My new blog

[SIO99]

My new blog is http://commodore64crap.wordpress.com . I dunno if I should cross post it all on here. Let me know what you think of it.

[ANTIQ]

[Marius]

I read rapidly fast a few sentences, but do I understand right your blog is some kind of c64 bashing?

 

Omg that is SO 1988.

[andym00]

You must be mental to waste your time on such misinformed vitriol..

[atari8warez]

it's getting hard to believe by the day that majority of Atariage users are "mature" individuals

[w1k]

[sack-c0s]

I don't say this as a C64 fanboy, because I try to be as agnostic as possible and sample the delights of as many 8-bit machines as I can get my hands on, but you are aware you come across as a bitter, twisted resentful bellend with that blog?

 

commodore basic was shit. This might be part of the reason you now serve up burgers in a Wimpey in Peckham rather than being a superstar coder but most likely it isn't. That's life for you. Now grow up and stop whining.

[Fratzengeballer]

Who on the c64 ever wanted basic? I bought it back in 1983 because of the cool games and I couldnt care less about basic.

 

After several weeks of trying I figured that basic sucked and learned assembler, but nice that you waste approx. 12345 words about the importance of basic on the c64 compared to other systems.

Edited August 11, 2012 by Fratzengeballer

[SIO99]

I was provoked into starting this blog because of the recent "celebrations" of the Commodore 64's 30th anniversary of going on sale. As I said, it was a games console masquerading as a computer. If it had come out in 1977-1978 (like the BASIC it ran) it would have been a computer, but as it came out in 1982, it WASN'T!

 

BASIC is a beginners' language and Assembler isn't. Unless someone could learn another language first, they wouldn't be able to learn Assembler or Machine Code. Of course, having BASIC on ROM meant you were stuck with that version for writing programs that would run on most Commodore 64 computers. The disk drive cost more than the computer, or more than the price of a replacement computer and I never heard of any way to compile any version of BASIC for it just by using the cassette based data recorder.

 

Not many people as a percentage of owners of ANY computer system have managed to learn Assembler or Machine Code AFAIK, although there may be a lot of them on this forum. Not long after getting a Commodore 64, I was typing in BBC BASIC program listings in an educational establishment. I was very impressed by BBC BASIC and I couldn't wait to find out how to do the same things on the Commodore 64. A few months later, I started to realise from this experience, the Commodore "Introduction to BASIC" course, and computer magazines, that something was drastically wrong with the Commodore 64. I was DISGUSTED when I found out what Commodore had done and my confidence was badly damaged.

 

There's no way I should have to know the intimate workings of a computer's hardware in order to make it do what I want. That's a job for the people who write implementations of languages that run on a certain computer, not a job for a beginner who wants to start learning how to program!

 

BTW, my next post on my blog will be about how it's virtually impossible to draw hires graphics on the Commodore 64 and how to turn on the hires graphics screen, which on other systems was achieved by a simple GRAPHICS [number], SCREEN [number], or MODE [number] command, or on the Spectrum didn't require any command at all.

Edited August 12, 2012 by SIO99

[Marius]

So it indeed IS a bash blog. Sorry that is so uninteresting.

 

I am a 100% Atari 8bit fan... And yes when I was 12 I really found it annoying that 'everyone' in my neighborhood had C64 while I wasn't ... But come on... All these 8bitters have their pro and cons.

 

The most important thing is what someone feels by their own system. I know people who are damned excitede about their East-German car Trabant or their Russian LADA...... It is the chemistry between user and console.

 

Nobody has benefit from a bash log.

 

 

[TMR]

I was provoked into starting this blog because of the recent "celebrations" of the Commodore 64's 30th anniversary of going on sale. As I said, it was a games console masquerading as a computer. If it had come out in 1977-1978 (like the BASIC it ran) it would have been a computer, but as it came out in 1982, it WASN'T!

 

This is a ridiculous argument; the early Atari 8-bits or the Jupiter Ace didn't have BASIC at all so by your "logic" they're not computers either. And you weren't "provoked" at all, this is the same bee you've had in your bonnet when you were talking about your Atari 8-bit BASIC programming - speaking of which, nothing seems to have come of that, you'd think with a BASIC that powerful you'd have written something by now.

 

BASIC is a beginners' language and Assembler isn't. Unless someone could learn another language first, they wouldn't be able to learn Assembler or Machine Code.

 

This is wrong and i know people who did go straight into assembly language, some recently. BASIC was included on most but not all 8-bits to ease beginners into programming but wasn't considered a good choice as a teaching language even then because most of the dialects around didn't encourage structured programming and there wasn't much in the way of standardisation. By the time the 16-bit machines ruled the roost, BASIC on ROM had gone the way of the Dodo.

 

Of course, having BASIC on ROM meant you were stuck with that version for writing programs that would run on most Commodore 64 computers.

