Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site sdcc7.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!gatech!seismo!harvard!talcott!panda!genrad!decvax!ittatc!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdcc3!sdcc7!ln63fcv
From: ln63fcv@sdcc7.UUCP (Who )
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari
Subject: Re: Action! Programming
Message-ID: <177@sdcc7.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 23-Nov-85 19:10:40 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcc7.177
Posted: Sat Nov 23 19:10:40 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 26-Nov-85 20:21:55 EST
References: <633@tekigm.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: U.C. San Diego, Academic Computer Center
Lines: 43

> By judicious reading of the advertisements in Antic and A.N.A.L.O.G. magazines,
> I was able to partially answer my own questions.  Action! is a cartridge
> available from O.S.S. and presumeably is another distinct computer language.
> However, I am still griped that the original article did not make this clear
> and I am still uncertain as to why the odd spacing of the lines.  The
> indentation number of spaces does not seem to follow a logical pattern.  (I
> thought that each succeeding indentation was another 2 spaces, but then I found
> some at 4 spaces, etc.)  
> 
> (Flame on)
> What is the advantage of Action! over BASIC, Pascal or C?  Does it fit in one
> of these "families" of languages or is it a new one?  Why we have such a
> proliferation of languages anyway?  I'm still trying to learn AB,MBII and 
> BXE/BXL, familiarizing myself with C, let along trying to learn Pascal and
> Action!
> (Flame off)
> 
>                                    Thanks,
>                                    --Bill--
>  
>      ***Just an "over-the-hill apprentice hacker" (in the legal sense)***

The advantages of Action! over other languages are many. In its basic syntax
it is like a combination of c and pascal. The fact that the entire language
resides in a 16k bank switched cart(thereby looking like 8k to the computer)
gives a programmer more memory. The best feature is definitely its speed.
Action! is taylored for the 6502 enviroment and it shows. The one pass com-
piler is extremely fast and the resultant code is compact and fast.
Homepack is programmed in Action and when they ported it over to the Commodore,
they also programmed that in Action to, though I don't remember exactly what
they did. I once tried implementing an 80 column emulator in Action and was
quite impressed with the results though I realized machine language was the
only way to go for something like that that uses lots of processor time.
I also decided that any big programming tasks I ever would do in the future
would either be written in Action or machine language.

					Scott Weisman
					!sdcsvax!sdcc7!ln63fcv

(If you see any opinions in here, they are probably mine; if they aren't, then
I didn't write them. That means one of two things, nobody wrote them or
Lectroids from planet Ten wrote them. I tend to think the latter, or none
at all.)