Re: Apple Computers-collector's items?

[dalloff@freenet.columbus.oh.us (Dave Althoff)]

Hokay, time for me to jump in here briefly...

I started working with computers in 1981.  I learned BASIC on a TRS-80
Model I.  Before long, I moved over to the Apple ][+ and became an
Applesoft Ace.  My family bought a ][e; I took a couple of classes in
PASCAL on the Apple (LOUSY language for an 8-bit Apple!) and gave up in
disgust.  I learned to program in 6502.  For the longest time, the only
applications I used were PFS:Write, PFS:File, AppleWorks, and ASCII
Express.  Until I learned AppleWriter, which prompted me to abandon both
AppleWorks and PFS:Write.

When the Lisa came out, I had a chance to play with it early on (it took
me five minutes before I managed to make the mouse fall apart in my hand).
When the Macintosh was introduced, I learned its GUI fairly quickly.  I
got a job at a radio station as a technician, where I was expected to know
how to keep the computers alive, so I learned MS-DOS.  And when we had a
need for special programming, I called on QBASIC, which is just close
enough to Applesoft ][ for me to use it.  At the University where I work,
I deal with problems under AmigaDOS, MS-DOS, and Mac-OS 7.5...in fact, I
hide out in the television studio, but I think I am the only person on
campus who really has a working knowledge of doing things under MacOS. 
And now I'm starting to use REXX under both OS/2 and under AmigaDOS. 
Plus, I've actually written a couple of scripts in HyperTalk.

So what does this mean?  I'm still an Applesoft programmer at heart.  If I
want to get something done quickly, that's what I use.  But the main point
is that I learned how computers do things.  It's not the internal
I/O<->CPU<->Memory details; I couldn't care less about that.  But through
extensive programming in BASIC (I like the fact that Apple called it
"Applesoft" instead, since BASIC is a misnomer...it's too powerful to call
it a "beginner's" language.  Maybe we should call it ASIC instead.) I know
about all of those things that programs have to do...I/O calls, counters,
loops, branches, etc...and it all transfers no matter what platform or
what language you are working on.  So I can switch from BASIC to 6502 to
HyperTalk to SuperPILOT to WPL to REXX to AREXX to ".BAT" or whatever. 
And as the computers advance, it becomes an incremental step.

Put it this way...if you can create a spreadsheet on VisiCalc, you can do
it faster and easier on AppleWorks.  And if you move over to LisaCalc,
you'll be amazed, but you'll know what you're doing.  I've not used Excel,
but I'm willing to bet that I could put together an Excel spreadsheet or a
dbase record structure or a Word Perfect document based on what I know
from VisiCalc, PFS:File, and AppleWriter.

On the other hand, I wonder if the same could be said for someone who
learned on Excel, DBase, and Word Perfect trying to use VisiCalc,
PFS:File, and AppleWriter.  

Obsolescence isn't as bad as you might think.

--Dave Althoff, ][.
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