 

As a beginner's language, it did all you needed to be doing with it to learn; variables, string manipulation, arrays and so on are reasonably implemented on the C64. After that point, any programmer regardless of platform who worried about their code running on other people's machines should also have been considering the move to machine code because they were no longer a beginner. And when you get to that point which translates more easily to machine code? Take something simple like changing the border colour, on a fictional "better" C64 BASIC that could be frame, border or color with an extra modifier and for the C64 as is it's POKE53280,0 but in machine code for either case it'll be LDA #0 / STA 53280 - the POKE values learnt whilst picking up BASIC translate to machine code, that's one of the things that made the transition easier for myself and other programmers.

[Mclaneinc]

I never touched Basic, the big excitement was to learn Assembler, Basic, Fortran C and logo did nothing for me.

 

As for bash blogs, pointless and often filled with incorrect 'facts'..

 

Best avoided whatever the system..

[sack-c0s]

I notice your moderation system seems to be broken - people keep posting corrections to the factual inaccuracies in the blog yet they somehow seem to fail to appear.

 

you might want to correct that or it might appear you are blocking them out of some kind of bias

[Heaven/TQA]

Did we not had a several discussion? That one theory of going straight to assembler on c64 was the peek/poke nature of the basic? While a8 had too many of them translated to commands? Instead of moving players around.

[SIO99]

I was provoked into starting this blog because of the recent "celebrations" of the Commodore 64's 30th anniversary of going on sale. As I said, it was a games console masquerading as a computer. If it had come out in 1977-1978 (like the BASIC it ran) it would have been a computer, but as it came out in 1982, it WASN'T!

 

This is a ridiculous argument; the early Atari 8-bits or the Jupiter Ace didn't have BASIC at all so by your "logic" they're not computers either. And you weren't "provoked" at all, this is the same bee you've had in your bonnet when you were talking about your Atari 8-bit BASIC programming - speaking of which, nothing seems to have come of that, you'd think with a BASIC that powerful you'd have written something by now.

 

BASIC is a beginners' language and Assembler isn't. Unless someone could learn another language first, they wouldn't be able to learn Assembler or Machine Code.

 

This is wrong and i know people who did go straight into assembly language, some recently. BASIC was included on most but not all 8-bits to ease beginners into programming but wasn't considered a good choice as a teaching language even then because most of the dialects around didn't encourage structured programming and there wasn't much in the way of standardisation. By the time the 16-bit machines ruled the roost, BASIC on ROM had gone the way of the Dodo.

 

Of course, having BASIC on ROM meant you were stuck with that version for writing programs that would run on most Commodore 64 computers.

 

As a beginner's language, it did all you needed to be doing with it to learn; variables, string manipulation, arrays and so on are reasonably implemented on the C64. After that point, any programmer regardless of platform who worried about their code running on other people's machines should also have been considering the move to machine code because they were no longer a beginner. And when you get to that point which translates more easily to machine code? Take something simple like changing the border colour, on a fictional "better" C64 BASIC that could be frame, border or color with an extra modifier and for the C64 as is it's POKE53280,0 but in machine code for either case it'll be LDA #0 / STA 53280 - the POKE values learnt whilst picking up BASIC translate to machine code, that's one of the things that made the transition easier for myself and other programmers.

 

I came onto this forum, as well as buying an A8 computer as a kind of therapy to undo the Commodore 64 brain damage. I was later provoked into starting my blog because I saw a BBC News clip about a teacher showing off his old Commodore 64 to two classes of different ages. His "demonstration" of it as a computer was just to load a game by typing LOAD "" or LOAD "filename". This isn't a demonstration of computing, but just playing games. I also read some other comments praising the Commodore 64, claiming it helped people get into programming. I couldn't stand by and allow this propaganda to continue unopposed. I've contacted the BBC and told them about my blog. I don't know what you mean by saying that the early Atari 8 bits didn't have BASIC. AFAIK, when the Atari 400 and 800 first came out in 1979 they were supplied with BASIC on a cartridge. If you mean the Atari 2600 or 5200, obviously these were games consoles, not computers, although an upgrade kit with BASIC was released. The Jupiter Ace WAS a computer, but it had the language FORTH on ROM. This is a language which is all about writing new commands using the existing commands, so it can be greatly extended, which I think is good. Recently, I've got sidetracked with my Atari BASIC programming by the book "Atari 130XE Machine Language for the Absolute Beginner". I typed in the ALPA Assembler listed in the book, but after debugging the whole program, I still can't assemble anything! I hope to find out what's going wrong soon, as well as doing some more Atari BASIC programming. I find it hard to believe that anyone went straight into Assembly Language programming, but I've got a theory about this. It depends on what were your best and worst subjects at school. What were yours? Of course, it was good when BASIC was no longer supplied on ROM, but on disk instead, because people were no longer tied to a particular dialect or version of BASIC. I started to program in AmigaBASIC, but I feel I didn't get enough encouragement from the media. I don't remember seeing many AmigaBASIC listings to type in, or articles about learning AmigaBASIC. My most recent attempts at programming in Atari BASIC have been to display instructions for and main screens for games, but these programs don't actually do anything yet, except display the next screen when the user presses the joystick fire button. One game idea is called "Salt Empires", based on a one player game, or not even that, I made up as a little boy. It required me to use my imagination a lot. I scattered salt on a small, black, round coffee table, then gathered some of it together to threaten the still scattered salt. This meant that at least one other empire would be formed to defend against the first empire, but eventually one of the empires would be bigger than the other, or all the others, then at the end, all the grains of salt would be united in a single empire. I think it's more interesting than shooting as many things as fast as possible, anyway. I was very surprised that, although I used the GRAPHICS 8 (320 X 192 2 colour) mode and plotted all the pixels in the same colour, they actually turned out to be in 4 or 5 different colours, most of them not white. Can anyone explain this? Another game I'm working on takes place in a city and the user controls a superhero type character enforcing the law as they see fit, instead of the Police sick, twisted version of the law where some laws don't matter, but others must be rigorously enforced. The Police are out to get your character, who they think is a "dangerous vigilante" and you have to wipe out all the crimes you specialise in, before they can catch you.

