12 Oct
2019
12 Oct
'19
4:05 p.m.
On Sat, 12 Oct 2019, Doug McIlroy wrote:
For a contrast in aha moments, consider this
introduction to
an early Apple (Apple II, I think).
When my wife got one, my natural curiosity led me to try to
make "Hello world".
I asked her what to use as an editor and learned it all depends
on what you're editing.
So I looked in the manual. First thing you do to make a C program
is to set up a "project", as if it was a corporate undertaking.
I found it easier to write a program in some other editor than
the one for C. Bad idea. Every file had a type and that editor
produced files of some type other than C program.
After succumbing to the Apple straitjacket, I succeeded.
Then I found "Hello world" given as an example in the manual.
The code took up almost a page; real men make programs that
set up their own windows.
Aha, Apple! Not intended for programmers.
And that didn't change until OS X.
Doug
That sounds like Macintosh rather than Apple ][.
-uso.