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BBC Micro Bot – Creative Retro Coding

bbcmicrobot.com

11–18 of 18 posts

Re: BBC Micro Bot – Creative Retro Coding

#12
post #10

Very cool. Not just tweets. Loads BASIC code from a github gist as well ;) https://github.com/mattgodbolt/jsbeeb I feel like there is a renaissance afoot. These old school emulators are highly performant in the browser. And it's only a matter of time until some intrepid developer releases a full fledged app, akin to Briklin & Frankston's VisiCalc, that launches them from the creative ghetto of "retro computing" and i…

> highly performant in the browser

So you're saying they are... fast? Usable? Energy-efficient? Memory-efficient? Secure/safe? Reliable? Accurate? Entertaining?

Re: BBC Micro Bot – Creative Retro Coding

#13
post #10

Very cool. Not just tweets. Loads BASIC code from a github gist as well ;) https://github.com/mattgodbolt/jsbeeb I feel like there is a renaissance afoot. These old school emulators are highly performant in the browser. And it's only a matter of time until some intrepid developer releases a full fledged app, akin to Briklin & Frankston's VisiCalc, that launches them from the creative ghetto of "retro computing" and i…

We're already there in some respects. Octo is a Chip-8 + extensions IDE/emulator which runs as a web app. It's been used for game jams and things like that.

https://johnearnest.github.io/Octo/

Re: BBC Micro Bot – Creative Retro Coding

#14
post #10

Very cool. Not just tweets. Loads BASIC code from a github gist as well ;) https://github.com/mattgodbolt/jsbeeb I feel like there is a renaissance afoot. These old school emulators are highly performant in the browser. And it's only a matter of time until some intrepid developer releases a full fledged app, akin to Briklin & Frankston's VisiCalc, that launches them from the creative ghetto of "retro computing" and i…

> highly performant in the browser So you're saying they are... fast? Usable? Energy-efficient? Memory-efficient? Secure/safe? Reliable? Accurate? Entertaining?

yes no no yes yes yes yes yes

maybe.

Re: BBC Micro Bot – Creative Retro Coding

#15

It mentions that people are using character limiting techniques, is there some minifying tools to help achieve this or are they writing this code free hand? This seems totally incomprehensible. I suppose if I knew BBC BASIC it would likely be a different story. This is cool to see, though it all looks like dark magic to me.

When I programmed in BASIC for the Apple II there were some tools to optimize code - cramming everything possible in single lines and making variable names shorter increased speed a little and made the memory footprint of the program smaller. I'm sure the BBC had similar tools.

Re: BBC Micro Bot – Creative Retro Coding

#16
post #6

would this code work for programming microbit?

No. They are completely different computers. The Microbit doesn't have BASIC or video output. It's also vastly more powerful than the BBC Micro.

Not sure, but it could be more powerful than the Acorn Archimedes, the first ARM workstation, apart from IO capabilities.

Re: BBC Micro Bot – Creative Retro Coding

#17
post #10

Very cool. Not just tweets. Loads BASIC code from a github gist as well ;) https://github.com/mattgodbolt/jsbeeb I feel like there is a renaissance afoot. These old school emulators are highly performant in the browser. And it's only a matter of time until some intrepid developer releases a full fledged app, akin to Briklin & Frankston's VisiCalc, that launches them from the creative ghetto of "retro computing" and i…

They were already performant enough when converted into Flash and Crossbridge.
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