On 27.03.2025 00:21, bart wrote:
On 26/03/2025 18:09, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
[...]
>
Oh, please, don't get me wrong. Of course you could do a lot of
geeky stuff with those devices and learn a lot about that (then
"new") technology. The "toy" character as I named it I perceived
from the lousy hardware (membrane keyboard, TV as display, etc. -
unless I am confusing things) and also what seems to have been
mostly done with those devices.
>
On the minus side, if you wanted to learn about IT or CS - we've
Few played with this stuff because they wanted to learn CS. They wanted
to do interesting fun things.
Call it as you like.
Some commercial products were low quality because they had to be done
for a price. I think the ZX80 was £100, at a time when my company
produced a business computer, also Z80-based, for £1300. (One client
used one of our machines to more easily develop Spectrum programs.)
I'm speaking about all that inferior systems that had a comparably
high price without a matching quality. And about years and years
passing without vendors of such products changing that situation.
My own first machine was build from discrete chips, and the software had
to be developed from *nothing* (actually, from keying in binary code
using home-made switches). There was little scope for niceties.
For "niceties"? - We're obviously speaking about different things.
The first apps with my crude languages revolved around vector graphics,
image processing, and frame-grabbing, *after* having to develop the
assembler, editor, compiler and libraries needed to make it possible.
That was an incredible learning experience, which helped me get that job
with hardware, and formed my attitutes towards traditional tools that
everybody is apparently still stuck with.
got a lot of bad paragons from many of these primitive systems;
OSes like DOS,
I had no interest whatsover in operating systems. I did fine without one
to start with, while CP/M (our rip-off of it) and DOS provided a file
system and a way to launch programs; what else was there?
languages like BASIC
What language would you have advocated that could fit into a few KB, and
that could run without a proper file system?
The first that comes to mind was (for example) Pascal. It actually
became available on several platforms. But it was not comparable
to the omnipresent [lousy] BASIC that was inherent part of the OS
in the ROM. (Well, or on a 8" floppy; e.g. in case of the Olivetti
P6060.) There were other languages available; someone (maybe David)
mentioned some upthread. Myself I bought a Simula compiler for my
Atari ST. Simula is a powerful and comparably huge language, so your
"few KB" excuse is not convincing.
I think it was a professor at the university who meant that anyone
who started with BASIC would be incapable of ever doing real CS. -
This is of course nonsense! (And such arguments say more about the
person formulating such non-arguments. - I recall a similar nonsense
mentioned here by someone some months ago concerning OO and Simula
and all other OO languages that took their OO concepts from Simula.)
The point with BASIC is that if all you know is BASIC without knowing
anything else you probably won't be able to understand the problems
with it. I know you have a broader language repertoire, so I presume
you know BASIC's deficiencies (or at least the deficiencies of those
BASIC dialects that were around until around 1980).
, primitive CPU architectures,
8-bit architectures were fine, just a bit short of registers and with
limitation instruction sets. But that is to be expected with only 27,000
transistors on a chip or whatever it was for Z80.
(BTW, have a go at emulating such a processor in sofware; tell me in 3
months how you got on.)
I don't understand your last sentence. - Are you suggesting I should
do something stupid and unnecessary just to waste my time; why?
In the past I had implemented an emulator for the SC 61860; if that
helps you in any way with your argument please let me know.
But also at that time - early 80s when Spectrums etc were popular -
there were some wonderful new 16/32-bit processors such as 68000,
Z8000/0 and NS32032, of which only the first survived.
I've had contact with a couple CPUs back these days; 6502 (6510),
68000, 8080 (Z80), another Intel thing where I forgot the number,
SC 61860, TMS 320 C25. And I read about (but not programmed) a
couple more (the SPARC, one from National Semiconductors) where
I forgot the model numbers.
The 68000, specifically, is a great example for an inferior CPU
architecture. (Your mileage obviously varies if you think it was
even "wonderful".)
CPU architectures that I found to be more interesting were SPARC,
the National Semiconductor thing (NS 32016 maybe? nor sure), and
the TMS DSP (where I spent quite some time with), for example.
But that all was long ago and is meaningless today. Personally
I've occasionally programmed in assembler around 1980-1990, and
you can imagine that I don't care much about that topic anymore.
Their architecture is not that different from current machines.
That would be bad news. And I have my doubts that this is true.
(But as said, I don't care much anymore.)
It's interesting to still see advocates of inferior IT justifying
bad paragons, though. The situation has not changed. - Have fun!
Janis
(YMMV)
Yeah.
Suggested method for returning a string from a C program?
Re: Suggested method for returning a string from a C program?
