Retro Computing

Other than hand-crafted items, there is probably little in this commercial world that is made that doesn't involve a computer program of some type.

I'm not particularly good at programming. I'm a little dense, in fact. I don’t "see" the quickest, most elegant solutions. I tend toward brute force.

And I approach it as a fun puzzle. I have done some programming that has been useful. But mostly I dabble in it for fun. It's a way to peek behind the curtain to see how this normally hidden side of the world works.

But it is a specialized field populated by mostly males with Bobby Fischer-like brains (to some degree). They have amazing talent.

However, most people make productive use of machines built by programming (or run directly by programs) and need know relatively little about the underlying software. Programmers, if they are good (and kind), will build a "user interface" that allows the user to make good use a tool with little or no need to memorize arcane commands and such.

But programming itself is inherently arcane. Although so-called higher-level languages have simplified programming greatly, this is "simple" only in contrast to such things as assembly language whereby you literally manipulate registers in the microprocessor one bit of hexadecimal code at a time using a few dozen three-letter mnemonics. Even this is a step up from true machine language which would consist of feeding the machine basically zeros and ones. Such code would be all but unreadable (and thus unusable) to all by the highest savants. Even assembly code is a challenge to makes sense of (example below).

But these days they have languages such as C++ (or C, or C#), Python, and Java which make up the bulk of the languages used. They are "friendly" in the sense that they are at least a couple levels of abstraction above machine language. And from what I understand, these languages (and their compilers) have become so sophisticated, they can produce code that is often faster than machine language or assembly (which historically is used for important drivers and such where speed is a must).

A typical case for understanding how to make a language work is to write a program that writes "Hello World" onto the screen. This is how it looks in 6502 assembly language (the 6502 is the microprocessor used in early Apple, Atari, Commodore, and many other computers):

; goodbyeworld.s for C= 8-bit machines, ca65 assembler format.
; String printing limited to strings of 256 characters or less.

a_cr = $0d ; Carriage return.
bsout = $ffd2 ; C64 KERNEL ROM, output a character to current device.
; use $fded for Apple 2, $ffe3 (ascii) or $ffee (raw) for BBC.
.code

ldx #0 ; Starting index 0 in X register.
printnext:
lda text,x ; Get character from string.
beq done ; If we read a 0 we're done.
jsr bsout ; Output character.
inx ; Increment index to next character.
bne printnext ; Repeat if index doesn't overflow to 0.
done:
rts ; Return from subroutine.

.rodata

text:
.byte "Hello world!", a_cr, 0


It's really a wonder that there is so much good software (including games) that is written at all. It is an enormously daunting task, even if modern languages make it relatively simple. Written in the BASIC programming language, this is all you need to do.

1) Turn on the computer (which might automatically boot into BASIC as the Atari, Apple II, Commodore and other computers do).
2) Type: 10 print "Hello World"
3) Type "Run" and the above one-line program will run and print "Hello World" on the screen.

BASIC is a learner's language although modern forms (and computers) are certainly fast enough that it is still useful.

The post previous to this includes a listing for a BASIC program (Atari Basic) that will deal 5 cards to you at random. I found the program online, adapted it a bit to make it work outside of someone's Twitter engine, and then set about trying to understand it.

Like I said, I am a bit dense in this regard, and that's not false modesty talking. But part of the challenge (fun?) of being a programmer is that it is often a pissing contest. The point is not to teach or make some bit of code readable. It is to show off one's virtuosity. Readability of the code (all the comments to this code are mine) is not needed or perhaps even desirable. The point is to come up with something that is concise and relatively elegant.

Think of giving someone directions for how to get to the airport. The most concise and "elegant" way would be to point directly to the airport as the crow flies (and this indeed would be correct). Or you could spend an enormous amount of time explaining (and mapping out) the exact route so that the other person could actual understand and get there.

That's sort of how "programming virtuosity" is a pissing contest. And I'll admit it can be difficult to distinguish from just a hefty brain doing what is skillful work and what is a pissing contest.

But if is often the case for programs you find online that a lot of piss is involved. You have to figure it out. And so I did and it took a fair amount of time to deconstruct this guy's program. I'll post more about that later.

