Donkey Kong and Me

MBCook sends us to the blog of one Landon Dyer, who posted an entry the other day entitled Donkey Kong and Me. It describes how he was offered at job at Atari after writing a Centipede clone and ended up programming Donkey Kong for the Atari 800. It's full of detail that will be fascinating to anyone who ever programmed assembly language that had to fit into 16K, as well as portents of what was to come at Atari. "My first officemate didn't know how to set up his computer. He didn't know anything, it appeared. He'd been hired to work on Dig Dug, and he was completely at sea. I had to teach him a lot, including how to program in assembly, how the Atari hardware worked, how to download stuff, how to debug. It was pretty bad."

Comments

Nep0

[Tablizer]

My first officemate didn't know how to set up his computer. He didn't know anything, it appeared. He'd been hired to work on Dig Dug, and he was completely at sea. I had to teach him a lot, including how to program in assembly

Without RTFA, I bet its a relative of an Atari bigwig.

And now that office mate is . . .

[cheebie]

My first officemate didn't know how to set up his computer. He didn't know anything, it appeared. He'd been hired to work on Dig Dug, and he was completely at sea. I had to teach him a lot, including how to program in assembly, how the Atari hardware worked, how to download stuff, how to debug. It was pretty bad.

So, what was it like to work with Bill Gates?

[rim shot]

503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

[sootman]

And he's now hosting his blog on that very same Atari he used oh-so-many years ago.

Re:And your point is?

[Mr. Slippery]

A new word has entered the lexicon by accident of hyphen: "cow-orker".

You kids today, no sense of history. "Cow-orker" is at least 15 years old, it was common on alt.folklore.urban when I was a USENET junkie. (USENET. You know, USENET? Newsgroups? The original peer-to-peer system? Ah, forget it. I gotta go yell at some kids to get off my lawn.)

Re:And now that office mate is . . .

[Gregg M]

So, what was it like to work with Bill Gates?

This was not funny at all.

Re:FORTH

[Megane]

I got a job offer in my inbox the other day from some moron recruiter. (Apparently he is incapable of understand that there is a "macro assembler" other than IBM 370, or that "I will not relocate" in all caps is just pretty formatting.)

Some company in Ohio wants to convert their "Macro Assembler" code (hopefully 370 and not 360!) to... COBOL! Yes, in 2008. Way to be 20 years behind the times, guys! Maybe in another 10-15 years you'll discover SQL and the internet.

Re:Open Development

[Digital Vomit]

I had at least 2 books on assembly for the Atari and neither of them got me to first base.

You have much to learn about women, grasshopper. Much to learn.