GPIO Module and the old SWI's

…either…or?

Interrupted by cat needing to be fed and lost the thread in a set of edits:

“trying to do far too much, or having a personal axe to grind.”

Case in point:

The difference is that with C it’s unavoidable.

Except that it isn’t, of course.

No, I wouldn’t try to write a DTP app in BASIC. The fact is, I wouldn’t try to write a DTP app at all, nor even a vector drawing app. Impression and !Draw exist.

Well, you can write a DTP app in say C and then update it quickly to match some quirk of a new platform or you can write it in assembler and utilise some really obscure feature of the current platform and have it break on future platforms.
You mentioned Impression and I thought assembler and then I thought Ovation Pro and C.

Note that I’m not anti-C, I just have difficulties finding the right mindset.
Think of the Jon Pertwee depiction of Worzel Gummidge and the head changing – I can’t find the right head…

You mentioned Impression and I thought assembler and then I thought Ovation Pro and C […] you can write a DTP app in say C and then update it quickly to match some quirk of a new platform or you can write it in assembler and utilise some really obscure feature of the current platform and have it break on future platforms.

Absolutely.

I’m not really doing DTP any longer; not since 1997 with Impression at Physiology, or since 2007 with FrameMaker at ARM. I couldn’t afford FrameMaker! I use LibreOffice for preparing books – fiction only – for print. I’m not anti-C; I think it’s a pretty crappy language, but it’s the best we’ve got, exactly because it’s portable & widely used. I’m not anti-C, but I find it horrible to work with and I don’t need to. The italicized bit being the real point.

It’s not really a matter of finding the right mindset – I’m sure I could do that if I was sufficiently motivated, but I’m not, never have been, and am unlikely to be in the future.

Today her laptop sounded a “factory hooter” as a little clue to stop.

Subtle. I like her. :-)

The difference is that with C it’s unavoidable.

The difference is that C encourages code reuse. Put things in libraries rather than writing the same thing over again and writing the same thing over again and writing the same thing over again and writing the same thing over again and writing the same thing over again.

C also encourages the use of constant definitions, a concept that does not exist in BASIC (the closest you can get is assgning values to variables – something that pollutes the variable list and requires a specific variable lookup for every use).

I just had a look at the code to !Chars and there are fourteen integer variables defined at the beginning to act as constants. A little further down we see stuff like ptr%!8=ptr%!8 OR (1<<22) and SYS "OS_ServiceCall",,&43,8,blahblah. In C, the ptr%!8 will have a name (as a part of a structure), the setting bit 22 (obviously a flag) can be a named definition, however it’s perhaps even better to treat it as a bitfield so something like menu.item[which].data.shaded = TRUE or whatever. And as for the service call, what’s &43,8? Clearer to have it say something like SERVICE_INTERNATIONAL, UCSTABLE.

The thing is, all of this stuff needs to be defined somewhere.

The difference is that with C it’s unavoidable.

As Steve (not that Steve, the other Steve! ;-) ) says, it is possible to write software in C without using any external references [I do not count stdio, stdlib, string, etc as external because they are a required part of every functional C compiler]

The thing is this version we like so much is so neatly tied to the OS that people end up doing things with that probably ought to be done in another language.

The other thing is that BASIC is an implicit part of the system. There’s not one Acorn machine since the Beeb (possibly the Atom) that doesn’t have BASIC onboard. So you know you can write something in BASIC and you know that as long as it’s the correct sort of machine (the 6502 range can’t do ENDWHILE, the Archimedes can’t do GCOL r,g,b) then it will run. No if/but/maybe. It’s there, it’ll work.

The other other thing is that we aren’t exactly blessed with much in the way of languages that a RISC OS machine can run directly.

WRT Rick’s comment about those other languages actually being written in C, do the users care?

No. Just a humourous attempt to point out that before one maligns C, keep in mind that your current favourite programming language might actually be written in it. ;-)

WRT Messy code, that’s largely in the mind of the creator.

Indeed. I can understand (and mostly tolerate) why C scatters its definitions all over the place in the name of modularity, even if it means grepping the filesystem to try to find where the hell something is actually defined.

What I can’t abide is those who write BASIC and stuff it full of GOSUB and GOTO. I read, a while back while on break at work, the Osborne guide to creating adventure games. It talked about how they worked, and then gave the most awful code to implement it. It was awful out of necessity, as most (lesser) dialects of BASIC could only support GOSUB and GOTO. But the end result was like trying to find patterns in a bowl of linguine. Far far worse than any mess I’ve even encountered in C, and this was a book teaching kids how to program.

No, I wouldn’t try to write a DTP app in BASIC.

No, it would be crazy to use BASIC for a DTP app. Or anything else heavyweight like a web browser or professional grade image manipulation program…

…oh, wait…

[refer to Steve’s missing either/or comment about using BASIC for things it’s not really supposed to do but manages to do surprisingly well anyway]

The fact is, I wouldn’t try to write a DTP app at all, nor even a vector drawing app. Impression and !Draw exist.

You wouldn’t. But somebody did. That’s why they exist. ;-)

Being well up the autism spectrum (undiagnosed but pretty obvious) helps a lot with that.

I probably am too, but the time when I would have been diagnosed, nobody wanted to be labelled autistic. These days, I consider myself to be somewhere on the spectrum (cerulean!!!) but I don’t need some tidy little tick box to fit into. If I am, if I’m not, the best I can manage is a nonchalant shrug.

I don’t believe it helps to break things up into modules and patterns. That, to me, just seems like plain common sense. When you’re making a cake you add ingredients in a certain order and help the mixture “become”. You don’t just chuck everything into a bowl, whisk it to hell and back, and consider it fait accompli. That will produce a cake, it just won’t produce a particularly nice cake. And what’s the point of cake if it isn’t nice?

Mmm… cake… doughnuts… tea. *BYE

You wouldn’t. But somebody did. That’s why they exist. ;-)

Well yes, obviously! And I’m very grateful to them!

What I can’t abide is those who write BASIC and stuff it full of GOSUB and GOTO.

Indeed. Horrible. Did BBC BASIC have FN and PROC from the beginning? I don’t remember now.

not that Steve, the other Steve! ;-)

I told people many years ago, “I am the Steve, all the others are just that – others” :)

Did BBC BASIC have FN and PROC from the beginning? I don’t remember now.

On the Beeb, and still people used unwarranted GOTO.¹
I could never understand that when putting the other bits, that added to the whole, in nice PROC_do_something type chunks made code re-use so easy. Even more so when that skip out of the core code is a skip to a bit of the OS lovingly crafted for speed. OK so Rick will complain about certain SWI calling, but he’s got an answer staring at him.

¹ Use that and then go play with Bill Gates’ masterpiece² (where’s a brick wall when you need it?)