I'm reminded of a joke I heard about 30 years ago.

A commuter helicopter was flying to SEATAC and got lost in the fog. The pilot seeing a brightly lit building flys towards it and hovers. He holds up a sign, "where am I ?" The people in the building huddle around and hold up a sign, "you are in a helicopter" 

The pilot nods his head and flys directly to the airport. The passengers are amazed, "how did you know where to go from that little bit of useless information, they asked. The pilot replied, "not entirely useless, but entirely correct. That told me it was the Microsoft building and from there to the airport was easy. 

I've heard most skilled programmers are Yankees. If you have ever gotten directions from a Southerner you'll understand the saying of getting there is half the fun. 

Yankee driver, "how do I get to the Smith place?" Rebel farmer, "which Smith, the one married or the one not married, or the on with red hair? After deterring which Smith the directions follow. Take the road down to the fallen oak tree, that's just past the broken mailbox on the left. Turn right and drive a piece to what used to be Nelson's farm. Go up the hill and stop and ask the guy in the tractor where you are. 

That anecdote is also told by Dave Plummer, a Microsoft millionaire who has a YouTube channel and self-identifies as autistic. I don't know why he doesn't just take his millions and call it good. But as I told him once (in a less direct way): Why identify as "autistic" when you have a special gift that allowed you to have a successful career as a top programmer?

I guess living in and around Seattle, you can't be normal. You have to be a "victim" of some type. But he told this same story and I think it may not be apocryphal.

The thing about programming is that it is about breaking up tasks into discrete steps. Although the specific commands in the language of BASIC might not be familiar to you, as a non-lunatic traditional America, you understand the concept of steps, why they are necessary, and how to reason from one to another in order to get something useful done and not waste a lot of time.

If you weren't, you would find it very easy to be a Socialist who just wishes for an emotional Utopia, completely unconcerned about the problematic nature of the steps to get there (and probably unconcerned about bathing as well), if in fact he has thought about steps at all.

The steps a computer must take are usually smaller than the ones we map out for ourselves when we do something because we operate on a very "high" language indeed. If I say "Take a left" to you, you know it means to make a left turn at the next intersection. A computer might indeed have a verb for the equivalent of "take" but it will be left wondering what a "left" is unless you've already defined it. That sort of thing.

It's describing over the telephone to someone how to tie a tie. You've learned the steps and have done it so often, you don't even think about it. Thus the difficulty comes when you then have to think in terms of steps and can't just say to someone over the telephone "Do it like this." You'll find that there could be a very many small steps that you have to unambiguous communicate to that person on the other end of the line.

So how do you get a computer to deal five random cards to you? Whatever the specific commands and syntax of a language, usually any worthy software problem first gets parsed into more human-understandable terms – as in some kind of basic flowchart (even if it's just one you keep in your head). The computer has an easy function to produce a random number. That will come in handy. But it knows nothing about a deck of cards, nor about denominations and suits. You have to somehow create that (or simulate that) from scratch.

We're not worried about drawing the graphic of a card. That is a completely different task and, in some ways, far easier. It would be enough for the computer simply to spit out something like this: "AH, 2S, 5H, KC". (Ace of hearts, 2 of spades, five of hearts, King of clubs, etc.).

So you might envision the problem like this:
1) Create a deck of cards using whatever BASIC commands can hold this information (an array seems logical)
2) Pick five of these cards at random
3) Print them out on the screen

That's pretty much it. And yet there are some interesting complexities that pop up. For instance, you'd be shot at the poker table if you were to have in your hand, for instance, two Aces of Club. Somehow you must keep track of which cards you have already randomly picked. With real cards, when they are dealt from a deck, they go missing from the deck and thus can't be dealt twice. But a computer never forgets unless you tell it to. And if we deal a card from this virtual deck, we must find a way to mark that is has already been dealt.

If these were real cards (and we kept them in the deck, simply announcing to people what their card was), we could just put a check on them with a red felt marker. And that's pretty much what you can do with a computerized virtual deck of cards...although you could certainly envision a system whereby that one card was erased from the virtual deck so that it could not be chose again. In the program listed above, the programmer took the "mark with a felt tip pen" approach. But it's not the only approach. Why this and not another? I really won't know until I try to program the alternative method.

