[Coco] "C" Compiling Was: New CoCo site for programmers

[wdg3rd at comcast.net]

From: "Aaron Wolfe" <aawolfe at gmail.com>

> I know this feeling too, and it's not unique to the CoCo community.
> I've done work on some open source projects that I thought were
> really
> great only to find that no one else seemed to care.
> 
> A wise man (who participates here :) once told me that the only good
> reason to do development on the CoCo is the pleasure of seeing your
> own code run.   At first, I honestly didn't like this statement.
> However, after some time, and many lines of code,  I've realized it
> is
> quite accurate and not negative at all.  It *is* a great pleasure to
> design a system and see it work, and the CoCo provides a great
> environment for experimentation.  Trying to take anything more from
> the CoCo will probably result in a less than satisfying experience.
> 
> I like to see the excited announcements from everyone working on
> their
> projects (and I hope I haven't bothered the list with my own). I
> think
> it's really great to hear about people working on CoCo stuff.   Keep
> them coming! :)

Aaron, I don't do much development lately.  I program only for my own pleasure, and after two divorces and two widowings, pleasure can be hard to find. (I dislike Microsoft, hate SQL and only do perl under duress).  For one thing, I've killed a lot of brain cells during these last several decades.  (Mostly with ethanol, I won't deny my vices).  Backalong, I wrote for TRS-80 (every Z-80 platform, Models 1,3,4,2,12) and of course for the BASIC Cocos, and most importantly for the next decade or so the Xenix machines (that got me into the rest of the Unix, now Linux, universe).  I was only attracted to OS-9 when I noticed the similarity to Unix, read the manual, and set up a multi-user system in my RSCC classroom, a 64k CoCo 1 with a floppy, a 16k Coco 1 with a Vidtex cartridge (it would have worked with a 4k, but they were no longer in the stockroom) and a null-modem hack of a 4-pin DIN cable.  While typing on the "terminal" tended to drop bytes if the floppy on the "mainframe" was running, it worked.  And that was Level One, way the hell back in 1983.  (I left Radio Shack just before the Coco 3 came out in 1986 followed by OS-9 Level II).

Only one published program that I was paid for (code I write as an employee or under contract is different), was in the article "Computer Cantos" in the March '81 issue of 80-Micro.  The program worked in Coco BASIC, but the output needed more than 32 columns.  (The original Mod One version fit in 64 columns).  Printed fine if you wanted to waste paper.  It wrote free verse with proper punctuation and change of tense and number, but while it wrote better poetry than I did in high school some years previous (there'd been some college and USAF between) it wasn't up to what most folks would call literary standards.  Got paid $85 by 80-Micro (plus a few sent me checks for copies of the program), and it got me twenty years as a paid computer geek.

Presently I'm working as a clerk.  Pays diddly, but a lot less stressful than tech support or system administration.  I want to open my restaurant, where I can actually see happy customers.  (Something you never see in tech support or as a sysadmim -- once you fix the problem, you never get thanked and you never see a smile, since even if the client was in your office, the last thing is the door closing on the client's ass).

Yeah, I want to open my restaurant.  I'm a damned good cook (especially if it's chili, and the planned name of the place is "Fire!").  I'm not a chef, while I'll experiment with odd recipes for personal use, I won't try it commercially.  But I'm the best known (and probably the best overall) chili cook in the anarchist/libertarian population in North America.  And I'll face off any statist chili cook anywhere.

The name "Fire!" is for two reasons.  One, some folks think chili is spicy (it isn't to me, but I use a whole habanero chile in a two egg omelet, I may have lost some taste buds).  Two, there will be a 10% discount to anybody carrying an effective tool for self defense, and a certificate from Tiger Schulman's karate schools doesn't qualify.  (Yeah, I'm one of them libertarian gun-nuts).  L. Neil Smith (and the beautiful woman he married and the beautiful younger woman they brought into this world) eat free, anytime they visit east from the Rockies and so do a number of other winners of the Prometheus Award, at my discretion (which is fairly loose when it comes to Prometheus winners, since well over half of them are personal friends).  (And that might be considered scary by some).
-- 
Ward Griffiths        wdg3rd at comcast.net