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Describing a laptop from 1994 as “a netbook before there really was a net“ —- I don’t get.
It just looked and operated like a whole other beast then. In part and parcel it practically was a different aninmal.
This is very cool. I've often wished I could return to my roots of simply programming, and not being a server admin and dba. Am I the only who wishes we could deploy things like BASIC applications to a runtime in the cloud and be done with all these layers of abstraction and incidental complexity?
Furthermore, the UI facilities that early microcomputer BASICs provided would not be acceptable today. The graphics of the Apple II or QBASIC might be cool for a retro game, but you wouldn't want to develop a real application that way. For one thing, such applications were inaccessible to blind users with the primitive screen readers that existed back then, and today's screen readers would do no better. And a text UI with PRINT and INPUT would be accessible but even more retro. So even if you wrote an app in BASIC and deployed it to a cloud platform, you'd somehow have to use a modern platform like the Web for your UI. Unless, of course, you want to develop a retro game, and that might indeed be a fun side project.
Describing a laptop from 1994 as “a netbook before there really was a net“ —- I don’t get.
Describing a laptop from 1994 as “a netbook before there really was a net“ —- I don’t get.
Back then, they called it a subnotebook, and it was plenty useful offline. My Contura Aero (in 1994-95) had a 486 (SX I think, 25 or 33 MHz), 4 MB of RAM, and a ~170 MB hard drive. The 3.5" floppy drive was indeed connected via PCMCIA. Its primary purpose was taking notes in class and doing homework, but I also did some QBASIC and assembly programming on it.
Describing a laptop from 1994 as “a netbook before there really was a net“ —- I don’t get.
Am I having a generational moment? I have fond memories of 1994's "Internet" with a capital I It just looked and operated like a whole other beast then. In part and parcel it practically was a different aninmal.
This is amazing! I have an old copy of GW Basic. Maybe it's worth an experiment to do the same with an even older interpreter for the fun of it!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is really interesting, thank you! I've been working the last couple of days on getting an old type-in game working and I had some vague thoughts about it being fun to somehow make it playable on the web. I'd have to convert it from Microsoft BASIC to the dialect BaCon uses, but that's definitely an option. Another option I've considered is to see about getting cbmbasic[0] running using a JS terminal emulator. An…
It is my understanding that QB64 [1] compiles through C++, although I haven't tried it myself. They in theory support a superset of QBasic, and you could compile the C++ generated files using emscripten (again, in theory). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QB64
It’s slow. All those layers of abstraction exact their toll on latency, even on today’s monster systems. Reading the essay, my heart goes out to the author: he missed all those wonderful years in the ‘80’s and the early ‘90’s cracking protections, swapping, coding intros, watching demos and competing on the Commodore64, Commodore Amiga and the ATARI ST. He missed out on all the wonderful memories and all the action.…