A lot of the comments here are depressing, showing no appreciation of computing history or engineering challenges.
David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)
111–120 of 154 posts
Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)
#112Impressive, as is the recent smaller program from a French programmer. Note, however, that both have sacrificed some rules. I believe they have both left out en passant, which is rare enough that it won't be missed most of the time. It's rare enough that if you use it against a casual player, there is a good chance they will accuse you of making it up. Castling, however, which is also omitted, is much more serious. G…
I had no idea that move even existed! Are there any other "non-standard" moves?
Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a rather ahistoric perspective at work here. I wonder if there's a generational thing. ZX81 chess was so impressive because it was impossible (at least, I'd have bet real money on it). It was the thing programmers namechecked as the kind of thing you couldn't do on these newfangled cheap home computers. You need a 'real' computer to do it. There's just no way. I was writing programs for the ZX81, and the kind…
I strongly recommend playing with this sort of machine. It's an utter education. It will, literally, change the way you think about programming. Also, the ZX81 had the best cover art for any programming manual EVER: http://uknet.com/gallery2/d/16341-2/076_Sinclair_ZX81_Manual... (Paintings by John Harris. He sells prints! http://www.alisoneldred.com/thumbsJohnHarris-Prints-3-1.html ) However, you will be frustrated w…
However, you will be frustrated with the ZX81;
Agree with that. The syntax check while you typed programs would break your concentration. Still have my first machine in it's foam box, a zx80 with ROM upgrade.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/tags/zx81
And thank you David for pointing out the John Harris prints, what a bonus.
Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did BASIC work with just 1k of memory? A scripting language interpreter is quite complex, not?
They didn't work like modern interpreters, which basically compile the program into bytecode and then interpret the bytecode. They would do simple very simple parsing of the program, mostly just tokenising it, and then more or less execute each Basic statement directly. (Sinclair Basic's wacky keyword-at-a-time entry system meant they didn't need to ship a tokeniser.) So: 10 LET I = 10 20 LET I = I + 1 30 GOTO 10 The…
Oh my god - that's we we had line numbers ! To reduce parse complexity - FFS!!!
That's amazing. Why am I so blind?
Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? Seems like a much poorer analogy to me, since it is trivial to make a movie for much less than that. It falls into the same trap as the commenter above, the 'greatness' is due to the quality of the program, rather than just making it exist at all.
The greatness of a run mile is measured by how fast it is run. The greatness of a movie is not measured by its budget, nor is the greatness of a program measured by its number of lines or memory footprint. Do you see now why your analogy is not as good?
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Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)
#116Nice! ZX81 was my first computer. I didn't even have the tape storage. I just typed some program in from a magazine and left it on for a couple of days. I even got the Lampda 16K memory expansion, which was a big external module mounted on the back :)
Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)
#117Does anyone have a link to find out more about David Horne?
Why? I hear Fastidious produces better code, faster, and without errors.
Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a rather ahistoric perspective at work here. I wonder if there's a generational thing. ZX81 chess was so impressive because it was impossible (at least, I'd have bet real money on it). It was the thing programmers namechecked as the kind of thing you couldn't do on these newfangled cheap home computers. You need a 'real' computer to do it. There's just no way. I was writing programs for the ZX81, and the kind…
I strongly recommend playing with this sort of machine. It's an utter education. It will, literally, change the way you think about programming. Also, the ZX81 had the best cover art for any programming manual EVER: http://uknet.com/gallery2/d/16341-2/076_Sinclair_ZX81_Manual... (Paintings by John Harris. He sells prints! http://www.alisoneldred.com/thumbsJohnHarris-Prints-3-1.html ) However, you will be frustrated w…
> This made typing on it horribly frustrating even when you had the keywords written on the keyboard, which you won't have with an emulator.
Sounds like a good argument for a software keyboard. Might make a good touchscreen app.
Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whoah, I'd almost completely forgotten Kuro5hin, and a lot of other people obviously have, too, as the site is a ghost town. It was a really neat pre-reddit user-generated social media site; kind of a more democratic Slashdot. I knew the founder in some capacity (I don't even remember how/why, now, or their name...maybe because I worked on Squid or because I worked in Perl), and used to advertise my old company on Ku…
My favorite Kuro5hin article is the intro to the K language: https://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/11/14/22741/791
Mine was the Casino story: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/19/181127/355
Almost 15 years ago now yet I still remember it. That was Kuro5hin at its peak.
Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't imagine being like you, so please understand how weird it must be for me to watch someone be so dedicated to being wrong.
please understand how weird it must be for me to watch someone be so dedicated to being wrong I sympathise, I'm having very much the same experience.
Problem is he's right and you are wrong.