[Coco] Programming advice (might be a can of worms...)

[Steve Bjork]

We need to know your level of programming skills.  But from the sound of 
it, you have not  done much,  if any.

In that case BASIC is a good starting point.  Aaron already pointed out, 
BASIC does not teach you bad programing.  It's very limited on what it 
can do.  That's what good about BASIC, there is not a lot to learn.  
(This is the reason why it was on almost every computer back in the 80's.)

As for coding in Assembly, it takes a lot of code to do very little.  
You are working at the base level of the computer and really need to 
know just how everything works.  To put graphics on the screen you need 
to know how the memory, CPU, I/O Ports and graphics systems work on the 
hardware level.  That's why there are so few Assembly programmers out 
there for the CoCo.  If it was easy, everyone would do it.

Once you learn BASIC then other programming system are much easier to 
understand.  You just need to start somewhere.

Steve Bjork

On 4/26/2011 7:01 PM, Brian Blake wrote:
> Good evening everybody,
>
> Looking for a little advice. Since my soldering hand is out of commission
> for the foreseeable future, and pending a possible surgery, I'm looking to
> spend some time taking on a long overdue (for me) CoCo subject -
> programming.
>
> I can write a little in basic; might even be able to create a small game if
> I spent enough time. However, I'm wondering if I shouldn't just jump head
> first into ML? I've heard BASIC tends to teach bad habits, and I have enough
> of them ;-)...
>
> Thoughts or opinions from the coding gurus would be much appreciated. My
> coding background consists of the following: AutoLISP for AutoCAD, tinkered
> with Python and been heavy into HTML for the last two years or so.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Brian
>