Re: Low-level vs. High-level programming (was My First Computer)

[wildstar <wildstar128@hotmail.com>]

pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter) wrote in
news:bcuhk7$1elo$1@merope.saaf.se: 

 
> That would be quite possible!  Not on one single HTML page of course;
> you'd need a sequence of pages, and probably a very large sequence as
> well.  But here's how to do it: each page is assigned a timeout,
> after which the next page is loaded.  This is accomplished by putting
> this in the HTML header:
>  
> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1;URL=nextpage.html">
>  
> This next page will be displayed automatically, that is unless the
> viewer clocks at some link first.
>  
> So now you'll just have to create a very large number of HTML pages,
> displaying each and every possible combination of ball and paddle
> positions...... :-) ....admittedly not very practical, but still
> possible.  And with the very large disks of today's computers, disk
> space shouldn't be the limiting factor.....
>  
> You could even do it without that "refresh" HTML line: the user would
> then have to click on one of three links: move the paddle up one
> step, down one step, or don't move the paddle.....  of course such
> a HTML Pong game would lose all real-time aspects of the game, but it
> would still be a version of Pong.
>  


Aren't you missing a key element. The balls X,Y coordiniation control. 
When a ball is hits the right paddle the balls X-direction will change 
from incrementing to decrementing. If it hit the left paddle then it 
flips to incrementing. Understand. If you hit the top or bottom walls, 
the balls Y direction flips. The key to Pong was that flip variable 
controls in its programming. The ball either goes left or right and may 
go also up or down or level (rather rare). HTML doesn't have the required 
controls for this does it. This require data handling. Well handling and 
processing the data in the variable. That is something not reasonably 
possible with pure HTML.