Re: Apple III question (couldn't find a 3 group to ask)

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Dowe G. Keller replied:

>mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon) writes:
>
>> bathswife wrote:
>> 
>> <insightful comments snipped>
>> 
>> >Is there still a market for computers that can be 'talked to'?  Those
>> >of us still using Apple II's that pine away for the 'good old days'
>> >are probably using some form of Linux or something comparable but  are
>> >limited by what can be done with the hardware aren't they? I don't
>> >know...I'm actually new to the Apple II having just bought one used
>> >but prefer using it to write on for some inexplicable reason.
>> >  Why can't there be a personal computer using faster processors and
>> >newer technology that can be 'talked to'....modified and with the
>> >options that 'simplification' for the masses took away?  Is that
>> >impossible?  I don't know.  How many people would be interested in a
>> >machine like that and willing to pay for it (I 'm sure it would cost
>> >more than the average pc made today)?
>> 
>> I was just talking with a friend this evening about the Apple II, and
>> found that it was his first exposure to computing years ago.
>> 
>> We reminisced about the joy of working with a computer that,
>> as soon as you turned it on, responded with a BASIC prompt
>> beckoning to be programmed.  What a far cry this is from the
>> computers of today!
>
>I was reading this and realized that that is exactly what my computer does.
>The UNIX shell isn't much (if any) less powerful as a programming language
>than integer basic.  When my machine boots up, The prompt is waiting there
>for me just like in my IIe.  I can even set the prompt to a ">" :-).

Command lines are cool, but they directly invite shell programming,
not the construction of a program to, say, do a Monte Carlo
simulation with graphical output, as Applesoft does.

>> To program one of today's machines (as they are intended to
>> be programmed) requires a couple of bookshelves worth of
>> documentation, several hundred dollars worth of Integrated
>> Development Environment, and more trouble than 99.999%
>> of users are willing to take.
>
>IDE's are overblown and encourage large cumbersome programs.  There
>are lots of people programming in perl, java, python etc. from a
>simple text editor.

Those are all examples of "scripting languages" I referred to.

But I agree that the examples you cite are powerful enough
to support interesting interactive programs.

>> The fact is that the "barrier to entry" for programming today's
>> machines is so high that few venture more than a scripting
>> or macro language, if that.
>
>If by scripting language you mean an interactive interpreter, thats
>been beeing done since Dartmouth introduced BASIC in 195?.  And as for
>high "barriers to entry" you mean price, then all I have to say is
>gcc, there's a version for (as far as I can tell) all the UNIX clones,
>and 95% of the other OSes out there on nearly every machine built.

Price is, for many, not the biggest barrier.  Complexity is the
barrier.

Of course, a good part of the problem is that expectations for
a program have changed in the last 20 years!  Now, doing an
"INPUT" and "PRINT"ing the results seems primitive compared
to getting input from a dialog box.  And learning to control a GUI
is much more complicated than solving the problem you started
out to solve.  ;-)

I regularly sit down at the Apple II with an idea and create a
useful and enlightening program in 45 minutes to an hour.  And
it is easy enough and incrementally rewarding enough that I
continue to come back for more.  I have not found this experience
on modern machines apart from much more limited spreadsheet
programs.

>> "Getting to the bottom" of a modern machine and its detailed
>> behavior is extremely difficult--modern processors alone are
>> so complex in their behavior that even their designers are at
>> a loss to work out the detailed execution of, say, a half-dozen
>> instructions, without the use of a timing simulator!
>
>Here you have a valid point, one of the things that I really like
>about the Apple II is its simplicity, modern processors have complex
>timing issues, and 80*86 machines are just plain grungy.
>
>> With the 6502, timing was as simple as addition.  And the
>> Apple II, as I'm fond of saying, was the last computer for
>> which all the information necessary to completely understand
>> it weighed less than the computer itself.  ;-)
>> 
>> So...to address your original question:  "Is there still a market
>> for computers that can be 'talked to'?"  I don't know.  I'd like to
>> think so, but I think the jury's out.
>
>The question is if the size of that market is large enough. IMHO,
>There are just as many computer hobyists today as there were in the
>early eighties when I got my first micro.  Its just that the hoards of
>users make us seem miniscule.

But the machines to do the job are _already_ available, and for
a pittance.  They are the Apple II machines (and a few others).
There are plenty of them to satisfy the needs of the hobbyist
market (judging from the fairly constant, low prices on eBay),
so why do another one?

And, of course, there is an application/tool base of thousands
of programs, which no new platform could possibly hope to
achieve for several years.

>> Of course, one can easily run an emulator or other synthetic
>> environment on a modern computer which will present a simple,
>> easy-to-program, understandable interface--but 1) that isn't really
>> quite the same as seeing all the chips and wires without any
>> "magic", and 2) such environments already exist and are not the
>> basis of any "mass movement" as far as I can tell--mostly just
>> some enthusiasts reliving the joys of their youth.
>
>I think one of the problems is that the systems most users are exposed
>to don't make hacking easy.  But this is mostly the fault of OSes that
>obscure the interesting stuff from the user.

If you mean hardware hacking, I agree.  But any emulator provides
countless opportunities for software hacking on the emulated
platform.  The purpose of the emulated environment is to transform
the WinXP environment into a, say, ProDOS environment.  ;-)

>> Perhaps the real issue is that computers have become passe.
>> 
>> Everyone has a couple, they are necessary to life and business,
>> like shoes, and are about as intrinsically interesting as shoes.
>> Young people aren't excited by the prospect of being a cog in
>> the giant software machine of a "major label", and regard a
>> "major software innovation" as a tempest in a teapot.
>> 
>> True to the dreams of the inventors of the personal computer,
>> it has become ubiquitous--more conspicuous by its absence
>> from a room than by its presence.  It is now a commodity.
>> It is boring, humdrum--taken for granted.
>> 
>> Q:  "How would you like to learn to _program_ a computer!"
>> A:  "Whatever..."
>
>You can't lead kids to computing, they have to catch it.  You
>mentioned macros, and this may be a good trend (except for in mail
>reading software), to get people interested.
>
>I try to introduce young people to programming when I can, the trick
>is to put them in an enviroment where they can explore.  I'll never
>forget that moment, on a Timex Sinclair 2000 (not a thousanth of an
>Apple ][), that I realized that That little machine would do anything
>I wanted (Later I learned about memory and how 2K wasn't enough).  You
>get a kid hooked on that high and he/she'll never give it up.

Perhaps we are in greater agreement on this point than you imagine.

What you call "put(ting) them in an enviroment where they can explore"
is what I would call "leading them to computing".  The point is that
most computing experiences they have do not encourage or even
permit exploration or discovery of programming.

The barrier is very low when your first program is:

100 ?"Hello, world!"

and it can be immediately followed up with:

110 goto 100

Wow--a program!  ;-)

Of course, the situation is not unique to computers.

The modern radio is not easily tinkered with, nor is the
modern automobile.  If we were systematically trying to
keep kids from figuring out how things work and playing
with their own ideas, we could hardly have done better.  ;-(

-michael

Check out parallel computing for 8-bit Apples on my
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/