I need to make this

[Spud]

Show of hands please. Why didn't more people learn assembler?
Was it
1. their satisfaction with basic
2. no literature provided with the computer
3. no IDE provided with the computer
4. no possibility of sensible debugging, instead
5. a machine which hangs on the slightest error?

I don't opt for Nr. 1.

It was most likely:

6. Too busy playing Jet Set effing Willy.

[R-Tape]

Show of hands please. Why didn't more people learn assembler?
Was it

2. no literature provided with the computer
3. no IDE provided with the computer

BITD my experience of assmebler* and machine code were just mystical lists that no normal human could possibly understand. But getting beyond that, I guess 2 & 3 would have applied most if I was a bit older and willing to try. With good reading material and an easy way to get the code into the Spectrum (thank god for the SPIN assmebler!) - it's surprisingly do-able.

6. Too busy playing Jet Set effing Willy.

Heh. And this^ of course.

...and this:

7. Too busy playing Microbot.

*I keep typing that by mistake, I'm going to stop correcting it.

[Ralf]

INC simply is replacing the 0 that is in the rightmost position with 1.
There most be a 0, 'cus otherwise there'd be a 1. And there cant' be a 1 because ... oh sh*t**.
Ok, this can actually happen. Than we change the 1 to a 0, and see, if we can a execute our cunning plan on the 0 on the left hand side. WHAT? Yeah ... yeah ... that actually could be 1, but look, just how probable ... ok ... ok we set it to 0 and we set the 0 left to this one to ... Oh come on now! You are just doing this on purpose. I don't have to respond to these obscene demands. Oh every gracious Great Programmer help me, as I'm tortured by evil spirited BASICERS. Yeah, that's a pleonasm. So what? ... Back to the the facts now please, for we of the Great Assembly feel only abhorrence towards pompous talk. Well, you just do as described with the 0 left to that and - ha! I foresaw this chicanery - if there should be a 1 you go one like this What? Still question? What if all the bits are 1s? Your' done. And that's that.

Man, I don't know what you're smoking but I want it too

[ZXDunny]

Or you could explain that PLOT x,y will do the same job.

To give the job description the child already has to understand Cartesian coordinates.
They are not even the target audience.

And honestly, how often did you see a child ask you how to draw a line between points on the screen instead of - say - asking how a video game works. And if the question is about lines, will you hear decimal numbers or will they point to the screen?

They'll point to the screen. My son did. I taught him about DRAW, which is fine. He already knows about cartesian coordinates, as they've done graphs in their maths lessons. Strangely enough, they haven't been taught binary, register usage, esoteric display layouts or bit-patterns. As I said, he's 7 years old.

He is drawing circles with PLOT and trig, not because he understands SIN/COS (and try teaching him how to do that in asm) but because I gave him the formula for drawing a circle.

I started teaching him to code because he wanted to know how games are made. And without getting the BASICs down first, there's no way on earth he will understand assembler.

[1bvl109]

6. Too busy playing Jet Set effing Willy.

Heh. And this^ of course.

So we have reached common ground, At long last.

*I keep typing that by mistake, I'm going to stop correcting it.

Everyone has personal quirks. Mine is, that I don't have them.

Some people even have the quirk of believing I have the quirk of not being able to perceive the other few dozens or so quirks, I presumably have. People are strange. But I must be very important if so many people have a quirk which relates especially to me.

[1bvl109]

I taught him about DRAW, which is fine.

It is.

Strangely enough, they haven't been taught binary, register usage, esoteric display layouts or bit-patterns.

Go easy on them. They are only teachers. They wasted their lives at some university or such instead of experiencing the one true religion in the basement of their parents houses.

Drawing graphs in school you say. Say did they also teach the very important distinction between the graph of the function, i.e. the set of ordered (x,y) value pairs where x is from X and y from Y so that f:x -> y holds and the function itself which is an association f:x -> y. And what exactly is a function? It is a relation, so that for a given x there is at most one y. And what is a relation? It is a subset of XxY. And what exactly is XxY, what are the elements of it? Well they are ordered value pairs (x,y) where x is from X and y from Y.

... or bit-patterns.

That's the beauty. There is nothing to learn. You see the bits, you see the pattern.

