Day 009 - #100DaysOfCode

Update

Another day where I am feeling like just catching up on life. I did manage to read some code. Back when I was at High Scool and my father was a programmer there used to be a “Computers in the classroom” in the Australian news paper. One of the more interesting columns was by Tim Hartnell where he would discuss a topic and share a half page BASIC program (IBM PC compatible). 1 Such artilce I have scanned below which is a pattern generator using ASCII art.

10 REM Leonardo
20 CLS:REM HOME on Apple II
30 A$=" .`-~^:+!?xk*0%$MX@"
40 FOR X=-18 TO 18 STEP .5
50 FOR Y=-18 TO 18 STEP .5
60 GOSUB 160
70 NEXT Y:LPRINT:NEXT X
80 FOR X=18 TO -18 STEP - .5
90 FOR Y=18 TO -18 STEP - .5
100 GOSUB 160
110 NEXT Y:LPRINT:NEXT X:LPRINT
120 LLIST 160:LPRINT
130 END
140 REM ***********************
150 REM Put function in next line
160 K=SIN(X*Y)
170 K=10+INT(10*K):IF K<0 THEN K=0
180 IF K>20 THEN K=K-20:GOTO 180
190 LPRINT MID$(A$, K+1, 1);
200 RETURN

This made me think where all these things are up to

• Tim Hartnell died a year after these articles were published from cancer at the age of 40
• sadly even a tribute to him is now a 404 page https://worldofspectrum.org/tribute/en/HartnellTim.html
• as for BASIC - well there are a number of emulators
  • https://www.calormen.com/jsbasic/
  • https://github.com/robhagemans/pcbasic/
  • https://www.pcjs.org/software/pcx86/app/ibm/basic/1.00/

I should take a look at some of these or look at rewriting some of these early ideas in JavaScript or similar.