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Re: Complete Basic?

Michael Kent wrote:

Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:



Michael Kent wrote:
"Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote in message 5PqdnVXUWsYfRnvbnZ2dnUVZ_rDinZ2d@comcast.com">news:5PqdnVXUWsYfRnvbnZ2dnUVZ_rDinZ2d@comcast.com... 


[Quotes trimmed extensively to cut down on length.]



As I've observed before, a GUI means that almost any program you want
to write will be 10% your functionality and 90% GUI wrangling.  That's
a heck of a tax!




Your numbers seem to be off.  With GSoft BASIC (and apparently Complete
Pascal from what I read of Chye Thean's site) you can write a desktop
program in just a few dozen lines of code.  That's the magic of the
toolbox.




Actually, what you are writing is a full-screen graphics app, with
no pull-down menus or widgets.  A GUI app would be one that conforms
to Apples human interface guidelines.  They are always event loop
driven.



No, the program would be a full desktop application.  I don't know about
Complete Pascal, but in GSoft BASIC a desktop program can be as short as
a few dozen lines of code.


I was unaware of that--it must have an extensive runtime environment.


The program Frame found in the Desktop.Samples folder in GSoft: The Free
Version (available from Syndicomm) is only 49 lines long not counting
comments.  It sets up a full GS/OS desktop in 640-mode graphics, complete
with a menubar, pull-down menus, NDAs, wallpaper, screensaver, and menubar
clock.  Everything is functional.  The wallpaper is my own, the menubar
clock (Chronos II) starts automatically when I run Frame, the screensaver
(Ultrablank) is still active, as are all the NDAs.  I can listen to MODs
with Sonobox, edit a text file with Hermes, view pictures with Show Me,
and even play a nice game of Solitaire, all from Frame and its 49 lines
of code.

I'm not a programmer anymore, but I suspect I could write some very useful
desktop programs in a hundred or two lines of code, maybe less.


Outstanding--I'm glad to find that the IIgs was so well supported.


The IIgs is every bit as accessible as the other slot-based II's.  Even
more so.  (And much more so than the IIc and IIc+.)




From a hardware point of view, there's no argument regarding the
"closed systems" of the //c series.




But the primary component of accessibility is easy programmability--
even with PEEKs and POKEs from BASIC--that can put the machine through
all its paces, without layers of overlaying complexity.



If you're going to allow PEEKs and POKEs from BASIC, then all of the
GS-unique functionality is available right out of the box as well.
When I first got my IIgs, the first program I typed in was an Applesoft
program that displayed some of the 4096 IIgs colors on the SHR screen.
The second was a program that played a short tune on the Ensoniq using
sine-wave tones, again in Applesoft.  It wasn't exactly a MOD, but it was
way more than my II+ could do.


Well, "out of the box" may be a little strong, since you had to buy
documentation that wasn't even published (IIRC) when the IIgs shipped
to find out what the PEEKs and POKEs were.

Up through at least the ][+, the "box" had all that info in it.


Tens of thousands of Apple II users understood their machines down
to the gnats eyebrow, but I would guess than only a few hundred ever
acquired the same level of understanding of the much more complex IIgs.



I would venture that that's due to necessity more than anything.  In the
early days of the II there wasn't a lot of high-quality pre-written
software.  You often had to "roll your own" to get something useful done.
By the time the IIgs was released there were already 20,000 programs
written for the Apple II that the IIgs could run.


I guess necessity really *is* the mother of invention.  ;-)


The IIgs user could get quite a lot done without getting down to the
gnat's eyebrow, whereas the early Apple II user couldn't.  They were
both great hobby machines, though, which allowed their users to go down
to whatever level they were interested in.


I do think you point about available application software being
a major part of the transition from hobbyist machine to "user" machine
is a good one.

I suppose that microcontrollers are the closest thing available today
to a "hobbyist machine", though they are certainly not in a form that
would allow one to do some programming and then let others use it--the
very circumstance that made the Apple II a huge success.

Perhaps I should distinguish between a software hobbyists and hardware-
software hobbyists.  The hardware-software hobbyist must get potential
users of his efforts to build or buy something as well as run his
software, while the software hobbyist needs only distribution to have
a "user base".

As soon as a potential user must buy something and add it to their
machine to run a piece of software, another barrier to wide adoption
of the software is created.  The absence of such a barrier is the
great benefit of a large installed base of compatible systems.


I do think that the IIgs was intended to replace the //e, which the
//c could never do.  And, ironically, the IIgs failed to replace the
//e as well, and the //e was produced long after the discontinuance
of the IIgs.



If you call ten months "long after", then yeah.  :-)


"Long" was a stretch, but it certainly demonstrates that the IIgs was
*not* seen by the market as a //e replacement.


The IIgs has Applesoft.  And GSoft BASIC.




But as noted here several times recently, its Applesoft is for its
//e genes, and GS BASIC was not provided with the machine, nor was
it capable of imlementing the "native GUI" applications of the IIgs.



GSoft BASIC can easily implement native GUI applications on the IIgs.


Again, good to hear--and a surprise to me.


It's interesting to consider it as a tradeoff between its 8-bit hobby-
programmable nature and its 16-bit "IBM PC competitor" nature.  I must
admit that I don't often think of it as a "contender" in the world in
which it was introduced.



It was the second-most selling machine in 1988, according to a PC maga-
zine I don't remember the name of.  That year the IBM PS/2 Model 30 sold
350,000 units.  The Apple IIgs came in a very close second at 340,000
units.  The editors were almost beside themselves trying to explain
how an Apple II could still be selling so many units as to almost take
the sales crown away from a PC at that late date.  :-)


It would be very interesting to see a breakdown by market segment.
I'm guessing a lot of K-12 installations (which was, I think, the
actual "marketing target" for the IIgs).

