Re: Is it too hard to program for the Apple?

[Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca>]

On Thu, 18 Feb 2010, D Finnigan wrote:

> I think (I've probably been doing too much of that lately) that maybe one of
> the reasons why there aren't loads of "exciting" projects coming out for the
> Apple is that it's too hard to program on the Apple, especially compared to
> programming on today's Mac or PC.
Did you have an Apple II when it was in its prime?

It was one of the easiest home computers to program.  It had a CPU with a 
limited set of instructions and few address modes, nice and simple. Most 
of the time you used a handful of instructions, and you could remember 
them. You could hand assemble 6502 programs, I never had an assembler in
the five years I was using 6502 computers.

But the Apple II was even better.  It had a built in mini-assembler, not
perfect but good enough.  It also had a great monitor in ROM, that was
well documented.  So people didn't have to recreate a lot of common things 
each time they wrote a program, they could use what was in the monitor.

There was nothing mysterious about the computer, it was all out there. 
And unlike later GUI based computers, you could start programming 
immediately.  Type in a few lines of code, and see how it worked, thanks
to that monitor.  You didn't need to learn all kinds of things about 
placing something on the screen before you could see how the CPU added
two numbers; you just entered that line of code and saw the results via
the monitor in ROM.  So you could start small, learning along the way,
until you had enough for a major program.

All your comments are as if someone was going to start programming
the Apple II for the first time today.  And those people aren't likely to
be out generating programs, because they don't have the decades invested 
in the computer.  They may want a retro-feel, but why would they want to 
program something that has such limited resources?  If they think the
Apple II is foreign, then that won't stop with the programming tools
available, it will be about the end programs too.

    Michael