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Apple II DOS Source Code Released
gbooch writes "The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, is not just a museum of hardware, but also of software. The Museum has made public such gems as the source code for MacPaint, Photoshop, and APL, and now code from the Apple II. As their site reports: 'With thanks to Paul Laughton, in collaboration with Dr. Bruce Damer, founder and curator of the Digibarn Computer Museum, and with the permission of Apple Inc., we are pleased to make available the 1978 source code of Apple II DOS for non-commercial use. This material is Copyright © 1978 Apple Inc., and may not be reproduced without permission from Apple.'"
Whatever your complaints about your job, at least debugging your code doesn't involve stepping through assembly on a pencil and paper virtual machine.
That was how I wrote my first published game back in the 80's. I have no complaints. Everything was new back then and even though the "wheel hadn't yet been invented", programming was still exciting and it was some of the most fun coding I have ever done.
I like to imagine every new programmer has that amazing sense of euphoria as they begin to uncover all the major algorithms for themselves, and begin developing a sense of just how much is possible with programming.
Then it's your job. To give the end-user some uninteresting but necessary layer of data connectivity.
", I just wish there was a popular 8-bit machine out there for the young'ns to get them started.
That's like saying people need to learn to drive on a model T.
My kids had no problem getting started on modern hardware.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Whatever your complaints about your job, at least debugging your code doesn't involve stepping through assembly on a pencil and paper virtual machine.
Back then it was actually easier to read through large amounts of code, flipping between different sections, etc when it was on paper.
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The listing wasn't used for paper and pencil emulation, we had quite nice integrated editors and debuggers to see what was going on (ex. the LISA 6502 assembler). The listings were for reading and understanding. These lists were used somewhat like tablets today. You can take the listing anywhere, flop down on the couch and start reading,
Copyright should end after 10yrs max. Whatever paltry profits apple may stand to gain from hording things like this to themselves pale in comparison to the lost history if such things are destroyed before they're ever released to the public.
Some sort of virtual machine is the correct way to do legacy support. In some cases full virtualization is the answer, in others, a thinner layer that looks like the old OS to the application and like a modern app to the outer OS might be more appropriate.
The MS approach of keeping the severely broken APIs around forever is NOT the answer.