Run CP/M on your C64 using emulation
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But anyway, back in the mid 80's I wrote a ton of dBase II code (using WordStar as my editor - I think it was v2), for my employer and at the time couldn't afford a full blown PC (I owned a BBC 'B') so he let me borrow a Torch Z80 co-processor which ran a variant of CP/M called CP/N. It worked like a treat. It used the Beeb's "Tube" interface that basically turned the BBC micro into an I/O device - not unlike the Commodore effort. John, now sadly gone from our mortal coil, was an official BBC/Acorn outlet, so we got to play with a lot of toys.
I don't remember the mechanics of getting my code to and from the office CP/M PC's at the time; even under Torch CP/N I seem to remember that BBC drives weren't compatible with real CP/M/MS-DOS PC's - I think I may have transported my code through the medium of floppy disc and used a BBC Micro in the office to squirt my code to/from via serial cable and some XModem/Kermit type of affair, which was no biggy because we already moved data between DG mini's (John was also a Data General broker) to/from PC's anyway. This was all before the joy of ethernet, though we did have a bunch of machines that ran a thing called SageNet(?) which was a kind of network. It's a long time ago, my memories are fading now :)
As a final tangent, we initially had a NEC PC8800 and a NEC Advanced Personal Computer - which were lovely bits of kit for their day. We eventually moved to a bunch of PC "clones" (one made by Ferranti which was a really odd thing). I have other stories, but that'll do for now.
I have two kids now. 9 and 12. They are brighter than me. They speak swedish and English almost fluently thx to yt and since I introduced computers early in their lives they aren't scared of anything. My son started his YT channel at the age of 8. Mostly in game footage. He uses down pretty cool sw to edit his clips.
My daughter plays Roblox and act as everyone's go to for all questions revolving around that game.
Both navigate windows or Android or macos like they have inherited their knowledge from me. My kids are brighter as hell. Not one has asked me about programming.
I blame 8080. It's not accessible. Is it technically more advanced? Perhaps. But somewhere along the line we forgot about computing and children. Somewhere along the line we said it's no longer important for kids to learn programming. It's for adults.
I think blaming 8080 is extremely inappropriate here, as it is historically inaccurate. Intel 8080 is a preliminary microprocessor (and usually even not considered a x86 processor at all), it was designed in the early 70s, it was very accessible. Arguably, it was the processor that created Altair 8800, which was the ancestor of the entire lines of home computers in the 80s. The original Microsoft BASIC interpreter also targeted Intel 8080 and Altair 8800, the BASIC interpreter would later be licensed to all the other home computer manufacturers including Commodore. The derivative of the Intel 8080, Zilog Z80, was used on Sinclair and MSX computers, particularly, ZX Spectrum is the British-equivalent of Commodore 64, and MSX is the Japanese equivalent (also made and sold in some European countries) and introduced a generation to programming.
With the correct historical background in mind, you better to blame 8085, 8086 or 8088. It was those processors that established the x86 architecture and the IBM PC, leading us to desktop computing as we know it today.
Long words short, 8080 gave us home computers. 8088 gave us desktop computers.
Ok, so let's blame 8085, 8086 or 8088.
Or, we (as in I) can blame no one and instead, only realize there's no blame to manage.
Anyway, I regret that we killed 6502. I hope my kids will pick up programming anyway. I think later in life they will feel crippled if they didn't.
I agree, I think the problem was not a particular microprocessor, but a greater cultural issue. At the end of home computer era, a PC has became someone's workbench, end users are not expected to learn and write programs anymore. There were bright sides, Xerox Alto, GUI, desktop publishing, multimedia, widely-available programs, no need to repeat those stories, we all know them. Meanwhile, accessibility to programming has largely been lost in this process.
On second thought, it's not all black-and-white, some accessibility to programming still exists. On Unix-like systems, "python", "perl" is one command away, and even on Windows, JavaScript is one browser window away. If the next generation rewrites the computing history today, I wonder what tools/environment would be seen as the 21st century equivalent of 6502 and home computers. I'm sure it would have a dedicated chapter to Raspberry Pi and Arduino devboards at least.
I have nothing but love for Bill Gates' software. I programmed my vic 20 using his BASIC.
In my twenties I had no trouble picking up WINTEL + JS. But that's because I had already learnt what is computing. I had already realized what is a virtual machine and what is a "high-level language".
