[Coco] scary old code

[Aaron Wolfe]

I think most of us who were introduced to the world of programming via
the CoCo probably have some very bad code on a disk or tape somewhere.
 The CoCo makes it so easy to start programming that you can get ahead
of yourself, writing code that is beyond your own skill level by trial
and error.   I don't think that's a bad thing... doing something the
wrong way helps you appreciate the right way once you figure it out.

I don't have kids, but if I did, I would want them to have the same
experience.  Sure, you might pick up a couple bad habits by learning
on your own, but those are easily corrected.  The insight you gain
from learning on a machine like the CoCo is priceless.  On a modern
computer, I don't know how a kid would even start to learn
programming.  With the CoCo, it's instantly ready for you to
experiment.   The BASIC manuals were a big part of it too, they really
encouraged you to try things and explained each step without becoming
a boring computer book.  I wonder if there is anything done that well
for kids (or even adults) today.

Anyway, don't feel bad or ashamed of old code that's poorly done,
after all, simply knowing that it's bad indicates you've learned new
things and grown as a programmer.   If you look at code from years
prior and cannot see problems with it, you've stopped learning.  (or
you are one heck of a programmer :)

-Aaron



On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 7:49 PM, Todd Wallace <dragonbytes at cox.net> wrote:
> I wrote part of a game when i was about 14 or 15. it was supposed to be star fighter game.  Had 4 guns at the corners and fired at a center crosshair at enemies. Written in BASIC.  Also wrote a very basic GUI client that looked like Mac OS.  would load a few apps.  But alas I lost it when I wrote an Undelete program for DECB.  Before I perfected it,  I messed up and corrupted the disk.  Those were the days.
>
> - Todd Wallace
>
> On Jul 21, 2010, at 7:28 PM, Willard Goosey wrote:
>
>> Ouch!
>>
>> Last night I stumbled across a BASIC game I wrote when I was in the
>> 8th grade.  "Bad" doesn't even begin to describe it!
>>
>> People who have no musical ability at all (that's me BTW) should NOT
>> be allowed to use the SOUND statement! :-)  SOUND 255,255 is just
>> plain painful!
>>
>> Not quite so painful, but still bad, is the BASIC database manager (it
>> wanted to look like dBaseIII+) I wrote in '90.  That's actually mostly
>> OK at the code level, except for handling conditionals on the
>> reports.  I didn't understand what I was doing at all, and that
>> clearly shows in the code.
>>
>> Then there's the extensive hacks I did to some of the Sample Programs,
>> mainly "Print or Revise" and "Color Doodle".  But at least those
>> aren't entirely my fault!
>>
>> Willard
>> --
>> Willard Goosey  goosey at sdc.org
>> Socorro, New Mexico, USA
>> I search my heart and find Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.
>>  -- R.E. Howard
>>
>> --
>> Coco mailing list
>> Coco at maltedmedia.com
>> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>
>
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