An array is like a big chest of drawers. For a deck of cards, we could create an array that could hold 52 "drawers." Each drawer could hold some information. In this case, each drawer would hold information on both the denomination and the suit of a card. The first drawer (if we fill them in order) is the Ace of Clubs. The second drawer is the 2 of Clubs. We wrap up to the 14th drawer which is the Ace of Hearts. The 15th drawer is the 2 of Hearts, on up to the last (and 52nd) card (depending upon how we order the suits) which is the King of diamonds.

Creating the deck might look like this:

5 CLS                ! clear the screen
10 DIM CARDS$(52)    ! create an array of 52 "drawers", one for each card
20 CARDS$(1)="AH"    ! assign the first three cards manually/proof of concept
30 CARDS$(2)="2H"    !(all 52 could be assigned later in an automated way)
35 CARDS$(3)="3H"    
45 FOR X = 1 TO 52   ! print out these cards using the "for/next" loop
46 IF CARDS$(X)="" THEN END   ! terminate loop if "drawer" is empty
50 PRINT CARDS$(X);", ";
55 NEXT X

This was done in Microsoft Basic II on an Atari emulator on my PC. Atari Basic doesn't do "string arrays" well. That's one reason the programmer in that initial program (using Atari Basic) that I listed did it another way, which I will get into later.

When I run the above program it prints out: AH 2H 3H.

It's too hot to do much outside (about 90 right now) so I worked some more on replicating the function of that original code I found on the net which dealt five random playing cards. I used Microsoft Basic II on the Atari 800 XL via an emulator on my PC.

I thought my "brute force" approach would be much longer than the other program which has some elegant aspects to it. But it was the same 21 lines. The code below is longer because I've extended it to deal a hand to three people. It took a while to get the bugs out of it, but here is the first run (with formatting that could stand to be improved):



I haven't even looked at the results until now to see who won.

I would need to heavily comment the following code (my code) to make it understandable. I might do that for my own sake. But this was a fun exercise in doing it. The only real complicated parts are those nested for/next loops. That can make it difficult to see what is going on. But it works. And this could somewhat easily be extended to a poker game where you discard cards and draw more, etc. There could even be some light gambling involved. And because you can transparently see the program, you know you can trust your money to it.

10 REM "H2:CARDS6.MSB"
20 RANDOMIZE
30 CLS
40 COUNT=1:Z=1
50 DIM CARDS$(52),DENOMS$(13),SUIT$(4),PLAYER$(3)
60 DENOMS$="A23456789TJQK"
70 SUIT$="HDCS"
80 FOR Y = 1 TO 4
90 FOR D = COUNT TO COUNT+12
100 CARDS$(D)=MID$(DENOMS$,Z,1)+MID$(SUIT$,Y,1)
110 Z=Z+1
120 NEXT D
130 COUNT=COUNT+13
140 Z=1
150 NEXT Y
155 FOR GAMER = 1 TO 3
160 FOR X = 1 TO 5
170 R=RND(52)
180 IF CARDS$(R)="" THEN END
185 IF MID$(CARDS$(R),3,1)="*" THEN GOTO 170
190 PLAYER$(GAMER)=PLAYER$(GAMER)+CARDS$(R)+" "
200 CARDS$(R)=CARDS$(R)+"*"
210 NEXT X
215 NEXT GAMER
220 PRINT "BRAD ";:PRINT PLAYER$(1)
230 PRINT "KFF ";:PRINT PLAYER$(2)
240 PRINT "ARTLER ";:PRINT PLAYER$(3)

Much the same here in Fayetteville, as I write at 21:40, it is 78 F the high was  90 F and the low will be about 65-68 F with humidity about 80%. People without A/C must be sweltering. It is said you get used to the 90/80 days, temp and humidity. Don't believe it. Without a natural sea breeze it's hot and uncomfortable. And it will be for at least 6 weeks. Been this way here since, well creation. Those of us who live in the South have learned to live with it, but it doesn't mean we like it. It is just that it is balanced out by the Fall and Spring when there are few bugs, pleasant sun and cool nights just right for sleeping and other nocturnal activities. Southerners, and I include Texans, know a special joy to every season.