He is drawing circles with PLOT and trig, not because he understands SIN/COS (and try teaching him how to do that in asm) but because I gave him the formula for drawing a circle.

If this is heading somewhere I don't know where to.

.. there's no way on earth he will understand assembler.

Chubby hen it is.

I suspect that there must have been people who learned assembler from scratch, to give us high level languages.

[1bvl109]

Man, I don't know what you're smoking but I want it too

Sorry, couldn't find a suitable dead drop.

Unfortunately my description of doing precise loops without knowing how to count featuring the Zermelo-Fraenkel-Set-Rap got banned by the Monty-Phyton-Funniest-Joke-Law.

[Morkin]

This is "my" version of Can Can:
https://gofile.io/?c=XdiZmK
I don't have any experience of programming.

It looks like you know some BASIC, and your music is Beepola generated.

One issue is that the .asm code that Beepola generates plays the whole tune. Though you could modify it to get it to just play one note at a time.

That way you could PRINT something after each note. If it's BASIC it'd probably have to be quite efficient PRINTing - if it's too slow it might start to mess up the music a bit.

Try something like this:

Code: Select all

10 RESTORE
20 GO SUB 1000
30 RANDOMIZE USR 40000		; start Beepola playing
35 GO SUB 100			; PRINT something
40 RANDOMIZE USR 40028		; play a single note
50 GO SUB 100			; PRINT something
60 GO TO 40

100 REM ** PUT YOUR PRINT ROUTINE HERE **
200 RETURN


1000 FOR z=40031 TO 40039	; amend the generated Beepola code
1010 POKE z,0			; to allow playing one note at a time
1020 NEXT z			; rather than the whole tune
1030 RETURN			;

[Cosmium]

I have to agree to disagree with AndyC - Sinclair BASIC served me very well for years and I loved it. Yes, it was slow but being able to produce programs with similar graphics to the games (with character movement and general slowness etc) was amazing.

I loved it so much, I remade the BASIC for PCs. I still love it.

I have to agree also. It was Sinclair BASIC that made making those early games so achievable and accessible - first on the ZX81 and then the Spectrum - even if they ran a bit slowly and had simple character based movement!

But most of the Spectrum features were quite easily accessible from the 'instant on' BASIC and that allowed you to recreate much of the spirit of games from the arcade. Something that wasn't always the case for the computers of the era.

It was that easing in with the accessibility of Sinclair BASIC that then led me on, bit by bit, to the world of machine code.

[ZXDunny]

Drawing graphs in school you say. Say did they also teach the very important distinction between the graph of the function

What, for a 7 year old? Why would they?

[ASH-II]

Code: Select all

10 RESTORE 130
20 LET x=0: LET b=0: LET n=7
30 BORDER 7: PAPER 0: INK 6: BRIGHT 1: CLS 
40 READ t$: PRINT AT 21,0;
50 FOR f=0 TO LEN t$
60 POKE 23692,255
70 PRINT t$(f+1);
80 IF b=2 THEN LET b=0: READ n
90 IF N=255 THEN LET N=0: READ T$: RESTORE 180: GO TO 50
100 BEEP .1,n
110 LET b=b+1
120 NEXT f
130 DATA "THIS IS THE FIRST LINE OF TEXT  I HAVE DISSABLED THE SCROLL WITHA POKE AND PLAYING THE TUNE WITHA SIMPLE BEEP COMMAND***********THANK YOU. . . . . . . . . . . ....... ADD TEXT HERE AS YOU WISH..."
140 DATA 14,14,16,14,12,12,16,17,21,24,21,21,19,19,19
150 DATA 21,12,12,21,19,12,12,16,16,14,16,14,16,14,16,14
160 DATA 7,14,14,16,14,12,12,16,17,21,24,21,21,19,19,19
170 DATA 21,12,12,21,19,12,12,16,16,14,16,14,12,12,12,12,0
180 DATA 0,0,0,0,4,2,0,7,7,7,7,7,9,4,5,2,2,2,2,2,5,4,2,0
190 DATA 12,11,9,7,5,4,2,255,"*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.THANK YOU*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*."

[Eugene C.]

Thank you !!!!