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t.tabloid
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2022-08-26
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79 lines
u
TABLOID HEADLINE CREATOR
Program by Joshua & Richard Derocher
Text by Dave Moorman
Joshua and Richard are our two
youngest contributers. I can imagine
them hunched in front of the monitor
as they wrote this program -- laughing
their heads off!
That is because Tabloid Headline
Creator does in seconds what takes the
whole staff of Weekly World News a
full week to accomplish -- coming up
with outrageous headlines involving
celebrities, scandals, and strange
science!
I am particularly fond of Weekly
World News. It's the one with no color
-- and a photo/headline that always
brings a smile. The first issue I
noticed had a guy holding a four foot
long grasshopper up by its hind legs.
The reason I noticed it was that Dad
used to have a postcard with that same
picture on it -- from the late 1940's!
Not that WWN fails to be timely. A
couple months ago, the headline was
"Pope Counters Scandal with Robot
Priests!"
That aside aside, this kind of
program is one of the funnest things
to do with a computer. It's all random
numbers and string arrays -- two
things Basic does very well. And this
program is very well laid out with
appropriate REMs and meaningful blocks
of code.
As editor, I took the liberty to
make the headlines centered if short
enough, doing all the phrase PRINTing
in a subroutine at 59000. This also
required reseting the line links after
a character is printed to column 39.
(I am glad I read the [ZP: Basics]
text on this issue first, or I would
never have figured out what was
wrong!)
Some things could be done
differently. But the only rule of
correct programming is "Does it
WORK!?" The Derochers made no major
boo-boos -- such as illegal exits from
FOR-NEXT loops. So it works, looks
nice, and gives a great laugh or two!
What can we do to convince other
kids that C-64 programming is fun and
challenging? I have shown young teens
programs like this and told them THEY
could do something like it. I don't
think they believe me.
Joshua and Richard are learning
that THEY [CAN] make anything happen
on a C-64. And I can't wait to find
out what they will do next!
DMM