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Re: 21st century programming for the Apple II



heuser.marcus@freenet.de wrote:
On Aug 8, 10:01 pm, David Schmenk <dschm...@YUCH.gmail.com> wrote:
When was the last new programming language environment brought to the
Apple II?

I have no idea - until now.  Today, VM02, the Java-ish VM for the Apple
II arrives at Alpha.  Things are looking good and its time for others to
start playing with it.

And they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks! (the
old dog being the A2 platform, of course)

Major achievement indeed! How long did you work on it?
I mean more than 400 K sourcecode of this caliber with
few comments in a short(?) time suggest not only extreme
proficiency but also retirement!
;-)


Getting in-the-groove of 6502 assembly takes time, but once there you can program about as fast as anything. The idea is to take a few key constructs and be consistent. If you look at the source, you'll see how register usage and assignment are very similar throughout. Sort of like being a human compiler. Think high level, type low level.

And of course you need the time retirement provides. I have a notebook of ideas and code that stretches back a few years when I first started contemplating an object-oriented, multi-threaded language for the Apple II. In a previous life I implemented floating point in hardware, so that part went surprisingly fast. This summer my son spent some time with his mom, so I took advantage of a few quiet weeks to complete. A geek vacation of sorts :-) (I'm sure Michael can attest with the development of AppleCrate II).

Dave...

bye
Marcus