45 replies to this topic

[Opry99er]

Ahh man this is great!! Thank you Walid!!!  You may have just inspired some C programmers to come try out our little small C language... Little do they know that C99 has very little to do in any way with modern C... But it's a hook anyway.  

[Willsy]

I did a sprite designer with C99:



and

[unhuman]

You're not supposed to tell me that until AFTER I'm hooked (and figured that out myself).

BTW - it might depend on what you mean by modern C... To me, C is K&R.

-H

Opry99er, on Sun May 2, 2010 10:12 PM, said:

Ahh man this is great!! Thank you Walid!!! You may have just inspired some C programmers to come try out our little small C language... Little do they know that C99 has very little to do in any way with modern C... But it's a hook anyway.

[The Codex]

unhuman, on Mon May 3, 2010 9:17 AM, said:

BTW - it might depend on what you mean by modern C... To me, C is K&R.

Agreed. Though I prefer C++ these days, being oriented to objects as I am.

[Vorticon]

unhuman, on Mon May 3, 2010 9:17 AM, said:

You're not supposed to tell me that until AFTER I'm hooked (and figured that out myself).

BTW - it might depend on what you mean by modern C... To me, C is K&R.

-H

I agree. Actually c99 is pretty close and quite capable. I personally never quite got hooked on it because it was rather difficult to read and much preferred Pascal. I am trying to translate the manual of Turbo Pasc'99 that Filip sent me from German to English, and once I do I think I am going to do a project in Pascal. I also have a pretty complete Fortran compiler for the TI on loan from Berry Harmsen in Amsterdam which I am going to make available at some point when I have had a chance to convert the disks.

[The Codex]

Oo, I'd love a copy of the Fortran compiler when you've got that ready! I enjoyed it much more than Pascal in school, though both are fine learning languages.

[unhuman]

I had a copy of Turbo Pasc at some point. The only thing I could get it to do was lock up my machine.

Vorticon, on Mon May 3, 2010 11:46 AM, said:

I agree. Actually c99 is pretty close and quite capable. I personally never quite got hooked on it because it was rather difficult to read and much preferred Pascal. I am trying to translate the manual of Turbo Pasc'99 that Filip sent me from German to English, and once I do I think I am going to do a project in Pascal. I also have a pretty complete Fortran compiler for the TI on loan from Berry Harmsen in Amsterdam which I am going to make available at some point when I have had a chance to convert the disks.

[Opry99er]

Awesome stuff--- hope to get up and running playing with this language soon!!!

[retroclouds]

unhuman, on Mon May 3, 2010 12:06 PM, said:

I had a copy of Turbo Pasc at some point. The only thing I could get it to do was lock up my machine.

That most likely was the Turbo Pasc copy protection. You could only make a reliable copy when using a track copier software.  
Turbo Pasc'99 used to lockup during compilation when it thought it was running as a copy.
Due to its copy protection scheme it was reported that it didn't work with certain disk controllers.

[unhuman]

Ummm... Not sure. I don't have it anymore. But, it's what forced me to get a PC and Borland was very nice to us with super-low prices when I was in college.

retroclouds, on Mon May 3, 2010 1:10 PM, said:

unhuman, on Mon May 3, 2010 12:06 PM, said:

I had a copy of Turbo Pasc at some point. The only thing I could get it to do was lock up my machine.

That most likely was the Turbo Pasc copy protection. You could only make a reliable copy when using a track copier software.
Turbo Pasc'99 used to lockup during compilation when it thought it was running as a copy.
Due to its copy protection scheme it was reported that it didn't work with certain disk controllers.

[Vorticon]

The Codex, on Mon May 3, 2010 11:51 AM, said:

Oo, I'd love a copy of the Fortran compiler when you've got that ready! I enjoyed it much more than Pascal in school, though both are fine learning languages.

I only took Fortran in high school and hated it thoroughly! I still have the original textbook however, and looking back at it, it's really not a bad language after all. One of the reasons I had a tough time with it was that unlike my TI which was interactive, we had to use punched cards for programming then (1981-1983). Then I took Pascal in college and fell in love with it. Unfortunately, I was not allowed access to the college mainframe after the Pascal course was over. In these days (1983-1986), mainframe computer time was still expensive and mostly reserved to engineering and computer science majors:) I did not pick up Pascal again until the late 90's when I acquired a P-code card, and now I mostly use it on my PCjr with Borland's Turbo Pascal 3.

