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Old Apple ][ asm coder here. Don't despair. It's not the merits of your "product" being judged. It's just the wrong audience (mostly). Colleges now don't even

Old Apple ][ asm coder here. Don't despair. It's not the merits of your "product" being judged. It's just the wrong audience (mostly). Colleges now don't even bother to teach two's-complement. Of course today's "coders" won't get it. This is a generation that has never had to count cycles, get timing just right, or worry about running out of memory. The idea of paying $1000 for a C compiler or $500 for an assembler (in 1985 dollars!), is almost unimaginable now. I remember the excitement of a 1200 baud modem -- my initial response was "wow! The text is coming faster than I can read it!" The systems were primitive, sure, (but at the time they were amazing!) but this challenge was met with creativity. What the games lacked in photorealism they surpassed with "fun." Programming was learned by doing. And most of the folks I met were amazingly generous about sharing techniques. It was like Jazz musicians sharing a cool lick, with others. There were no books, really. Coding in assembly is like juggling. It takes a little effort to get all the balls in the air and get the rhythm going, then it goes until you hit a roadblock and it all falls down. You plan, think, and start again. >>somehow seemed exciting at the time For you, me, and thousands more, it was absolutely magical. Thank you for sharing this. I'm reading it now and found myself smiling.

WhitneyLand 8y ago
Sorry if I implied I wrote this game I did not, just knew like you would what it took to do stuff like this. Glad to see your reply though, as it somehow makes the nostalgia seem less like it was all just a dream. I think you may have had a rougher go of it being on an Apple, I mostly did Commodore stuff. Didn’t the Apple have the nightmare framebuffer layout? Something like 7-bit increments of pixels across a scanline instead of nicely aligned bytes, or some similar bit of graphics insanity?
- jackhack 8y ago
  The Apple ][ was actually a joy, but there were challenges : interleaved raster lines and quirks of hires color byte alignment (certain colors could not border other certain colors). As I understand it, commodore had better support for sprites and overlays. And commodore sound may have been easier as well, with a dedicated sound chip (am I remembering this correctly). I'm sure it was a wash, in the end, for which of us had a better experience.
WalterGR 8y ago
Colleges now don't even bother to teach two's-complement. I learned two’s-complement in college. And at the least: one’s-complement, sign-magnitude, BCD, IEEE floating point. And arithmetic on same. Which colleges are you referring to?
- scintill76 8y ago
  I've been taught two's complement in multiple undergrad classes over the last ~8 years, including last semester. I've also been exposed to one's, sign-magnitude, and BCD.
- WhitneyLand 8y ago
  The ones with programming courses. This is is just a guess, but the guess is you didn’t learn any of that in CS101. Sounds more EE related. Of course there’s often no clear dividing line between the two. Regatdless that’s assuming a full CS/EE undergrad program in either case. There are tons of people who takes courses, have careers, and all those boot camp style programs. Any way people can learn and develop skills is good, so I don’t suggest any of the above as lesser ways to learn. I’m just unaware of the concepts you mention being taught in typical 100-200 level courses that have emphasis on software programming or computer science.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

WhitneyLand 8y ago

Sorry if I implied I wrote this game I did not, just knew like you would what it took to do stuff like this. Glad to see your reply though, as it somehow makes the nostalgia seem less like it was all just a dream. I think you may have had a rougher go of it being on an Apple, I mostly did Commodore stuff. Didn’t the Apple have the nightmare framebuffer layout? Something like 7-bit increments of pixels across a scanline instead of nicely aligned bytes, or some similar bit of graphics insanity?

jackhack 8y ago
The Apple ][ was actually a joy, but there were challenges : interleaved raster lines and quirks of hires color byte alignment (certain colors could not border other certain colors). As I understand it, commodore had better support for sprites and overlays. And commodore sound may have been easier as well, with a dedicated sound chip (am I remembering this correctly). I'm sure it was a wash, in the end, for which of us had a better experience.

WalterGR 8y ago

Colleges now don't even bother to teach two's-complement. I learned two’s-complement in college. And at the least: one’s-complement, sign-magnitude, BCD, IEEE floating point. And arithmetic on same. Which colleges are you referring to?

scintill76 8y ago
I've been taught two's complement in multiple undergrad classes over the last ~8 years, including last semester. I've also been exposed to one's, sign-magnitude, and BCD.
WhitneyLand 8y ago
The ones with programming courses. This is is just a guess, but the guess is you didn’t learn any of that in CS101. Sounds more EE related. Of course there’s often no clear dividing line between the two. Regatdless that’s assuming a full CS/EE undergrad program in either case. There are tons of people who takes courses, have careers, and all those boot camp style programs. Any way people can learn and develop skills is good, so I don’t suggest any of the above as lesser ways to learn. I’m just unaware of the concepts you mention being taught in typical 100-200 level courses that have emphasis on software programming or computer science.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]