> and an impressive amount of capability for a high school senior It's only impressive because very few (none?) high schools teach calculus at the level required for his implementation. High schoolers are quite capable of handling that kind of calculus, it's just that the high schools don't teach it.
It's not about the level of calculus knowledge for me - it's about building this from scratch with 1960's technology in 50 lines of basic and very little prior art. It's easier to be the second person to do something.
I remember playing a version of this on a TI programmable calculator back in the 80s. There was also a graphical version for an assortment of 8-bit computers where you could navigate over the lunar surface in search of a flat landing area.
Pretty cool, the offending line seems to be 08.10 [1]. I thought it was a little odd that he mentioned "impressive for a high school senior in 1969" multiple times throughout -- honestly I would imagine that growing up in the Space Age would have had a massive influence on technically minded folks, reminds me of that movie from a while back called October Sky. In the interview in TFA with the game's author he mention…
There were on the order of hundreds of high school students with computer access in the US in 1969, and even fewer with computer literacy. Growing up in the Space Age probably was inspirational, but that doesn't change the fact that computers basically didn't exist to the general public at that time. Unlike now, software development wasn't a widely known career. There wasn't a CS major in the US until 1962. I think t…
Not disagreeing with the overall point here, but there definitely were some high schools with computers and programming classes by then---my mom was teaching programming (FORTRAN) in a Chicago high school starting in 1967. I think she was one of the first dozen or so high school programming teachers in the country but I don't think she was _the_ first.
> By 1973, it had become “by far and away the single most popular computer game.” On Lunar Lander and bugs: my first programming book had a version of this game in Basic that I never got to run correctly. 25 years later I came back to it and I was surprised at the ridiculous amount of bugs it had and the convoluted logic ("440 IF GOTO 450"). I eventually rewrote it as an adult [1] but young me stood no chance. And to…
Oy vey, "no chance" is putting it lightly. A lot of this BASIC code had roots in the 1960's-70's. Back then, editors ruled the roost of print magazines where this code often showed up within, and in books of collections of code they especially ruled with an iron fist. There was little notion that source code had to be dropped in verbatim with absolutely zero changes, so editors would make "judicious" changes in the s…
> They thought they were "helping" with "obvious" typographical and editorial decisions
Sounds completely baffling. How does that thought process even work? What did they think the code meant? What changes did they make, anyway? Did they learn to not touch math equations before?
Isn't that simply because the engine provides less resistance through the clutch than brakes do? Would clutch really be spent less than brake pads for the same braking power (light press on the brakes)? FWIW, modern flywheel clutch kits are way more expensive than brake pads, so the cost is not so clear cut anyway.
You aren't really using clutch surfaces to brake though, mostly you are relying on the friction and energy used to compress your intake air and blow it out the exhaust with either minimal or no combustion/fuel input, and if at speed air resistance. And everything else added up helps too like in friction in transmission and differentials and cam and crank bearings which are hopefully minimal, and also pumping coolant…
Agreed, I mostly referred to gear changes (downshifts) used to engine brake as I described in my other comment: it's certainly less friction than on brake pads, but it's slightly more than with usual gear changes (assuming smoother rpm matching). But we are talking minute wear on either, but the price difference is significant, so I just wonder — translated to thousands of km/mi — how does it compare?
True, however that statement sort of makes the assumption that engine braking is the same ablative system as friction braking. with the same wear characteristics. I have to admit I don't know the exact wear characteristics of an IC engine in breaking operation but I don't think it is any different/more than it's normal running wear.
They are certainly in any way identical, but to engine break, you usually need to switch into a lower gear (or a couple gears lower), which means that the clutch needs to reattach while the engine is rolling at a higher rpm than the gearbox can handle in that gear. Every downshift will do another "reattachment" through the clutch. Which means that there will be some friction braking before internal engine resistance…
This isn't the case if the driver (or, car computer, nowadays) rev-matches properly. Which is a skill that all manual drivers should have IMO.
EDIT Personally, for clarification, I do think the code is impressive , but the above back-and-forth doesn't really explain why. --- That explanation still wouldn't mean support the assertion that writing the lander game is the part that's "impressive for a high school senior in 1967." If anything, all this explanation would show is that their having access to a computer is the "impressive" part.
I think both. It's likely only very impressive high school students got that much access to a computer in 1967. It reminds me of an article I read about Jai alai years ago: the sport is long, long past its peak, and one of the people interviewed said the players nowadays are some of the best ever, because only people who are really, really good and really, really love the game still try to play professionally.
I'm honored to be included in this article--I wrote Lander (1990) originally for Windows 2.x. When I applied for a job to work on Lotus Notes (back in 1989), I showed the interviewer (Tim Halvorsen) my Lander game. He said, "That's pretty cool--let's try running it on Windows 3." At first, I thought, cool! I get to see Windows 3 (which had not yet been released). But then he said, "Windows 3 runs everything in protec…
I was a huge Anacreon fan back in the day, thank you for hours and hours of entertainment!
I really appreciate that! I had a lot of fun working on it. Thank you!
If anyone is curious, in 2009, I discovered that Jim Storer was the author of the first Lunar Lander game and interviewed him about it (and also chronicled the history of the game beyond that). He later provided the source code, which was awesome. https://technologizer.com/2009/07/19/lunar-lander/index.html My favorite part is this: “After leaving high school I never thought about the game again,” says Storer. “Until…
I'm honored to be included in this article--I wrote Lander (1990) originally for Windows 2.x. When I applied for a job to work on Lotus Notes (back in 1989), I showed the interviewer (Tim Halvorsen) my Lander game. He said, "That's pretty cool--let's try running it on Windows 3." At first, I thought, cool! I get to see Windows 3 (which had not yet been released). But then he said, "Windows 3 runs everything in protec…