drawing a chess board

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Nomad
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Re: drawing a chess board

Post by Nomad »

MrPixel wrote: Wed Apr 04, 2018 10:21 pm is there a way to copy and paste?

in fuse
It might seem pointless, but you need to actually type the listings for this information to be retained. In an ideal situation you would write your own notes long hand re-contextualizing the information to let you retain the information. This is a basic study skill.

You can't just copy and paste information and expect to retain it in any kind of meaningful way.

Think about how type-in magazines evolved. They started off being very simple basic listings but fast forward a few years and its pages of hex/basic hybrids. :lol: Do you think that the readers would have progressed to that level with passively copying and pasting the information?
No they grew through active learning.

When you think about it - all these tasks that people do. They in themselves in most cases are of very little value except what they can teach you. So when you choose to make your own applications/games you can apply the information that you learned.

So if you short change yourself in this stage - it impacts everything that comes after.

It's my theory that this is why the understanding that the majority of programmers has gone down instead of up.

Lol I get the feeling you are thinking that not copy pasting everything is some sort of flat earth theory. Look its not just me, google Leerteorie/Learning theory if you want to look it up. :lol:

A bunch of different theories exist but for the most part the modern ones agree on the basics (that active learning is better than passive).

I don't know how badly education has declined in the last 20 odd years but I can't believe that people are just copy/pasting from wikipedia/W3 school to graduate.
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PeterJ
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Re: drawing a chess board

Post by PeterJ »

Fully agree with [mention]Nomad[/mention]. When I was younger and learnt from type-ins in magazines I would spend hours typing in listings in front of the TV. Often their would be bugs you would need to fix, or waiting until the next month's issue for the resolution.

There are utilities as others have said like bas2tap which make things easier by converting a text file to a .tap file.
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RMartins
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Re: drawing a chess board

Post by RMartins »

Do read the ZX Spectrum BASIC Manual.
It's a very good resource, unlike what you get nowadays.

Technical books, were usually very well written, in the old days.

I still keep some Hard-Copies of DOS and GW-BASIC manuals/books, just because of there quality content.
Ralf
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Re: drawing a chess board

Post by Ralf »

Often their would be bugs you would need to fix
Yes, I have a feeling they were often unable to print a single listing without some bugs.

And you could introduce a lot of bugs yourself by being not careful enough and typing in something different from the listing.

And if the bugs were in assembler, your computer usually hanged or crashed and resetted and all your work was lost.

Good (or rather actually bad :lol: ) old days.
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Alessandro
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Re: drawing a chess board

Post by Alessandro »

Why people still bother with the old and limited bas2tap when there is that wonderful ZX-Editor tool... Use it and stick to it, that's what I say 8-)
Nomad
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Re: drawing a chess board

Post by Nomad »

Type-ins/listings In a really bizarre way they were unintentionally brilliant teaching tools. They are like an intellectual puzzle to the reader to get it to work if they have the skills. Deeply frustrating. I think it had to happen at a time when there were less distractions or things to take up a young persons time. My memories of the 80s were it was an incredibly boring time to be a child unless you were born into privilege. :lol: Stuff like listings magazines, game books they all filled a void of boredom. Not sure if they even have an appeal today.

By having errors in the listing because of transcription errors from the printers, errors in design or errors introduced by the consumer.

The act of analysis, the expermentation and correction/finding a solution to the problem. What that taught built so many skills.

:lol: But for every listing I fixed, there were two that I couldn't and I had to leave in frustration not sure if it was the listing that was at fault, my copying of the listing or just a bizarre conception problem in the program itself. You would usually type in a listing that looked interesting or did something that was beyond the current ability level. There were times I typed in stuff I had no idea how it worked. :lol:

Not a perfect method, but for every failure there was a success that made the consumer better. And some could argue that even in the failures it taught a kind of mental resilience that promoted Stoicism. :lol:
MrPixel
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Re: drawing a chess board

Post by MrPixel »

the problem is the speed of emulators. the zx81 for instance, is where copy paste is appealing
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RMartins
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Re: drawing a chess board

Post by RMartins »

Nomad wrote: Thu Apr 05, 2018 11:15 am ...
Deeply frustrating. I think it had to happen at a time when there were less distractions or things to take up a young persons time. My memories of the 80s were it was an incredibly boring time to be a child unless you were born into privilege. :lol: Stuff like listings magazines, game books they all filled a void of boredom. Not sure if they even have an appeal today.
...
I never had this feeling of boredom.
We played a lot on the street with friends or riding a bike or whatever.
If we did not have anything to do we would invent crazy stuff, like catching small lizards, make some ramps to jump with our bikes, race with ball bearing go karts we built , use or build a slingshot to go bird hunting, play soccer on the street or any other crazy ideas we would come up with.

I wish I had today the free time I had back then ;)

Edit:
Home made ball bearing go karts ( a.k.a. "carrinhos de esferas" in Portuguese).
https://www.google.pt/search?q=carrinho ... 33&bih=295
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