LOCS: Language developed at age 9 in Z80 machine code (1988)
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Re: LOCS: Language developed at age 9 in Z80 machine code (1988)
#2Neat, I built one language when I was 12 or so, it was a ripoff of basic (and it was written in basic).
Parsing was hard, so commands were a single letter. The cool thing about it was that it supported windows and multi tasking (but no synchronization primitives).
It was rough and incomplete, but I always remember the moment I realized I could run one statement of each task to run more than one at the same time. I can still picture the first time I run two programs side by side in two windows.
Literature and information was scarce when I was a kid, so it was a true discovery (all my programming resources were basically the C64 manual). I could never get my hands on any lower level programming resources, many things I just found out by literally POKE-ing around the memory of the C64.
I still have a tape with the last version of it lying around somewhere, I called it LSP (Lenguaje Simplificado de Programación), not sure if it's still readable though.
Re: LOCS: Language developed at age 9 in Z80 machine code (1988)
#3I had a VIC20 and at 12 wrote an Asteroids clone - that’s how I realized what a game loop was. And also that I didn’t know how to write one in BASIC.
But drawing those sprites on graph paper was hours of fun.
Re: LOCS: Language developed at age 9 in Z80 machine code (1988)
#4This is what I mean when I say that the older generation knew their computers. Middle schoolers writing assembly was not extraordinary.
Re: LOCS: Language developed at age 9 in Z80 machine code (1988)
#5This is what I mean when I say that the older generation knew their computers. Middle schoolers writing assembly was not extraordinary.
Yes it was, though.
Re: LOCS: Language developed at age 9 in Z80 machine code (1988)
#6[flagged]
Re: LOCS: Language developed at age 9 in Z80 machine code (1988)
#7This is what I mean when I say that the older generation knew their computers. Middle schoolers writing assembly was not extraordinary.
Yes it was, though.
As a middle schooler blindly copypasting assembly to make the mouse work in my Turbo Pascal programs, can confirm that this was extremely rare in the mid 90’s. Just having a computer at home was rare enough, the fact that you were into programming? There were like 5 of us seriously into it in the whole school of about 1000 pupils.
Even now there are only about 27 million professional software engineers[1] in the world. That’s 0.3% of the population. Looking at USA alone, 1.4% of the population are software engineers. We are extremely rare.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demograph...
Re: LOCS: Language developed at age 9 in Z80 machine code (1988)
#8This is what I mean when I say that the older generation knew their computers. Middle schoolers writing assembly was not extraordinary.
Yes it was, though.
Uncommon, but not extraordinary. I did it. Only one or two others at my school were familiar with asm, but I came from a very small town (the single integrated middle and high school was 800 pupils)
Re: LOCS: Language developed at age 9 in Z80 machine code (1988)
#9"but it wasn't so good for teaching programming because no home computer came with Logo, it was expensive"
1. My 8bit Amstrad CPC464 (1984) with disc drive came with LOGO [0]
2. I've used LOGO to teach programming (and C, Python, Java) and LOGO is easily the best (Scratch).
[0] https://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/System_Disk#CPC464_.28DDI-1...
Re: LOCS: Language developed at age 9 in Z80 machine code (1988)
#10Neat, I built one language when I was 12 or so, it was a ripoff of basic (and it was written in basic). Parsing was hard, so commands were a single letter. The cool thing about it was that it supported windows and multi tasking (but no synchronization primitives). It was rough and incomplete, but I always remember the moment I realized I could run one statement of each task to run more than one at the same time. I ca…
> (all my programming resources were basically the C64 manual)
Real talk though, those Commodore manuals were AWESOME because of how comprehensive they were. Even the 1541 Disk Drive had a complete manual on how to use it's features from Basic. And if you got ahold of the Programmer's Reference, you were golden: https://archive.org/details/c64-programmer-ref