Date : Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:43 +0200
From : rick@... (Rick Murray)
Subject: Electric Dreams last night.
Darren Grant wrote:
Oooh! Strong mail! :-)
> Well actually he was quite right the most significant area of software for
> the BBC was education related
That I won't deny, it was a schools computer after all - but to not
acknowledge it had strengths in other areas is not doing the system
justice. Okay, it is a nerdier machine, but on the other hand it is a
machine more rounded than one based more or less purely around the games
market.
> BBC FanBoi alert !!
Gee, now which mailing list was this? Remind me...
> Most computers from that time included a basic interpreter and the
> Spectrum was no more difficult to program for than the BBC.
I am struggling to think of another computer from that time that DIDN'T
work it's BASIC interpreter around the user actually typing in stuff. If
there was the option of either, it would have been pretty nifty, like
how in BBC BASIC you can L. to LIST a program. It makes more sense than
remembering to press K.
At least the most used ones [P]rint, [S]ave, [R]un... were the correct
initial letters.
See, I'm not entirely clueless about the Spectrum.
> I personally preferred BBC basic in part because of teletext mode but
> also because you typed the words rather than having them assigned to keys.
> Took a bit of getting used to having to find the keywords on a spectrum.
Isn't this what I've been saying as the main criticism of the machine?
> The whole point is that there was a whole variety of home computers
> available at the time each with their own merits.
But, sadly, an awful lot of rubbish.
If I switch to Fanboi (!) mode, I can point out many merits of the BBC
that just never made it to other machines - the absolute biggest being
the built-in assembler. It might sound horribly square to be all "oooh,
my computer has an assembler!" (for best effect, say that like a St.
Trinian girl!) but you must remember all that PEEK and POKE rubbish that
filled pages of '80s computer magazines was BECAUSE that was the only
way to get it done. And writing any sort of serious games, assembler is
a necessity, especially if stuff is needing to be shifted around the
display memory fast enough to be useful. It's not that the Spectrum was
bad, per se, it's that the BBC was so damn innovative [*] that it set a
pretty high standard.
Oh, and shall we talk about a *REAL* BASIC and not one that would rely
on a tagliatelle-mess of GOTO and GOSUB constructs? A distinction
between functions and procedures, LOCAL...
* - and I'm only talking about the BASIC and MOS right now!
> of the population I was given a Spectrum by my parents to which I was most
> grateful that I was given a computer at all. I learnt a lot by using that
> computer and eventually I replaced it with an Atari ST but wish I had got
> the Amiga really.
I got nothing. Couldn't afford it. I cut my teeth breaking into the
computer lab (you call THAT a lock?!?) and staying up too late. It's
also where my interest in Econet was born.
Around '87 I was able to get myself an unwanted Beeb. Basic tape-only
model B. Issue 3. Did me for a while. Experimented with 6502 code, now a
lot forgotten. 1989 (as was it 88?) I got an A3000, when it was first
released. That was followed by an A5000. Econet for the Beeb. Unwanted
A310. Unwanted issue 7 BBC with DFS which rapidly became DNFS'd. Then a
RiscPC. Spotting a trend? :-)
Then the sad demise of Acorn coupled with my moving to France plus
something of a stagnancy of the RISC OS arena gave me the push to
Windows. That's not to say RISC OS is dead. It's just in the past
decade, other platforms did something of a quantum leap in capabilities.
I can now download streaming video and watch it in good quality in
realtime. Such things were unthinkable back in the RiscPC's day. We had
Acorn Replay, but a ~760kbit DivX stream totally leaves that behind.
RISC OS has kept up in some ways, but in others......
Anyway, one of the thing I always loved about Acorn machines, and miss
most, is their quirky innovation. So many things that Acorn did that I
can't believe everybody else didn't do. It's not until XP that we have a
CoolType display system that is actually reasonably good looking
on-screen. I can't believe a multinational massive company like
Microsoft doesn't have a MessageTrans-like system for EASY (and user
tweakable) internationalisation. Instead it's an ad-hoc mess of
differing implementations. The Windows API presentation is something of
a badly ill-thought-out mess in comparison to RISC OS and such delights
as ESG grouping (instead of in-a-frame requirements). Why can't you drag
a file to a taskbar button and have a "load this" message sent to the
application? What actual technical reason other than "D'oh!" prevents this?
I know this reads like a massive pro-Acorn advocacy post, and to a
degree it is. Point is, in order to know why you don't like something
you have to understand what you DO like.
I can equally attack Acorn machines - persistent refusal to implement FP
meaning the platform just wasn't going to cut it with FP-heavy
applications, illogical design decisions meaning a so-called expandable
computer was already bottlenecking it's main bus (but, credit, they got
ARM and x86 co-existing side by side and Win95 in a window!). Rather
lame and uninspired IDE support... I won't drag on.
> people like me the Spectrum deserves credit for making computing affordable
> for the masses. Clive Sinclair deserves the accolade of bringing an
> affordable introduction to computing to the masses in the UK.
Certainly. The fact that people could buy other, non-Spectrum machines
is due in part to his aggressive pricing strategy helping push down
prices all around... except for the BBC which had it's fairly safe
little niche.
