Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Free online programming books

A very common problem some programming students have is the access to good and free tutorials and books.

Check out this link:

195 Free Online Programming Books (from www.techtoolblog.com)

It's a fantastic list of programming books. All free. Some of them, believe me, very good !

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

8 bit computers - a retrospective look

There was a time in which just one person was able to develop a game... using machine code, simple graphics, very good ideas, a lot of imagination, and many hours ...

There was a time without UML, Object-Oriented Programming, .Net, Java ... even without C ... It was the time of BASIC.

There was a time in which a tape recorder was something more than your only way to copy music... It was the only way we had to load and save programs ... It was the time of the beeerererrppereerpppeeeppeeep ... We were so familiar with such a sound that we were even able to guess if the sound corresponded to graphics or code ...

I'm referring to the beginning of the 80s. And I am lucky, I lived that moment.

I was 13 the very first time I saw a computer. Impressive. I decided to learn everything about computers. After one year learning what I could from magazines and books, I convinced my parents to buy my first computer. My idea was to buy a Sinclair Spectrum, but when we went to the shop, a Sony MSX was their suggestion. I didn't mind.

MSX was the first serious attempt to reach a standard for personal computers. Sony, Philips, Panasonic, Toshiba and other companies produced computers under this standard. It was a fantastic computer, with an important continuity (MSX-2, MSX-2 turbo R ...) but finally, it disappeared.

The original ROM included the BASIC programming language and, with the disk version of the machine, an operative system called MSX-DOS also appeared. Microsoft was behind that (the BASIC interpreter and the OS), and I have to say, they did a very good work. In fact, it was the best computer in that period (IMHO).

At that time, I was able to earn money (I was 14-18) developing games. In fact, there was no option. Without the Internet, without software to install... the only thing we were able to do with our computers was to learn programming. I have found a video that shows perfectly what I'm talking about:

(if you have bandwidth problems, watch all the video until the end, and press 'play' again; normally the cache is going to help you the second time)



What the video shows was true. The only I was able to do at the beginning was to buy those magazines with printed code inside, so you had to type it if you wanted something to do with your computer. Consequently, you were almost forced to learn programming. And after learning BASIC, machine code was the only chance to get more performance from those old computers.

Very different situation now. You can buy a computer and be able to do millions of things without even know what a program is. Is this current situation better than ours ?

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Apple forever !

Apple is celebrating 30 years: an innovative and impressive period !

(if you have bandwidth problems, watch all the video until the end, and press 'play' again; normally the cache is going to help you the second time)