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The Apple II Source Code for the LOGO Language Found

blog.adafruit.com

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Re: The Apple II Source Code for the LOGO Language Found

#11

Post by orphean »

thought_alarm wrote: post #3

The source code is 213 KB of ASCII, assembled on 1980-8-6. A souped-up Apple II at that time would have had 64 KB of RAM, and 140 KB of storage per floppy disk. I guess you needed a PDP-11 to do any real work in those days.

Later on assemblers like Merlin and ORCA/M added the ability to assemble source files as separate objects which were then linked.

Earlier assemblers (and the later ones!) also typically supported a capability to reference another source file from another which lets a large assembly chain itself without needing to have the whole thing in memory at once.

At runtime, you could use overlays to essentially load in program modules in and out of RAM dynamically so you'd be surprised at the (relative) sophistication of some software packages back then!

Re: The Apple II Source Code for the LOGO Language Found

#13

Post by sumoboy »

coldcode wrote: post #5

6502 assembly is so nice, I wrote some apps in the early 80's. You can learn the language in a few minutes. But all sorts of interesting clever things were possible.

I don't recall learning it in a "few minutes" say compared to Apple Basic, but it was definitely a great learning experience.

Re: The Apple II Source Code for the LOGO Language Found

#15

Post by macjohnmcc »

thought_alarm wrote: post #3

The source code is 213 KB of ASCII, assembled on 1980-8-6. A souped-up Apple II at that time would have had 64 KB of RAM, and 140 KB of storage per floppy disk. I guess you needed a PDP-11 to do any real work in those days.

I watched an interview with a Sinclair Spectrum programmer who used a TRS-80 computer and a custom hardware interface to send code assembled in the TRS-80 directly into the Spectrum's memory to allow for quicker development and use of floppy and hard disks on the TRS-80.

Re: The Apple II Source Code for the LOGO Language Found

#16

Post by octorian »

MicahKV wrote: post #7

Wow, what a blast from the past. My introduction to programming was on an old Apple II with BASIC and LOGO. I was in the 6th grade at the time, and never did anything as complex as looping to draw spirals - I basically used LOGO like an etch-a-sketch.

I started on the Apple II with BASIC. Then, some computer teacher convinced my parents that I should be learning LOGO instead and gave me lessons. After spending some time on it, I found it sufficiently frustrating that I actually gave up and went back to BASIC.

I don't recall exactly that it was that I didn't like about LOGO back then. One thing probably was that I needed to first boot up into a "special environment" to run my code, and thus it didn't feel like I was writing a real program for the machine. Another might have been the emphasis on moving a turtle around, versus actually doing anything with text.

Re: The Apple II Source Code for the LOGO Language Found

#18

Post by ur-whale »

Oh, it is so nice to see this again.

This is the tool that introduced me to the notions of recursion and fractals when I was 11.

I remember spending two weeks cobbling up a Logo program to draw the dragon curve on my Apple IIe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_curve

Re: The Apple II Source Code for the LOGO Language Found

#19

Post by jake-low »

WJW wrote: post #17

I remember my very first program, from the book "Programmeren voor kinderen" ("Programming for kids" in Dutch) repeat 4 forward 100 right 90 It drew a square on the screen and my mind was blown. I haven't recovered yet :)

If you don't mind me asking, did the book do any explaining of why the magic computer words were in a foreign language (English)? Had you been exposed to much English already when you picked up the book?

As a native English speaker I feel fairly ignorant of how programming is taught in other (human) languages. I recall a quote [1] by Eric S. Raymond commenting (or perhaps speculating?) that Linus commented his kernel code in English because it never occurred to him to do otherwise. But I'm curious for your perspective as I imagine the experience of a child learning from a book is quite different from that of an adult who is immersed in the English-dominated "hacker culture" on the internet.

[1]: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills4

Re: The Apple II Source Code for the LOGO Language Found

#20

Post by dekhn »

I remember (quite clearly) the day I was introduced to the Apple II+ and shown Logo. It was way over my (middle school) head- functions? recursion? so I went with BASIC and later Machine Language, but the ideas stuck and percolated and later helped me understand Emacs LISP and functional programming. I thought the integration with the turtle so that you could make graphics really was slick (compared to direct explicit mode in BASIC).

I'd love to get my hands on an actual physical Logo turtle.

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