Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!fernwood!portal!cup.portal.com!dbell
From: dbell@cup.portal.com (David J Bell)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: MEL - A *Real* Programmer
Message-ID: <35522@cup.portal.com>
Date: 3 Nov 90 05:04:42 GMT
References: <7380.271c3129@ccvax.ucd.ie>
  <1990Oct23.235720.16178@nas.nasa.gov> <6089@nisca.ircc.ohio-state.edu>
  <1990Nov1.175742.5383@tc.fluke.COM> <784@VAX1.CC.UAKRON.EDU>
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Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 36

>:                               But lay off Mel.  He was an artist of a kind
>:that is becomming rare these days; someone who knew the difference between
>:what he was taught and what was necessary; someone who appreciated the beauty
>:in attempting to obtain adequate performance against impossible constraints.

Jeremy Starcher adds:

>Hear Hear!!!!

>I know [of] people who have written thier own version of languages that take
>less than 3K.  (I have the PILOT source around here that takes just about
>1K.  The only other langaguage that was avalible on the machine was
>6502 machine language.  Not assembler.  Hexadecimal words entered one
>at a time.)

I well remember that! When I started programming *on a micro*, it was 
a similar situation. 4k of RAM in a SOL (8080), cassette tape for I/O,
a 1K video page, monochrome ASCII only. 4K and later, 8K BASIC, PILOT,
and a Tiny BASIC that took well under 1K to start with, patched in Hex
to add feature after feature. We started with the bare bones, and ended
up with a primitive floating-point package, and file I/O. The final
version was still under 2K...

Then there was adding functions to the BIOS, once I had the luxury
of a decent assembler! It was totally amazing how much could be
crammed into the SAME SIZE EPROM, as everybody kept feeding in ideas...
Re-used code, dynamically modifying the RAM copy of ROM code in real
time, code used as constants, code/constants used as indirect addresses,
all the nightmare tricks necessary in truly limited-resource systems.

I don't think I've ever had quite the fun or feeling of accomplishment 
since, no matter how many megabytes an application requires.

Here's to the bad old days!

Dave