new zx spectrum

mart

Phil_aka_Pip said:

... I guess I was commenting about the people who wrote spaghetti BASIC and couldn't design a software solution to a tricky problem without using umpteen flags each stored in a 32 bit variable and a shedload of GOTOs.

It's easy to imagine those people going on to write horrendous code. But then again ... and this is an honest question ... do people ever start writing elegant code right from the get go, or is it something you generally evolve into doing? 

I'm pretty sure I was doing the spaghetti thing back in the '80s, but I like to think I've moved on since then. I certainly have a clearer understanding now of what elegant means and the reasons for doing it.

scrumhalf

Leaving the coding thing to one side for the moment, what the Spectrum did in huge numbers was to make people not afraid of computers.

FX_Munkee

My experiences over many, far, far too many, years:-
If someone has programmed in C or ADA then they're usually fine.
If someone has only programmed in C++ then they need to be educated as to where that memory actually comes from and how linked lists (or containers as they call them) really work
If someone has only programmed in Assembler they're good but potentially very, very dangerous and almost certainly on the Autistic spectrum.
If someone has only programmed in Visual Basic they're a good candidate for HR or "recruitment constulting".

Phil_aka_Pip

wis @FX_Munkee that's a pretty good assessment. I was brought up on various assemblers, but as a student had to dabble in Fortran and Cobol. I was never any good at the latter. One other really good thing we learned was a study of Algol-68 together with a How Compilers Work course. Algol really is the grand daddy of all block structured languages. Professionally I did assembler for several years then started mixing it with a little Coral 66 then C. I still do C, but occasionally also do PIC assembler.

jonnyburgo

How much patience did we have as kids? took about 8 minutes to load a game and right at the end it used to crash and go to the blank white screen with "sinclair research 1982" at the bottom, rewind the tape and try again..........kids these days don't know they're born I tell yer.

Phil_aka_Pip

FX_Munkee said:

 "recruitment constulting".

I'm not sure if that was deliberate, but it IS very apt. Stultus = latin for stupid

FX_Munkee

Phil_aka_Pip said:

FX_Munkee said:

 "recruitment constulting".

I'm not sure if that was deliberate, but it IS very apt. Stultus = latin for stupid

Not intentional but that's never stopped me from claiming the credit for things before...

thumpingrug

FX_Munkee said:

My experiences over many, far, far too many, years:-
If someone has programmed in C or ADA then they're usually fine.
If someone has only programmed in C++ then they need to be educated as to where that memory actually comes from and how linked lists (or containers as they call them) really work
If someone has only programmed in Assembler they're good but potentially very, very dangerous and almost certainly on the Autistic spectrum.
If someone has only programmed in Visual Basic they're a good candidate for HR or "recruitment constulting".

I have an O level in BBC basic.  where does that put me?

ps.  i have never found a practical use for it when playing Call of Duty.

FX_Munkee

thumpingrug said:

FX_Munkee said:

My experiences over many, far, far too many, years:-
If someone has programmed in C or ADA then they're usually fine.
If someone has only programmed in C++ then they need to be educated as to where that memory actually comes from and how linked lists (or containers as they call them) really work
If someone has only programmed in Assembler they're good but potentially very, very dangerous and almost certainly on the Autistic spectrum.
If someone has only programmed in Visual Basic they're a good candidate for HR or "recruitment constulting".

I have an O level in BBC basic.  where does that put me?

ps.  i have never found a practical use for it when playing Call of Duty.

Hmmmm probably something in the civil service, at a decent grade obviously, it is BBC Basic after all.
Your overqualified to advise the government on technology though, sorry if that disappoints.

thermionic

I did machine code in my O-level - we had to fill in these forms in pencil for the lines of code and the teacher would collect them up at the end of the lesson and post them to the university. Somebody would type them in, generating a punched card for each line, feed them in to the mainframe and print the output. We'd get the printout back the following week. Technology eh? By the second year we had one Research Machines 380Z for the whole school.

Now BBC Micros, most of the experiments I did for my Physics PhD were controlled with one of those, fantastic machines.

ROOG

Our school started by using CESIL via punch cards in the local uni computer which we all shared with the local prison! Then Acorn Atom BASIC, BBC B, machine code on Z80 based thing, ALGOL 68 and C My brain hurts just thinking about it now, I can't bring my self to buy a Rasberry Pi

Phil_aka_Pip

@ROOG do it! Cheap as chips, great fun, proper OS, GNU C, the whole bit.

Axe_meister

I learnt BBC basic,pascal,lisp and a bit of assembler on my Acorn Electron. At uni I did fortran. After about 20 years of no programming I had to put something together to automate part of my job. So I picked Visual Basic. Boy object orientated code was a steep learning curve, having been used to actually having to do every single step by hand.

Axe_meister

The beauty of BBC basic is that it was procedural so you could avoid any goto statements

Axe_meister

Fortran was just like basic without line numbers

thermionic

CESIL - that was it! I quite fancy a Raspberry Pi actually, but I don't know what useful thing I could make of it.

Computer programming is something I took to at an early age and was reasonably good at it but never developed. Never interested me as a career, I'm more of an analogue electronics person. I just use computers as tools and I'm not that interested in how they work. Bit like cars really - I'll use one if I have to, but don't ask me to open up the bonnet and try and fix it.

ROOG

Phil_aka_Pip said:

@ROOG do it! Cheap as chips, great fun, proper OS, GNU C, the whole bit.

I need a reason, most of my coding revolved around making stuff (machines) go, I enjoy making stuff and I am torn between the Adriano, Resberry Pi and I've just read that Intel are supporting another device a "Banana Pi"!

Phil_aka_Pip

ROOG said:

Phil_aka_Pip said:

@ROOG do it! Cheap as chips, great fun, proper OS, GNU C, the whole bit.

I need a reason, most of my coding revolved around making stuff (machines) go, I enjoy making stuff and I am torn between the Adriano, Resberry Pi and I've just read that Intel are supporting another device a "Banana Pi"!

One of the R.Pi selling points is the accessibility of the Arm Processor's GPIO pins. You can connect them up to the hardware devices of your choice and then all you have to do is write the code that read/writes the pins with the control logic in the middle.

I wouldn't trust anything Intel does. Go with the Arm based product.

FX_Munkee

ROOG said:

Phil_aka_Pip said:

@ROOG do it! Cheap as chips, great fun, proper OS, GNU C, the whole bit.

I need a reason, most of my coding revolved around making stuff (machines) go, I enjoy making stuff and I am torn between the Adriano, Resberry Pi and I've just read that Intel are supporting another device a "Banana Pi"!

The Raspberry Pi was designed for just this! as Phil pointed out it has a specific set of IO pins which you connect up to whatever you want to drive (probably a relay board in your case, which you can buy off the shelf).

Axe_meister

Just thinking you could use the Pi to create a Maga programable FX switching unit.