> relatively limited exposure to the BBC I don't go poking fun at the systems
> that I know relatively little about such as the BBC,
How much exposure would you consider a requirement to poke fun at
strengths and weaknesses of a computer system?
Furthermore, I shall quote myself:
* > Couldn't believe the stuff being spouted by the Sinclair advocate
> (god, where did they find him!)
I think he concentrated ONLY on the education aspect in order to portray
it negatively to the kids. Like "this is cool, that's like being at
school". Deny this.
* > You CAN program the Speccy, but it is so painful that I never
> personally met anybody who actually did it for fun.
Numerous Spectrums at school. Nobody programmed them for fun, not beyond
a few simple type-ins. The necessity to use key combinations (what with
some keys holding three different keywords) meant it was clumsy and
annoying in use. That is MY opinion, and largely the opinion of my
friends. Great for games, but the ability to spell out programs would
have vastly speeded things up. Don't say "you could learn", it's initial
impressions like that which would put you off wanting to commit to
learn. You yourself said "because you typed the words rather than having
them assigned to keys" meaning that this was by no means a peculiarity
to us, rather than a peculiarity to the Spectrum. Exactly how much
experience is necessary to recognise and comment on this problem?
You'll notice various somewhat derogatory comments about the Oric-1 and
not a single mention of the Atari ST. Why? I *have* an Oric-1 and have
never used an Atari ST. To spout about stuff you know absolutely nothing
about makes you come across as a clueless prick. So I will simply not
say anything about the ST. It isn't a machine I know.
> in fact I find it quite fascinating to learn about them.
Sadly I have a mother who doesn't understand why I have so many
computers around, and why I would even want something 20 years old. I
won't run an Atari (or whatever) emulator, because I think you really
need the real hardware to get a 'feel' for the machine.
It certainly is fascinating how the core of many computers was the same
- mainly a 6502 or a Z80; yet their personalities and functionality is
so vastly different. Not just in I/O terms, but in the user experience.
Switch on, get going, how do you feel...
> The main thing I learnt from early on is that everything has it's advantages
> and being a zealot about any one technology is a stupid thing to do.
Everybody has preferences and bias. This is acceptable, provided you
have the reasoning behind your preferences, rather than "X is cool 'cos
all the magazines say X is cool!" which is so mindless as to be an
evolutionary step backwards.
> Today I use a Mac as my main system as it gives me what I believe to
> be the most stable and best user experience
Isn't the new Mac based upon some sort of Linux-like thing? I'm sorry,
my visions of the Mac date from the cute monitor-and-processor-in-a-box
(with the disc drive below the screen) era. They made fairly regular
appearances walking around Bloom County (a "comic"). Oh, and anybody who
was anybody with video editing probably used a Mac, back when PC guys
were looking at 16 colour VGA. :-)
I'm pleased Mac is still around and there is still a mainstream player
other than Microsoft; but Mac is a bit Acornish in making both the
computer and the OS. Perhaps the strength of the PC is that there was no
such dependence one on another, yet this could eventually be Microsoft's
undoing as more and more move to Linux.
> have a windows XP netbook as XP works quite well as a simple browsing
> system on a low power system.
My machine I am using now (Azumi) is XP with Firefox and Thunderbird. It
serves me extremely well. I'm not overly keen on the small SSD space, so
I recently got an 8Gb SD card, which is working well. Loving the
widescreen display, great for watching films or streaming TV while being
a lazy git and sitting in bed. :-)
This isn't a games machine by any stretch. But for a general purpose
machine for a geek with no special requirements other than the ability
to correctly render Japanese, it serves extremely well. And as for the
battery life - up to 7 hours or so. Unbelievable. SO useful.
> It is all about making use of the strengths of each system.
Sometimes we don't always have a choice.
> Here is a tip for anyone who works in IT, do you ever wonder why non IT
> types don't take you seriously ?
It's because we talk in gibberish and they don't have the right mental
codecs installed.
> and you really want to share that with them but really they don't
give a monkeys.
Some people are just uninterested. This is why so much crap hardware is
around. Next time you see a webcam, tell me its resolution. You might
(or might not...) be surprised to see it scream 1.2 MEGAPIXELS, and in
tidy writing admit that it's an interpolated figure and in reality it's
a massively lamer third-of-a-megapixel imager inside.
The tech sector is full of this sort of nonsense. Many if the drooling
masses gave enough of a damn to listen to the passionate geek, they
might walk away with a camera that really is what it claims to be
instead of smoke and mirrors.
> much better one technology is than another immediately puts you in that
> zealot category and you won't get invited back.
Ha-bl**dy-ha. You forget the fact that I never got invited in the first
place... Some people just aren't. I'm one of those people.
Best wishes,
Rick.
--
Rick Murray, eeePC901 & ADSL WiFI'd into it, all ETLAs!
BBC B: DNFS, 2 x 5.25" floppies, EPROM prog, Acorn TTX
E01S FileStore, A3000/A5000/RiscPC/various PCs/blahblah...