The prospect of a machine as easy to use and as well-supported (by
software) as the //e, but with better graphics and sound, would be
enough to earn a warm welcome.


I suspect that then, as now, the "task" needs of most users are met
by a simple integrated "Office-like" application.  Appleworks is, I
think, the preeminent program in the Apple II universe for helping
people get their work done.



I used AppleWorks to write several college papers after I upgraded to a
IIgs from my II+.  I was poor then and had to upgrade piecemeal, so this
was after I got the CPU but before I got the GS monitor, 3.5" disk drive,
or 1-Meg RAM card.  It was (and is) a very nice program.


I agree--Appleworks was the "killer app" of its generation.  If
Apple had ported it to the IBM PC, it could have given Lotus a real
run for its money!


It is interesting, then, that there never was an "Appleworks" for
the IIgs that was as bulletproof and trustworthy as plain old
Appleworks--the same one I use on my //e (with a meg of RAM).



Ahhh, there was AppleWork GS, which is what I used to write my papers
once I got the aforementioned peripherals.  It offered much more font,
style, and desktop-publishing-style features than classic AppleWorks.
Plus, I could use Apple's LaserWriter driver to print to a Postscript
file that I could upload to the school's laser printer.  So my papers
actually looked better than my dormmates' papers written on their PCs,
Macs, and Amigas.


I'm glad it worked so well for you.  I have never really used it, but
have heard lots of reports of crashes--and, of course, it was never
really enhanced like its 8-bit older brother.

My impression is that its market penetration was much smaller than
that of Appleworks, so its support was correspondingly less.


It would seem that Apple never figured out what the market opportunity
was for the IIgs.



The Apple II division did a pretty good job with the resources they were
given from the corporate office.  Unfortunately, it wasn't much.  I'm
still surprised at how many IIgs's were sold considering its advertising
budget hovered near zero.  It was truly a customer-driven demand.


And most of that demand was leveraged from pre-existing customers of
the Apple II line.


I most enjoy resource-constrained programming--"running light without
overbyte"--and the //e (and earlier) seem a good match to my aspirations
and abilities.  My programming on the //e is best compared to a digital
sketchbook, to which it is perfectly suited.



NADAnet is a good example of that.  But for resource-constrained program-
ming, I still say Wolfenstein 3-D GS takes top prize.


Yes, everything is relative.  ;-)


So for me, the IIgs is "too much" to be a fun challenge, and "too
little" to be a useful tool.



So just up your goals a little and try writing a full-up MS-DOS FST or
building a new VGA card for the IIgs.  ;-)


;-)

Unfortunately, neither of those appeals to me as something interesting
to learn more about...


Again, there's no disputing taste...  ;-)



True.  And really, that's what this conversation is about.  I don't think
either of us is going to change the other's mind.  But I find the conver-
sation enlightening anyway.


Likewise!


You know, it strikes me that the original Apple II was the consumer box
of its day compared to the "hobbyist" computers of the time that arrived
in the mail as a bag of parts.  I can imagine that two other Mikes having
nearly the same conversation we're having in 1977 about the Apple II:

Mike1: You bought an Apple II?  That's a consumer machine, not a hobbyist
machine.  It comes in a box.  You don't even get to put it together, you
just plug it in.

Mike2: But I can do all kinds of fun things with it!

Mike1: Like what?  They video circuitry is built-in -- you just plug in
a monitor.  You don't get to design and etch your own video circuitry.
Same with the keyboard encoder.  They keyboard's built-in too.  How
are you going to learn how your computer works down to the gnat's eyebrow
without building your own keyboard encoder and video circuits?

Mike2: I can write my own programs.

Mike1: In BASIC?  That has "Beginner" written all over it.  Real pro-
grammers program by flipping switches and pulsing data directly onto the
bus.

etc.  :-)


I really like this little dialog!

You are, of course, correct--I wax romantic about the platform that
popped up in front of me exactly when I wanted and needed it, and that
both inspired and enabled me to exercise my imagination--in no small
part by not immediately "snowing" me with lots of irrelevant complexity.

I conclude that the IIgs would not have met this need for me, but I
agree that it could have been just the thing for someone else.

I expect, though, that I will always regard the 1977-1985 timeframe
as the "golden age" of hobby computing, where more people had their
consciousness raised by computers as a medium of self-expression than
at any time before or since.

Since then we have well and truly moved into the "user age", in which
computers are just a commodity that is actually *understood* only by
geeks.  ;-(  This is particularly disturbing since the digital computing
metaphor is so powerfully applicable to so many disciplines today, yet
most people grow up with little or no exposure to the actual mechanisms
of computation.


I don't want to seem like I'm giving the "silent treatment" (though
that might be a welcome relief  ;-), but I'm about to leave town for
a couple of weeks to marry off a daughter ;-), so I may be a little
"hit or miss" over the next few days...



There aren't many things in life more important than the Apple II, but
I think you found one.  :-)  I hope the wedding went well, and that the
marriage does too.


It was fantastic!  For four days prior to the wedding, which was held
outside in the middle of a vineyard, we had a forecast of thunderstorms.
But we decided to press on, and the storms passed on both sides, giving
us not-too-hot weather, mild breezes, and majestic cloudscapes!

The whole entourage basked in the inspiring glow of the happy couple
and the setting sun of the equinox.

I love it when a plan comes together.  ;-)

-michael

NadaPong: Network game demo for Apple II computers!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."