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From a comment in the source > ORIGINALLY WRITTEN ON THE PDP-10 FROM FEBRUARY 9 TO APRIL 9 1975 Wow! I did not realize that it was written so quickly. Two months that literally changed the PC landscape forever.
From a comment in the source > ORIGINALLY WRITTEN ON THE PDP-10 FROM FEBRUARY 9 TO APRIL 9 1975 Wow! I did not realize that it was written so quickly. Two months that literally changed the PC landscape forever.
For one person working 8 hours a day, that's roughly one line of assembly language per minute. If you know assembly language, and you know the algorithms you're implementing, that doesn't seem especially fast.
(with stack overflow blocked)
How does all this assemble into a 60k binary?!
Also, wasn't it true that Steve Wozniak was able to bootstrap the entire Apple I BASIC in hexadecimal from his own memory? How can that be? I'm reeling.
The funny thing about this announcement is that a week ago I just found my old QBASIC textbook that I learned how to program with back in 1998. QBASIC was my very first programming language; I was a nine year old kid who loved computers and would read anything computer-related that was available, including my mom's textbooks (she was returning to college at the time and took some courses on computing and applications…
Somehow I ended up trying QBASIC a couple of years later and programming suddenly became a lot easier and fun. I especially loved that you could easily switch to graphics mode and just start drawing pixels and lines to the screen, it was like the perfect blank canvas to try out different ideas for a curious young mind.
The funny thing about this announcement is that a week ago I just found my old QBASIC textbook that I learned how to program with back in 1998. QBASIC was my very first programming language; I was a nine year old kid who loved computers and would read anything computer-related that was available, including my mom's textbooks (she was returning to college at the time and took some courses on computing and applications…
I wrote my first line of code on a game console without persistent storage. Coding is everything that makes computer a computer. Now, some kids in college have an impression that coding is less relevant for a CS career.
Good times. The best was when there was a typo or a bug or it just didn’t work. Esp. the machine code that was just pages of hex.
It's really enjoyable to look at the source. These days one I feel it's quite rare to see assembly code not as an output from a tool like IDA Pro. If I remember correctly, the size of a compiled GWBASIC.EXE file was about 80 kB. What feels weird though is seeing all the files on GitHub last modified "38 years ago," which by the way, also includes the file CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md.
You think there weren't codes of conduct back in 1983? ;)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For one person working 8 hours a day, that's roughly one line of assembly language per minute. If you know assembly language, and you know the algorithms you're implementing, that doesn't seem especially fast.
You find me someone who can code assembly for 8 hours a day continuously for two months and I'll hire them on the spot.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Similar story, learned to program using GWBASIC and loved figuring out how to recreate Conway's Game of Life, fern fractals, etc on my own. Though 25 years later can't pass FAANG whiteboard interviews with just an EE degree!
> Though 25 years later can't pass FAANG whiteboard interviews with just an EE degree! Nor could I. But I think that's ok. I remember trying to make a game using a BASIC interpreter on Sinclair ZX80 Soviet clone and failing. Yet, here we are on HN taking about tech and leading lives in tech, whatever that means for us. I don't know where I'm going with this, but I'm glad for that experience and where it got me. And,…