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Digital Deli, 1984 book by early PC hackers and enthusiasts

atariarchives.org

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Re: Digital Deli, 1984 book by early PC hackers and enthusiasts

#11

Post by lutusp »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #4
lutusp wrote: post #2

I wrote one of the chapters in Digital Deli ( https://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programm... ), in a computing world that bears little resemblance to the present. Am I exaggerating? You decide. I wrote a popular program for the Apple II (Apple Writer). International best-seller, translated into five languages. It was a word processor that included a macro language. Are you sitting down? Hand-coded in…

I love HN for this kind of serendipity. I used Apple Writer in on Apple II machines in my public library in the 80s. I can't say I remember a ton about it but it's definitely a name I remember. I remember using AppleWorks on the machines at school, but I liked Apple Writer better and lamented that I wasn't permitted to use it at school (because the teacher said she wasn't familiar with it and couldn't help me if I ha…

About Apple Works ... Apple paid me massive royalties for Apple Writer but got tired of that arrangement pretty quickly. So they made an outright-sale deal with the Apple Works guy.

Then the Apple Works guy refused to answer after-release bug reports unless he got ... wait for it ... royalties.

Long time ago. Still pretty funny.

Re: Digital Deli, 1984 book by early PC hackers and enthusiasts

#12

Post by lutusp »

qingcharles wrote: post #5
lutusp wrote: post #2

I wrote one of the chapters in Digital Deli ( https://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programm... ), in a computing world that bears little resemblance to the present. Am I exaggerating? You decide. I wrote a popular program for the Apple II (Apple Writer). International best-seller, translated into five languages. It was a word processor that included a macro language. Are you sitting down? Hand-coded in…

A fantastic read. > There's a lot of talk these days about how the individual cottage programmer is on the way out. It feels like we're actually returning to the age of the individual cottage programmer. LLMs are really a force-multiplier allowing a single dev to do what was once the work of a whole team.

> It feels like we're actually returning to the age of the individual cottage programmer.

True. I've recently been vibe-coding a number of projects that I wouldn't tackle if I had to ... what's the current expression ... "hand-code" them.

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