Edited August 13, 2012 by SIO99

[bfollett]

Here is a page that describes artifacting... The reason you see extra colors in the hi res modes: http://www.atarimania.com/faq-atari-400-800-xl-xe-what-is-artifacting_18.html There were plenty of games that used that to their advantage. If you want to try some basic programs that did a little bit more than display menu screen, here is one source: http://www.atarimagazines.com/ This site has lots of type in programs that were featured in Atari magazines. I suppose many still used some machine language code for speed critical parts of the code. You can download the files so no need to type them in.

[flashjazzcat]

The blog is inadvertently rather well named, at least.

[pixelmischief]

I went over to your blog and read a few of the articles. I like the layout and I think you did some pretty good writing. Maybe you should apply your very obvious talents to CELEBRATING Atari, instead of bashing...well...anything!

[protek]

I went through the blog and I and IMHO, the problem with C64 Basic isn't that you don't have dedicated commands for graphics and sound, as pokeing these in isn't that hard. The real problem with the C64 Basic is that you practically can't write very complicated games with plain Basic as you can't access the hardware interrupts from it. Only way to access those is to do it in machine code or assembly. Without interrupts, i.e. reading the joystick will cause a pause in a moving sprite.

[flashjazzcat]

Thank heavens for Atari BASIC's comprehensive list of interrupt handling statements!

[TMR]

I also read some other comments praising the Commodore 64, claiming it helped people get into programming.

 

Yes, claims made by people it helped get into programming because that's precisely what it did. There are over 20,000 games in Gamebase 64 and thosands of demos and utilities at the CSDb, who did you think wrote that lot?! Just because you personally weren't able to learn from Commodore BASIC doesn't mean that nobody else did.

 

I don't know what you mean by saying that the early Atari 8 bits didn't have BASIC. AFAIK, when the Atari 400 and 800 first came out in 1979 they were supplied with BASIC on a cartridge.

 

Yes, and your argument against Simon's BASIC was that it came on cartridge so either the Atari one doesn't count (and the Atari 8-bits aren't computers by your reckoning) or you've made yourself look foolish.

 

The Jupiter Ace WAS a computer, but it had the language FORTH on ROM.

 

So a computer doesn't necessarily need a good implementation of BASIC and what you're saying falls further apart; even if you start trying to twist the already tortured "logic" around at this point to include other high level languages, there were 8-bit computers that shipped with nothing ROM-based at all.

 

This is a language which is all about writing new commands using the existing commands, so it can be greatly extended, which I think is good.

 

We know you're pretty much guessing about these things so are you basing that opinion on any kind of actual programming experience with Forth?

 

Recently, I've got sidetracked with my Atari BASIC programming by the book "Atari 130XE Machine Language for the Absolute Beginner". I typed in the ALPA Assembler listed in the book, but after debugging the whole program, I still can't assemble anything!

 

Try using a real assembler.

 

I find it hard to believe that anyone went straight into Assembly Language programming, but I've got a theory about this. It depends on what were your best and worst subjects at school. What were yours?

 

You can't test your "theory" with me because i'm one of the thousands of people who learnt programming with Commodore BASIC V2 and moved on to machine code later. But people did learn assembly language without picking up BASIC first all the time, i know people personally who've done it over the years including Mclaneinc.

 

Just for fun though, best subject was history and worst was French - what were you expecting?

 

...

 

TL;DR.

[sack-c0s]

The most important thing is what someone feels by their own system. I know people who are damned excitede about their East-German car Trabant or their Russian LADA...... It is the chemistry between user and console.

 

I grew up with the Skoda Estelle and would quite like to drive one for a bit of a laugh actually...

[thegamezmaster]

Tried to learn basic on Commodore and Atari Computers but was like trying to play chess with a checkers mentality. It was beyond me. So I ended up just playing commercial games on them.

[TMR]

I went over to your blog and read a few of the articles. I like the layout and I think you did some pretty good writing. Maybe you should apply your very obvious talents to CELEBRATING Atari, instead of bashing...well...anything!

 

If he was putting that much effort into writing Atari games...

[flashjazzcat]

Business acumen as well as deathless prose on display... there's information Apple needs to look at in one of the comments if the struggling company wants to make its hardware more popular.