When I try to explain to my kids the architecture that is today's computing I don't know where to start. Now I wish there where sprites. When I was ten I grasped the concept or sprites.
There is a fair amount of cargo-culting in the following statement but I still believe in it:
If we had maintained the 8-bit architecture and even 6502 as a "gateway drug", today, we would be much better off. Talent is hard to find, in my mind, because there is no longer a C64.
Ex: VBScript, bash, python, etc.
You don't explain everything from scratch.
To that I disagree. I believe what caught my interest was the bottom-up approach that was the commodore manuals.
You're right, it's a different topic entirely. I was trying to enforce the notion of the 8-bit architecture being superior to our current to beginners because of how easy it was to comprehend, even at the hardware level.
Looking again at my kids, I'm starting to question my initial premise that everyone should learn programming. They seem to want to become either the best fruit market owner in the world or the next Zlatan.
This isn't any different than someone learning -say- Python or JS today and then moving on to C or C++. If anything, i know artists in the game industry who started learning Python to automate some stuff in their workflow and then slowly started using C# and C++ (often such people end up as "technical artists" in bigger teams, which is an in-between artists and graphics programmers, implementing high level systems for artists and designers on top of the low level systems graphics programmers provide).
I am not saying which language microcomputers should come, just that if all the microcomputer came with the same language from day one we would see a lot more people programming today.
Personally, I don't like Pascal and I know a lot of people are against BASIC. What about Comal? You need something that is easy to program the simple stuff, but has the ability to teach good programming style.
I’m not really even sure computing is less accessible now. Kids find a way.
1908s computers were way simpler, and with far fewer distractions than modern machines.
[1] http://6502.org/homebuilt [2] https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Western-Design-Center-W... [3] http://retro.hansotten.nl/lee-davison-web-site/enhanced-6502...
As it is however, developer tools are a multi-billion dollar industry, and there is very definitely a desire by all the players in this space to milk it for every penny.
Bookstores used to be packed with things like "The Big Book of Computer Games" and magazines with program listings for interesting programs you'd type in (a task my mother and I shared). A blog/video series about using PowerShell for simple games would be pretty interesting.
Windows default file editors aren't that great either. The C64's full screen editor was designed for entering and editing BASIC programs, very visually.
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/mspfe/2012/09/10/how-to-...
https://github.com/avdaredevil/SnakeMadNess
http://www.twentysidedblog.com/powershell-match-3-game/
Books:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=PowerShell&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
There are a lot of people programming in Powershell. I probably write a few lines every day.
I'm sure it's possible to write Eliza or a pong game in PowerShell. These are the kinds of things that introduced kids to programming, and without an easily accessible, included language with the mindshare that they are appropriate for entertainment purposes, less experienced but curious people will gravitate away from it.
> It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
and wrote Go-to Considered Harmful talking about BASIC.
ie. it's not a high bar we're trying to reach here.
Removing compilers from the base OS install package has been detrimental to application development, and has created a bias towards web-based tools, for the reasons you state.
These people are talking about BASIC interpreters, not native development.
And there's no dependencies for web based development unless you want them. Just open notepad and save a .html file. Done.
Everyone I've talked to who got into programming as a kid (as opposed to through school/a job) was through BASIC/Visual Basic or making web pages and adding JavaScript, or though some kind of game scripting language. For me it was HyperCard/HyperTalk.
None of them just sat down with GCC.
I'd say blame Windows. If Windows had shipped with the equivalent of GW-BASIC + extensions, we'd have a different discussion...
True, it doesn't. I've expressed this opinion in my further reply in the thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19953066, and suggested the cultural shift due to desktop computing is a better angle to view this issue.
I said "you'd better to blame Intel 8086" rhetorically just to pointed out some historical background.
Yep!
The original IBM PC/XT machines came with BASIC in ROM. If you turned it on without a DOS floppy disk in it, it booted into BASIC instead. On early IBM PC clones (that omitted BASIC to save cost), instead of saying "no boot disk found" they would error out with "No ROM BASIC"
The BIOS interrupt call 18h still exists to launch BASIC from ROM
Windows 98 shipped with Windows Scripting Host that could run .vbs scripts. I wrote a lengthy (10 page, IIRC) "introduction to programming" article for a gaming magazine years ago that only used VBScript since that was simple enough syntactically (no weird sigils) and available in every computer out of the box (i even got a couple of people thanking me for this :-P).