[unhuman]

Vorticon, on Mon May 3, 2010 4:35 PM, said:

The Codex, on Mon May 3, 2010 11:51 AM, said:

Oo, I'd love a copy of the Fortran compiler when you've got that ready! I enjoyed it much more than Pascal in school, though both are fine learning languages.

I only took Fortran in high school and hated it thoroughly! I still have the original textbook however, and looking back at it, it's really not a bad language after all. One of the reasons I had a tough time with it was that unlike my TI which was interactive, we had to use punched cards for programming then (1981-1983). Then I took Pascal in college and fell in love with it. Unfortunately, I was not allowed access to the college mainframe after the Pascal course was over. In these days (1983-1986), mainframe computer time was still expensive and mostly reserved to engineering and computer science majors:) I did not pick up Pascal again until the late 90's when I acquired a P-code card, and now I mostly use it on my PCjr with Borland's Turbo Pascal 3.

3??!!! I started with 4, IIRC. 5 is when they added objects.

[unhuman]

Grumble. The docs don't look very good in OpenOffice.org. Oh well. Will have to find another way.

[The Codex]

Vorticon, on Mon May 3, 2010 4:35 PM, said:

I only took Fortran in high school and hated it thoroughly! I still have the original textbook however, and looking back at it, it's really not a bad language after all. One of the reasons I had a tough time with it was that unlike my TI which was interactive, we had to use punched cards for programming then (1981-1983). Then I took Pascal in college and fell in love with it. Unfortunately, I was not allowed access to the college mainframe after the Pascal course was over. In these days (1983-1986), mainframe computer time was still expensive and mostly reserved to engineering and computer science majors:) I did not pick up Pascal again until the late 90's when I acquired a P-code card, and now I mostly use it on my PCjr with Borland's Turbo Pascal 3.

Fortran is the inspiration for BASIC, which is probably why I grok'd it so well when I encountered it, having started off with BASIC (and LOGO and Lisp). Pascal seemed baroque to me and I didn't really get it until I worked with C. Then the syntax made sense and I started to see how loose BASIC (and Fortran) were. But I still have a place in my heart for Fortran and would like to have a go at again, if only for nostalgia's sake.

Any versions of COBOL you've got, you can keep.

[unhuman]

Hehe. Similar story. As a kid, went to computer camp. was one of the "smarter" kids and got pushed into Pascal. I didn't get it at all. Didn't comprehend how you could not have line numbers. Alas, come college and I guess my brain evolved a bit and I got it no problem. Then C... Objects did the same thing until I got a real job and had an application.

-H

The Codex, on Mon May 3, 2010 7:17 PM, said:

Vorticon, on Mon May 3, 2010 4:35 PM, said:

I only took Fortran in high school and hated it thoroughly! I still have the original textbook however, and looking back at it, it's really not a bad language after all. One of the reasons I had a tough time with it was that unlike my TI which was interactive, we had to use punched cards for programming then (1981-1983). Then I took Pascal in college and fell in love with it. Unfortunately, I was not allowed access to the college mainframe after the Pascal course was over. In these days (1983-1986), mainframe computer time was still expensive and mostly reserved to engineering and computer science majors:) I did not pick up Pascal again until the late 90's when I acquired a P-code card, and now I mostly use it on my PCjr with Borland's Turbo Pascal 3.

Fortran is the inspiration for BASIC, which is probably why I grok'd it so well when I encountered it, having started off with BASIC (and LOGO and Lisp). Pascal seemed baroque to me and I didn't really get it until I worked with C. Then the syntax made sense and I started to see how loose BASIC (and Fortran) were. But I still have a place in my heart for Fortran and would like to have a go at again, if only for nostalgia's sake.

Any versions of COBOL you've got, you can keep.

[Vorticon]

unhuman, on Mon May 3, 2010 5:26 PM, said:

Vorticon, on Mon May 3, 2010 4:35 PM, said:

The Codex, on Mon May 3, 2010 11:51 AM, said:

Oo, I'd love a copy of the Fortran compiler when you've got that ready! I enjoyed it much more than Pascal in school, though both are fine learning languages.

