re-found magazines

From: Charles P. Hobbs <transit_at_primenet.com>
Date: Mon May 12 22:02:03 1997

On Mon, 12 May 1997, Sam Ismail wrote:

> On Mon, 12 May 1997, Charles P. Hobbs wrote:
>
> > > The main thing that struck me is the diversity of computer systems that
> > > were available in the early 80s. Contrast that with what you got today
> > > (Wintel crap/Macincrap). That diveristy is what we are discovering
> > > today.
> >
> > The other side of the coin, though, is the difficulty of converting
> > programs
> > to make them work on your computer. I remember spending a lot of time
> > in high school, trying to convert TRS-80 and Apple II programs to run on
> > my TI-99/4A. Fun? Yes. Would I want to do this under deadline pressure?
> > Probably not.
>
> But wouldn't you agree that all the frustration you went through back
> then is what enables you to write good code today?

Perhaps, although I do very little coding nowadays (oh, a few C programs
on
Unix, and some Perl/CGI, and I'm learning C on the Mac)

> The diversity back
> then was at least conducive to creativity. You were always challenged.
> If you got bored, there was always some other system out there to conquer.

One other thing about the old days that I don't miss so much is the
fanatical commitment to one system.

Of course, nowadays, you can get just about any of these old systems for
around $10, but back in the old days, when these systems (yes, even a VIC)
cost $300 and up, the Apple vs TRS80 vs Commodore vs. IBM vs Mac vs Amiga
vs Atari discussions approached the intensity of jihads!

And of course, some systems were much better provided for than others. If
you had an Apple II, a TRS-80, or (later on) a Commodore 64, you were
pretty much all taken care of in terms of software. Users of Lesser-known
systems like the TRS-80 Color Computer, or the TI-99/4, had to fight to
find any
decent software outside of what Radio Shack/TI wanted to provide for
them. (The CoCo had it a little better, since its architecture was
somewha better known)

By the late 80's and early 90's, it was pretty much IBM, IBM, IBM and
its clones all over the place, with Mac in second place and the Amiga
in distant third (This was in the US--I understand that things were
quite different in Europe and the rest of the world)


> These days its trying to figure out what IRQ and base address you should
> use, and some of that is handled for you anyway. What fun is that?

There's always assembler language programming (almost a sine qua non for
emulator development :-)
>
Received on Mon May 12 1997 - 22:02:03 BST