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Programming the Commodore 64: the Definitive Guide
Mirk writes "Back in 1985 it was possible to understand the whole computer, from the hardware up through device drivers and the kernel through to the high-level language that came burned into the ROMs (even if it was only Microsoft BASIC). The Reinvigorated Programmer revisits R. C. West's classic and exhaustive book Programming the Commodore 64 and laments the decline of that sort of comprehensive Deep Knowing."
Though my experience was on the Apple II not the Commodore. Little things like writing your own device drivers, drawing graphics via direct access to interlaces vram, (oh the maths!) direct read latch access to the floppy drives, writing hybrid assembly/BASIC apps. It was grand.
It's downright depressing to compare my present-day knowledge of computers, classify myself as somewhere in the upper 2%, and still wish I knew a quarter as much (percentage-wise) about my current computer as I did about my //c.
*sigh*
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Here in 2010 it's not necessary to understand the whole computer, from the hardware up through device drivers and the kernel through to the high-level language that came from your apt repositories.
It wasn't necessary then either. The point is that you could. Now this is no longer possible. There are pros and cons to this, we can acheive more by building on the magical black boxes, but there was something deeply satisfying about knowing a device in such depth. The same can still be acheived in the embedded realm, however, and due to modern advances, it's cheaper and smaller than ever!
Today we have garbage collectiors in Java and that is why the C64 is completely outdated.
Everyone who still writes code on the C64 instead of Java won't get a job.
You probably don't even know the latest words.
Oh, I don't know about that. There are thousands of embedded systems that need programming and require the kind of thorough knowledge of the hardware that you got from the old C64 days. There are more 8-, 16- and 32-bit systems without enough memory to run something like Java than there are PCs and higher class systems.
Don't pooh-pooh the old ways. They're what's running your world.