In the Ozark's, we do actually have four seasons, sometimes in the same day. Summer is early morning fishing, afternoon bowling and pool and evening is drive in movies, supplanted with a little rum added to the concession stand coke. Another thing, all carbonated beverages are called Coke. Even if the label says Pepsi. Fall is a special season when it is still polo shirts in the day and a light windbreaker at night. Razorback football and High school football on Friday night. High school games often draw as many as 20,000 in Fayetteville. A considerable crowd as our high school has about 1,700 students. Lots of high school grads and undergrads. Fishing, and bowling are still on the schedule but the fishing has moved to later in the day and bowling has gone to the winter leagues. 

Winter, say from Thanksgiving to the ides of March can be challenging. But, there is deer hunting, still fishing but limited hours, as when the wind blows it is just miserable. Winter bowling which continues into the late spring. Winter leagues end about the time school is out in late May/early June. The challenge with spring is the storms. As the ground heats up and moisture flows in from the gulf we get some terrific electrical storms and the occasional tornado. It has been 40 years since Fayetteville had a tornado. The closest was two years ago in Springdale and that was an F-2. Tore up some trees and damaged a couple of houses. Fayetteville is hill country, while that doesn't always mean we can't have a tornado it does seem to limit them. There are more tornados in Johnson county, flatland near the Arkansas River, in a year than we have had in the last 100 years. 

Texans, especially East texans share some of the same conditions. The only thing we really don't like is the ice storm. These happen about once every ten to fifteen years. The last severe ice storm was 2008. Shut down the city for a week. Power was out all over the area, except the university. I was still working so I moved into my office, showered in the student union gym and ate in the food court. All the electrical for the university was underground and some buildings had generators, the older dorms. Some trees fell from the weight of the ice, in some places over one inch thick. It was a good week before I could go back home. If I had been stuck at home It would have been cold. If we have another wife and I are both moving into the Chem E offices for the duration. Ice and crippled up old people don't mix. 

When foreigners asked me about the weather in Singapore I used to tell them that it was 90/90. 90 degrees heat and 90 percent humidity.  I did not get used to it even after living there for 12 years. 

When asked if Singapore had four seasons I would respond, "Yes, wet and wetter and hot and hotter." People generally like that.  
Yep. Even if it is 7-Up. 
We share those as well. When I was young, before moving overseas, I think we could count on a good ice-storm every 5-to-10 years or so.  Really bad ones every 10-t0-15 years as you mentioned. An ice storm hit us in North Texas a day or so before The Super Bowl at what is now called ATT Stadium in Arlington. I think this was about 10 years back. Apparently, the NFL is not keen to have another Super Bowl there as the weather spooked them.   

The freeze we had a couple of years back was one of the worst in history, but there wasn't a huge amount of ice around. 

Herr Artler, that was a pleasure reading of your roundup summary of the great, and hot, land of Arkansas. If I had read that in The New Yorker, I would have thought, "Now, finally, an essay worth reading."

Here in Fayetteville, elevation 1200, summer is just summer. We live with it. I lived for a few years in Winslow. South of Fayetteville about 15 miles. Winslow is in the Boston Mountains at about 2500 feet. It is cooler, in part due to elevation 2-4 degrees and the forest surrounding the town. Winslow has the unique history of being the first town in Arkansas to have an all female mayor and town council, elected just after women got voting suffrage. Lumber used to be the industry in the Winslow area. A lot of the white oak cross ties for the railroads came from NWA from 1870-1930. By the 30s most of the white oak was cut and the timber industry moved south for Southern Pine. Winslow slowly declined in population and the great fire in the early 50s took the rest. It is now a rural town of about 300 with 15 churches each of which claimed to be the largest in Winslow. Baptists, anabaptist, Shakers and Quakers, Presbyterians and Episcopal, Roman Catholic and those who are only religious twice a year. All have made a home in Winslow. A small part of the real America.