David Ahl's Basic Computer Games Ported to C
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Re: David Ahl's Basic Computer Games Ported to C
#2The version of that book I remember came out long before there was GW-BASIC, in fact, it came out just before there were microcomputers and you might type them into a PDP-8/10/11. I bought a copy at the DEC store in the Mall of New Hampshire circa 1980.
Some of the games used features that were not supported on most microcomputer BASICs but you could type most of them into a TRS-80 or Apple ][ without changes and you could run all of them with minor modifications. Fun times!
Re: David Ahl's Basic Computer Games Ported to C
#3Of all the books which I've thought need to be re-written as Literate Programs:
http://literateprogramming.com/
These are at the top of the list.
Re: David Ahl's Basic Computer Games Ported to C
#4The version of that book I remember came out long before there was GW-BASIC, in fact, it came out just before there were microcomputers and you might type them into a PDP-8/10/11. I bought a copy at the DEC store in the Mall of New Hampshire circa 1980. Some of the games used features that were not supported on most microcomputer BASICs but you could type most of them into a TRS-80 or Apple ][ without changes and you…
Yep. Ahl's book was first released in 1973... about 10 years before GW-BASIC.
Re: David Ahl's Basic Computer Games Ported to C
#5Jeff Atwood (of Stack Overflow) started a similar effort a few years ago albeit in multiple programming languages. It was pre AI. I am sure AI would make short order of many of the conversions with very little tokens however that was never the point.
Re: David Ahl's Basic Computer Games Ported to C
#6Anyone remember GORILLA.BAS and NIBBLES.BAS? I learnt to program by fiddling with these.
Re: David Ahl's Basic Computer Games Ported to C
#7I liked maze games with sprites and CHASE.bas (like later PAC-MAN) was a first glimpse of coded transactional survival, though you usually didn't survive long. Great terminal game as was GORILLAS.bas. For printers/fanfold paper BANNER.bas was a functional matrix font generator. They were the days of SNOOPY
calendars on various RPG/COBOL/DartmothBASIC/FortranIV/77 platforms.
This treasured Volume and the whole series https://archive.org/details/bestofcreativeco00ahld was where a lot or it came together. Fun book and a Merry Prankster vibe from the Furry Freak Bros cover art, fun times for 13 year olds!
Re: David Ahl's Basic Computer Games Ported to C
#8> "These haven't been tested, validated, debugged, or verified! ... I used Google Anti-Gravity to convert the programs from GW-BASIC to 'C'"
Doesn't seem like there's anything of interest here. It's just tossing existing code into a LLM.
Re: David Ahl's Basic Computer Games Ported to C
#9> " These haven't been tested, validated, debugged, or verified! ... I used Google Anti-Gravity to convert the programs from GW-BASIC to 'C' " Doesn't seem like there's anything of interest here. It's just tossing existing code into a LLM.
Shame really as it would have been relatively straightforward forward to build in an agent loop that actually tests the games.
Re: David Ahl's Basic Computer Games Ported to C
#10> " These haven't been tested, validated, debugged, or verified! ... I used Google Anti-Gravity to convert the programs from GW-BASIC to 'C' " Doesn't seem like there's anything of interest here. It's just tossing existing code into a LLM.
Which then gets tossed into a compiler and who knows what kind of code that thing spits out. That's why I only support projects written in assembly by real programmers.