Spot the Typo

[Not Steve]

Ok, I have been reading 80's programming stuff online lately, and here is something:

 

https://www.atariarchives.org/pmgraphics/chapter3.php

 

I keep getting the feeling that someone typed this book from memory and didn't really test the code in it. Because it seems that there are lots of missing parenthesis and even missing words.

 

on that page, line 30 is missing a closing ) in one place then referenced again with the ). And in the memory reservation line, the initial DIM statement, it is written twice with a D$ and once with an A$ ... but I can't figure out what that means, or is referencing, and neither can the compiler.

 

Ok, I feel better. I have been given more up to date docs to read, I just had to vent so I can move on.

 

I think my neighbors heard me saying HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO LEARN WHEN THE EXAMPLES WON'T EVEN RUN?? after like the 5th program I typed in was so buggy I couldn't get it to work, even enough to figure out the rest.

 

Wait - I wanted to recreate my 1985 experience with programming - I think this is it lol! It's just like the back of Compute!

 

ok thanks for listening.

[+Stephen]

My worst story is, from late 1982. Got a 400 with B-Key upgrade in August 82. Came with BASIC, 410, and State&Capitals, so I believe that was "The Learner". Some weeks later, my dad & I hunt & peck type in Caves of Ice from Compute!. Painfully loading and saving to tape on the wonderfully reliable 410. We keep getting error 17 (garbage error). We have no printer. Dad has a friend come over (I recall dad saying he "did computers", as in his full time job. Back in 82, wonder who that dude was coding for? Anyhow. I remember these 2 neighbours (coder and his wife, I remember their names, Jeff and Lucy) coming over. He and Dad spent what seemed like hours listing the program, pausing screen, writing in the magazine. We finally get it to run, and ... ERROR 2 (yeah, out of RAM). Damn game needed 24kB to run. Week or two later, we get the computer back with 48kB.

 

Thanks for waking up some really fond memories.

[Not Steve]

lol, my mom and I typed that into my 600xl and saved it to the newer model tape. I tweaked that program to just play that random boogie woogie and flash text that would call my sister a butthead, then leave it running. Lol, caves of ice.

[Alfred]

Yeah, that's familiar. I was learning 6502 assembler from that Mark Chasin book and there's a typo in one of the example programs showing how to use CIO. It took me a long time to figure out that it was the book and not me.

[Gibstov]

I think a lot of the problems with these old magazines/books is that they aren't using computers to print out the listings.

 

What I mean, is back in this time, they would send these listings of to a typesetter, who would then set the type for the magazine to print out the program listings. Typesetters were not programmers, so they probably had no idea what they were printing. (That's my guess anyway.)

[flashjazzcat]

Were these books not OCR'd or manually converted to HTML? I imagine there's a lot of scope for errors to creep in at that point.

[_The Doctor__]

while modern error creation vectors exist, I can attest many of the physical real life magazines and books are riddled with various nonsensical mistakes and infuriating transpositions. Some of which may well have made one feel they were dyslexic. So add the new errors on top of the old when you get an online version and you can get yourself a hot mess. For a person typing it in making their own mistakes and not knowing the way it should look as they are learning this becomes a maddening exercise. It became a tedious needle hunt without a magnet to pull it out from the pile. This is where all the magazine checksum schemes came about, in an effort to quell the madness. This at least helped to find mistakes on entry, but did not solve programming mistakes or typesetting mistakes that sometimes happened so the checker values themselves. At some point they started using screen prints to eliminate this. And then we were left with programming or origination errors that would be corrected in later issues of magazines or leaflets and inserts tucked into the books (which fell out or were lost)

[phaeron]

Yup, OCR errors are definitely a problem but don't assume the original book was correct. Here's the one that made me rage as a kid:

 

https://archive.org/details/Commodore_16_Owners_Guide_1984_Commodore/page/n71

 

 

Every single PRINT statement in the book was like that. Type it in exactly like it says, and you can guess what happens.

 

 

[_The Doctor__]

it clearly made an indelible mark on you as you new exactly what and where it was to post in the thread It is a part of you forever!

[sack-c0s]

I would bitch and moan about type-ins, but here's me personal relationship with the damn things:

 

1) tried typing them in

2) They didn't work.

3) saw correction 1-2 months later, but that was an age as a kid

4) gave up, and figured out enough to just write what the description said the game did, using the screenshot as guidance

5) Ended up on the less popular platforms for a while (Acorn Archimedes anyone?), so more of the same....

6) ended up porting games for a living

 

so I pretty much built a career out of typos in type-ins I suppose

Edited January 30, 2019 by sack-c0s