | tambourine_man wrote:
         | > All three passes were written largely in Applesoft
         | 
         | Wouldn't this explain it?
         | 
         | But it seems odd that they wouldn't at least save a LUT
         | relating the shortened and expanded variable name.
        
           | js2 wrote:
           | Doh. I read right over that.
        
           | wumpus wrote:
           | Applesoft II fit in 10 kilobytes of rom and had to be able to
           | run in as little as 4 kilobytes of ram. The one thing that
           | Microsoft was an expert at (in that era) was sacrificing
           | features to fit.
           | 
           | There was no special version for machines with more ram or
           | with a floppy disk.
        
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       (page generated 2022-04-23 23:00 UTC)