Type-in Programs

[Type-in Programs]

I'm still a very novice developer, and I would be interested in hearing what people thought of old type-in programs. I've enjoyed going through them, either on an Atari 400/800 emulator or in QBASIC on an older PC. Am I doing myself more harm than good? I've really enjoyed the challenge of going from Atari BASIC to first-gen Microsoft BASIC and vice versa, or even from them to QBASIC and even VBScript. I took a class in Python this last semester and have been practicing my Python that way -- converting them.

 

I would also like to know if anyone can provide any resources for type-in 6502 Assembly programs for the Atari or C64. From what I understand, it wasn't anywhere near as common as BASIC but it wasn't unheard of for magazines of the 8-bit era to publish like ten pages of ASM code. Laborious as it sounds I'm wondering if that wouldn't help me get a jump start in Assembly programming.

[Loading Data into Arrays]

Remember that Atari BASIC arrays start at 0, not 1.

Thank you!

 

I don't know how I could manage to forget something like that. From what I recall, isn't really old time Microsoft BASIC weird that it doesn't start at 0? I know that by QBASIC and later in Visual Basic they started them at zero.

[Loading Data into Arrays]

What is the most efficient way to load a bunch of data into arrays? The way I've usually seen in classic BASIC is something like:

 

90 DIM X(4)

100 FOR I = 1 to 4

110 READ X(I)

120 NEXT I

130 DATA 1,2,3,4

 

But the Atari 800 doesn't seem to like that...

[Getting into 8-bit Demos]

For demos, 6502 assembly on Atari is almost a must. I programmed in Atmas II, but there are many other good (or even better) assemblers for Atari 8bit.

But if you're just starting out? Like programming in general. I really don't have much beyond the fundamentals. Demos are something I want to work up to.

[Getting into 8-bit Demos]

I only recently decided I wanted to be a programmer. I know I'm going to have to be just a hobbyist for a long time, and I'm the artsy type, so I figured that 8-bit demos might not be a bad place to start. I think I have the fundamentals of BASIC down, though most of what I've done is in QBASIC and VBScript, and I'm wondering how to start. I downloaded an Atari 800 emulator the other day but am still trying to figure out how to work the disk and tape emulation.

 

I was hoping someone could answer my questions:--

1) How hard is it to dive into 6502 Assembly straight from BASIC? Am I wasting my time with old type-in programs like 101 BASIC games, etc? Alot of the books I've found seem to want you to go straight to Assembly from BASIC. Should I detour into C?

2) Is there a better emulator than this one: http://atari800.sourceforge.net/?And are there ROMs online of a different implementation of BASIC? And Assembler? Or C?