NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/comp/sys/amiga/programm/15897

Text File | 1992-11-16 | 3.3 KB | 76 lines

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!sunic!dkuug!imada!news
From: [e-mail] (Bjoern Reese)
Subject: Re: New hardware reference guide?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (USENET News System)
Organization: Dept. of Math. & Computer Science, Odense University, Denmark
References: <[e-mail]>
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 13:07:52 GMT
Lines: 64

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bjorn
Stenberg) writes:
> [e-mail] (Bjoern Reese) writes:
> > Consider this: "The more knowledge people have about the hardware the more
> > likely their programs will work well."
>
> Well, this HAS been tested for the past seven years, with little success...

IMHO, there are four reasons to this lack of success:

1) The Seka assembler.
   It was extremely popular in the demo scene, because it
   gave you the feeling of total control over the machine.
   Most of the coders came from the C64, or a similar 8 bit
   machine, and they wanted to know exactly what was going
   on at any time. The Seka assembler allowed the continuation
   of the bad programming style of the 8 bit machines.

2) The "Machine Language" book from Abacus.
   Being the only book easily available which claimed to
   teach you Assembly Language, it rose to fame. Sadly it
   a) contained a huge amount of bugs, and b) supported
   the Seka assembler.

3) The early version of the Hardware Reference Guide.
   This manual is amoung the worst documentations I've ever
   seen. Cryptical explanations, lousy (even buggy) examples.
   Anyone having tried to figure out how to draw lines, or
   using the CIAs, will know what I mean.

4) The demo scene was/is a learning ground for upcomming
   programmers.
   People make mistakes; beginners more than experienced.
   Some of these mistakes continued to flourish as sourcecodes
   and tricks were shared amoung coders. Problem was/is, that
   many coders rather get famous quick, than learn the craft
   well, so they just copied the code of other coders.

Now, this shows us that C= was partly to blame, because of
their incomprehensive Hardware Ref Guide. Well, the Hardware
Ref Guide was partly unusable, and besides only a minority of
the upcomming coders had a copy, but did that stop them? NO!
My prediction is that it will not stop them either, if C=
doesn't release a new Hardware Ref Guide, featuring the AGA
chips. As the AGA chips are made available in low-price
machines, and hence available to new upcomming coders, there
will a massive interest in how to program the chips, and
with or without a Guide, they will try. So I say, it is better
to release a new Guide, in order to set guidelines and to
prevent fatal errors.

Also, I think this discussion is biased. Most of the people
on Internet are students at college or university level, or
employees at a commercial company. This kind of people are
well educated in programming, and if some of them were raised
in the demo scene, they most likely have converted (like me.)
Even though we are Amiga users, I don't think that we
represent a very wide variety of the common Amiga users.
I am not complaining, just trying to set things in perspective.

--

Bjoern Reese                   |     Email: [e-mail]
Odense University, Denmark     |     Voice: [phone] (private)