And of course Internet Explorer with JScript was in there since Win95 OSR.
Most 8080 and then Z80 systems of the mid-1970s used S-100 and were oriented around a separation of CPU and I/O, i.e. “Just plug a surplus terminal or teletype into a serial port to use the computer!”
It was really the 6502 and its use by the original “self-contained” Apple I that made desktop microcomputers a real product. Yes, buying an Apple I just you just got a board, but it was it intended to be put in a desktop case (and advertised that way) with a surplus keyboard and plugged into a TV, and could use audiocassette for storage. That made it way more approachable.
My 7 yr-old and I just finished our interpretation of Pong. He needed help of course, but got the basic concepts of X-Y axis, variables, calculating ball movement, etc
In 6502/6510/Z80 days, computers came with big books to tell you how to program them.
Today they come with a leaflet, or less. People are expected to go out and find out how to program their computers, rather than have that information right in front of them.
It's not about programming, it's about doing cool stuff. In 8bit era that meant programming. Even if you wanted to do grafx or sound you ended up programming the box.
Nineteenseventies Unix or Plan9 are cool, you can program on them. The iPhone is cooler, you can do movies and stuff.
Here is another vector: compared to the software you could buy back then, the things you could do in your spare time programming were more oftne than not cooler or at least comparably cool. To make a better version of any on single app that comes preinstalled with your Mac is not something you just do.
So, why should anyone be interested in learning to program in the first place?
IMO this is definitely the issue, rather than availability. If someone is too lazy to download some programming software then they're almost certainly too lazy to learn to program.
The C64 generation got a lot of software through things like 'enter it yourself magazines', which would often have programming information on the next page. It was an open invitation "hack and customize the game" which gets you onboarded to programming. You also had things like defeating crude copy protection as an incentive to learn how the machine worked.
I got into computers a little later-- my first computer was a 386SX that was obsolete almost as soon as it came out of the box. With no modem, your software selections were limited to buying whatever pig-in-a-poke the local computer store had. When the supply of new exciting software that would run on it dried up, opening up GWBASIC was my route to getting more enjoyment out of the machine.
Today, there's basically an infinite library of software easily available. The reaction to "I finished my game and want something new" won't be "let's change the delay loops so the aliens are faster" or "Can I write my own Dragon Quest clone", it's "pop open Steam/the App Store"
Feel free to ignore this if she's not interested, but you could try...
Show her the roblox development kit, and show her how to walk through the tutorials for setting up a basic obby (obstacle course), then when she's playing a game ask her fi there's something she thinks would be a cool idea, then show her how to implement just that tiny idea.
Then get her to come up with an idea for a game, and a bunch of ideas for what happens in it and how it flows, and help her create it, and then polish it up a bit, and publish it so her friends can play it.
I then typed in "dir" slowly, and this time it worked, but took about a minute to type out the few directory lines... character by character.
So, as the article suggests already, I'd really consider this to have been unusably slow even at that time. And then it suffers from the same problem as the actual Z80 CP/M cartridge, namely that the 1541 disk drive cannot read any disks that would contain CP/M stuff.
But as a curiosity, that all makes this just more interesting.
Perhaps and possibly an unfair comparison given that you're already running in an emulated C64?
I even switched to unthrottled at times, which with my setup gives about what a ~9MHz C64 would be like. The real one is about 1MHz. Even that was very slow.
But like all things here it's a hack, everyone's mileage may vary :)
Because as for performance, we are talking about emulating a fixed-frequency machine thousands of times slower. There was no "variable performance", CPU and video timings are pretty much exactly defined. This CP/M emulator was exactly as fast or slow on any stock C64[1], and, correctness assumed, any emulator worth its salt on any non-ancient PC (20 years?) will show no perceptible difference.
The "thousands of times slower" is not entirely true, since a C64 emulator has to emulate much more than just its CPU, and the emulator task gets uncontrollably preempted. But there is no way that CP/M will feel any different on the real machine, in terms of performance.
[1] The only significant exception was that NTSC machines were a tiny bit faster than PAL machines: A tad over 1MHz vs. a tad below 1MHz, to fit the respective video standard's timings.