I only took Fortran in high school and hated it thoroughly! I still have the original textbook however, and looking back at it, it's really not a bad language after all. One of the reasons I had a tough time with it was that unlike my TI which was interactive, we had to use punched cards for programming then (1981-1983). Then I took Pascal in college and fell in love with it. Unfortunately, I was not allowed access to the college mainframe after the Pascal course was over. In these days (1983-1986), mainframe computer time was still expensive and mostly reserved to engineering and computer science majors:) I did not pick up Pascal again until the late 90's when I acquired a P-code card, and now I mostly use it on my PCjr with Borland's Turbo Pascal 3.

3??!!! I started with 4, IIRC. 5 is when they added objects.

I also have 5.1 which I can run on my PCjr as well, but only after installing it on my parallel zip drive (yes, there actually is a zip driver for legacy DOS computers), and having an IDE really simplifies program development. Version 3 on the other hand is so compact that it fits on a single 360K diskette with plenty of room to spare for projects. Also, the CPM version runs on my TRS 80 model 4 as well as on the CP/M card sitting in my PEB.

BTW, I recently picked up Borland Prolog 1.0, and boy is it a weird language It does intrigue me though, and I hope to explore it a bit further. BUT first, I have to complete Ultimate Planet! See what I'm talking about??? It does not take much to distract me

[unhuman]

Vorticon, on Mon May 3, 2010 9:03 PM, said:

BTW, I recently picked up Borland Prolog 1.0, and boy is it a weird language It does intrigue me though, and I hope to explore it a bit further. BUT first, I have to complete Ultimate Planet! See what I'm talking about??? It does not take much to distract me

Oohhhh... I <3'ed (Borland) Prolog in college!!!! It was so very much fun. Then there was LISP, which I did not so enjoy.

I wrote some crazy tool for prolog to compile and run projects - or something... Whatever it did, it fixed the issues I had with the environment...

Umm... but that's as far as it went.

-H

Edited by unhuman, Tue May 4, 2010 5:55 AM.

[The Codex]

Prolog is cool, one of the better AI languages. And for anyone who as played with Lisp, try Scheme, it's kind of a next-gen Lisp that is more graspable to the average user.

An overlooked language that is fun if you think like an engineer is Icon. I played around with it on the Amiga and it has a spartan efficiency that's refreshing.

Meanwhile, I notice unhuman has selected a TARDIS avatar, presumably outing himself as a Doctor Who fan. Yet another unsettling coincidence between him and me. I've been a fan of the show since the British originals were shown over here in my teens. I also once owned a large, cantakerous boxy blue car with the custom license plate DR WHOM.

[unhuman]

Ha. I'm unveiling something, but perhaps it's not merely that I'm a fan. I'm more of a "modern-day" fan, btw - didn't watch as a kid. Got into it with the new, good production values stuff.

The Codex, on Tue May 4, 2010 8:24 AM, said:

Meanwhile, I notice unhuman has selected a TARDIS avatar, presumably outing himself as a Doctor Who fan. Yet another unsettling coincidence between him and me. I've been a fan of the show since the British originals were shown over here in my teens. I also once owned a large, cantakerous boxy blue car with the custom license plate DR WHOM.

Edited by unhuman, Tue May 4, 2010 9:35 AM.

[The Codex]

Hmm, could it be a Dr Who game for the TI? That would be fab if so. Almost every platform had some kind of Timelord game, from the BBC Micro's Doctor Who And The Mines Of Terror through the Amiga's Dalek Attack all the way up to the web games in the works on the BBC site. The TI really needs an incarnation of The Doctor as well.

Tangentially related, I did a remake of Daleks for a "games that could have appeared on the TI calculator" competition a while back. The best version of this old terminal classic is the Amiga one. Anyway, good luck on your own Doctor game, if that's indeed what is being alluded to.

Edited by The Codex, Tue May 4, 2010 10:04 AM.

[Opry99er]

I am going to unveil something here too... Marc Hull sleeps with a little brown Teddy bear with big blue eyes.