Re: P-Source: A Guide to the Apple Pascal System

[ferdimh@gmx.de]

On 4 Dez., 07:30, Jerry <SNIPawande...@yahoSNIPo.ca> wrote:
> Perhaps one more reason the vintage boxes still have a following is their
> characteristic of being understandable.  I was trying to think of why folks
> who never used them back in the day have begun to use them, and maybe this
> is partly why.  One can actually learn how a whole vintage machine works,
> whereas the new stuff today is so mind-bogglingly complex, it would be very
> tough for anyone to master it all.
This is VERY true IMO.
I actually started using the Apple ][ about a year and a half ago,
when I was looking for a more easy-to-use computer than the Altair-
like one I had built around an 8085 before.
At that time I didn't understand it, but that slowly changed.  I soon
learned to love the simple but quite powerful design, allowing me not
only to understand what it does but HOW it does it.
And the limited performance of the machine makes nice a programming
challenge. People often call me mad when I'm  sitting somewhere with
an assembler listing trying to squeeze out a few cycles.
"Get a real computer and write C++ code" they say.
I also love the floppy disks which are much more practical IMO. You
can't clobber a diskette which is not in the drive or write protected,
but you can't eject a hard disk and there is no hardware write protect
for some files only.
And I love to do something different than other people.