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Mini Micro Fantasy Computer

miniscript.org

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Re: Mini Micro Fantasy Computer

#81

Post by layer8 »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #37
alex_x wrote: post #2

I wonder why all these easy-to-learn languages use indentation to denote scope, not something like curly braces. Isn't it actually harder to explain?

Fifth grade teacher here. Significant whitespace is a major reason I prefer Python for teaching programming. 1. I want kids to indent their code anyway; they may not realize it (or won't admit it), but this makes the code much easier for them to read. Kids will not do this unless they have to. 2. Unbalanced brackets are a major source of mistakes and confusion for my students. Relying purely on indentation resolves t…

The alternative is what the Visual Basic editor does: It indents automatically; not only when pressing return, but whenever the caret is moved to another line. This means you virtually can’t fail to notice that you missed an END IF or similar, because subsequent lines will be indented as part of the IF body.

Re: Mini Micro Fantasy Computer

#82

Post by joshu »

K0balt wrote: post #27

I’d love to see something like this but designed to run on esp32 or raspberry pi 2530. Either can handle basic HDMI and USB. Or a little Easy to think raspberry pi, but with a full Linux you won’t get that intrinsic understanding that you fully control the hardware, you never control the “bare metal” unless you are a much more advanced user. IMHO the feeling of not being in full control of your computing device is no…

i haven’t seen hdmi on esp32. any example projects?

Re: Mini Micro Fantasy Computer

#83

Post by UncleSlacky »

poyu wrote: post #70
K0balt wrote: post #27

I’d love to see something like this but designed to run on esp32 or raspberry pi 2530. Either can handle basic HDMI and USB. Or a little Easy to think raspberry pi, but with a full Linux you won’t get that intrinsic understanding that you fully control the hardware, you never control the “bare metal” unless you are a much more advanced user. IMHO the feeling of not being in full control of your computing device is no…

There's PicoMite: https://geoffg.net/picomite.html It's a BASIC interpreter/OS for the RP2040

You could just use RISC OS on the PI for BBC Basic.

Re: Mini Micro Fantasy Computer

#84

Post by UncleSlacky »

talkingtab wrote: post #50
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fifth grade teacher here. Significant whitespace is a major reason I prefer Python for teaching programming. 1. I want kids to indent their code anyway; they may not realize it (or won't admit it), but this makes the code much easier for them to read. Kids will not do this unless they have to. 2. Unbalanced brackets are a major source of mistakes and confusion for my students. Relying purely on indentation resolves t…

Interesting point. I wonder if "easier for them to read" is too simple. I took "read" as in "read words" or "read a book". But "reading" a program is not I think the same as reading words. Reading words could be this: for i = 0 i But with a more pictorial presentation, it is easier to read the program. for i = 0 i I'm just wondering - if we had a more pictograph based programming language would it be easier to unders…

Sounds like Scratch:

https://scratch.mit.edu/

Re: Mini Micro Fantasy Computer

#85

Post by AstroJetson »

cdcarter wrote: post #71
Lerc wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been thinking along those lines myself. I have been playing around with a per scanline generated display on a rp2350 outputting to a tiny LCD. I think there's potential for some pretty fancy stuff on HDMI. A 2350 with PSRAM, HDMI connector plus a MicroSD for bulk filesytem, and USB for input could be quite a fun micro PC. I would be tempted to make somthing that had a second RP2350 with its own PSRAM sitting u…

Check out the Adafruit Fruit Jam, its got pretty much everything you need.

I really like the Fruit Jam. I was also excited about Frank's OS, I'm looking to see how hard it would be to port over.

Re: Mini Micro Fantasy Computer

#86

Post by strenholme »

This looks interesting, and it’s good to have alternatives to Lua in the embedded space, although MiniScript is an awful lot like Lua on first glance (e.g. using keywords instead of brackets to end loops and conditionals).

The things which slightly rub me the wrong way:

• C++ instead of C. There’s still places where one has a pure C language project.

• cmake instead of Posix-compatible make. This makes the project depend on a non-standardized tool with only one implementation.

I’m curious what advantages MiniScript has over Lua, though—when I had the problem of “let’s use a tiny embedded language” [1], Lua5.1 made the most sense to me:

• No need to worry about a Javascript, Moonscript, Kotlin, or Go language port—people have already made all of those. [2]

• People already made libraries I needed (e.g. a “spawner” library so I could run Stockfish from my Lua script)

• It’s a standard embedded scripting language which people are more likely to already know (e.g. people making Roblox games already know Lua)

• It compiles in a pure C environment.

[1] https://samboy.github.io/MaraDNS/coLunacyDNS/

[2] It would be nice to have a Rust port of Lua

Re: Mini Micro Fantasy Computer

#87

Post by K0balt »

alexisread wrote: post #73
K0balt wrote: post #27

I’d love to see something like this but designed to run on esp32 or raspberry pi 2530. Either can handle basic HDMI and USB. Or a little Easy to think raspberry pi, but with a full Linux you won’t get that intrinsic understanding that you fully control the hardware, you never control the “bare metal” unless you are a much more advanced user. IMHO the feeling of not being in full control of your computing device is no…

There’s a wealth of retro machines out there that cater to this. A sample: https://www.olimex.com/Products/Retro-Computers/Neo6502/open... https://www.olimex.com/Products/Retro-Computers/AgonLight2/o... Or with keyboards: https://wildbitscomputing.com/ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spectrumnext/zx-spectru... Or you can go mobile: https://www.clockworkpi.com/product-page/picocalc https://andywarburton.co.uk/pos…

Something like the one dollar riscV but with an ESP32, hdmi, and an sd card slot. Pretty sure this exists somewhere. But it needs a good OS with a built in dev environment to be successful. I think I looked into if pico8 or something could work on the esp32, but it was too heavy iirc.

Re: Mini Micro Fantasy Computer

#88

Post by d--b »

utopiah wrote: post #79
d--b wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mini Micro is a neo-retro virtual computer. Learn to code, play some games, and join a friendly, enthusiastic community of hobbyists! Apparently not that friendly on HN :-D

What's unfriendly in questioning the delivery mechanism or design choices? I can think a project is cool or useful without thinking it's perfect. In fact ALL projects I encounter, including mine, are like that, imperfect. I think native is a barrier to entry so IMHO it should only be relied on when it's truly necessary. I'm just stating my opinion and others are welcomed to disagree and explain why they think so.

It's a way of expressing things. "I don't get why you do X" generally comes across as "it's not smart to do X".

Similarly, "this kind of projects" sounds derogatory, as you don't specify what kind you're talking about, which implies "the kind of projects where the author didn't think things through thoroughly".

Also "AND", why do you need to capitalize here? Cause you want to show that your idea is a much better one.

I think you know pretty well that you were criticizing the project in a way that was not very friendly, as in: if an actual friend of yours had made the project, you wouldn't have used the same wording.

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