What was Coding like 40 years ago?

[@crism8868]

This guy is like the Bob Ross of coding. His enthusiasm it's contagious!

[@jayak3768]

There are only happy accidents and programming bugs.

[@JoshuaPritt]

Agreed. Immediately reminded me of a high energy bob ross.

[@nicktender]

THATS WHAT IM SAYIN!

[@cheeko8080]

reminds me almost of a Bill Nye haha

[@zackattack7103]

That describes him perfectly

[@SebastianLague]

Really enjoyed the video (and that intro was just incredible)! I had a lot of fun trying to code my own version afterwards, although the line number thing really made me appreciate how good we have it these days. Will submit my attempt to the passenger showcase :)

[@TheCodingTrain]

Thanks for the kind feedback! So glad you tried it out!

[@aeuludag]

I would love to see the result aswell!

[@andtechie5210]

Hey hey! You are very much an inspiration. God bless you for the work you put out.

[@pedrohpf1990]

Don't get any ideas Sebastian! I wanna see that part 2 of neural networks, not how you rendered a whole open world in AppleSoft BASIC 😂

[@himanshudas9042]

Sebastian when I saw your coding adventure I realized that you and Daniel has a lot in common. And Glad to know that you are also fan of Daniel. You both are blessing to coding community.

[@Alex_C_5605]

This is how I started learning programming. In the Soviet Union in 80s we didn't have personal computers at homes and we didn't have a computer class at school. So we we had lessons, where we studied syntaxes of basic and we wrote programs on paper. Then, once in to weeks, we went to a computer class, where we had 45 minutes to type in a program and debug it. That was a challenge.

[@mikesummer670]

Мы так и в 2006-2007 году код писали на бумажках и даже экзамен так сдавали, большая часть занятий по программированию не за компами была

[@mnzcrsh]

@@mikesummer670в 2019 году, когда я учился в школе, все было точно также, код на листочках. Преподаватели видимо сидят там со времён перфокарт и особо не хотят ничего менять.

[@ishikilucas8148]

Woah I remember doing that in 2011 in India. 😅

[@Bruh-jh7vj]

I can't Imagine doing It

[@seanyao7491]

This is what I experienced exactly in 90s in China by using Apple //e, which amazed me shockingly. So that I am still an Apple fan

[@hidoryy]

what I love about your channel is that most of the other coding youtubers only talk about efficiency, jobs, why this or that language sucks because it's 0.0000003ms slower running a very specific thing and so on. Your videos really remind me how coding can be fun

[@matttondr9282]

To me, limited technology is almost more fun. Trying to figure out how to do something with a constraint is more fulfilling than being overwhelmed by the oceans of libraries.

[@archvaldor]

@@matttondr9282 That's a good point. People often state video games were better in those days because the constraints meant you couldn't rely on processing power to overwhelm you with graphics and suchlike, so you actually had to make an enjoyable game.

[@nathanjohnson9715]

@@archvaldor totally! Look up how much space the original mario bros took up. You'll be astonished.

[@archvaldor]

@@nathanjohnson9715 LOL I'm actually old enough to remember the 1k memory limit of a ZX81 one of the the first home computers sold commercially. The Mario Bros stuff looked like really advanced technology to me when it came along:)

[@Semeyaza]

@@matttondr9282 scarcity of resources is always a terrific catalyst for new and good ideas on how to use those resources very efficiently for exciting things. 😉

[@nagualdesign]

Less than 2 minutes in and you've already put a smile on my face. 😊

[@JohnDoe-sp3dc]

Came to the comments to say exactly this! The intro seemed like a labor of love.

[@stoliczek6362]

Especially the first minute is opening so less than 1 minute

[@tiksman17]

Absolutely true, this guy does everything with love

[@sbrunner69]

Same

[@GerardHennemann]

Same here! It seems so natural for him to be like this ☺️

[@chipotlewhitegirlstarbucks1015]

Whenever I'm putting off doing my coding work, I put on this video. When most people try to explain computer science to me, I get intimated. This guy is different. He has a cozy, comforting sort of enthusiasm that is super motivating.

[@leroyjenkinsss1767]

nice user name haha

[@yousuck6222]

Coders will code themselves out of a job in the end.

[@Fafr]

I could actually say the same. I'm the kind of person to just be always demotivated seeing others make things that are far out of my reach, but in this case, even though I am by far not even a decent programmer (yet?), this guy just made me think of making Snake in C++. Sure, for obvious reasons C++ is not Apple Basic, but in general that's still programming. I don't think I've ever been motivated to do something after seeing someone else do something before. EDIT: After watching the video more, I think I've noticed _why_ that's the case. Most (if not all) other content creators just show the finished product and what's in it. This person, on the other hand, shows the failings and the thought process as well, and that unlike other creators, he shows that even professional developers can make silly mistakes, and that it's normal.

[@MrJuliankilla]

woah haven't seen a marshall pfp in years

[@david203]

In the late 1970s I was a software engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation, working in their old mill spider-laden building in Maynard, MA, mostly on PDP-8 and VT-78 systems software. One lonely night during a weekend or holiday I decided to program a snake on the screen of my favorite small computer, the PDP-12. I did it in assembly language, as was most systems programming on the LINC and PDP-8 computers, which had merged to make the PDP-12. The result was a wonderful, keyboard-driven little game that worked perfectly. I wish there had been a way to release it to the world, but all we had was a mostly clunky user group, DECUS, and I didn't feel up to filling out forms and waiting. I guess I'm the only person who ever played that game I wrote on the PDP-12.

[@TheCodingTrain]

Thank you for sharing this story!

[@markussteinbacher8807]

What an expensive console to run Snake !! ;-)

[@axelschweiss7066]

I wrote Assembly on a PDP-11... what beautiful code that was... with it's indirect addressing...

[@david203]

@@axelschweiss7066 I also wrote in assembly language for early PDP-11s, when the programs were on punched cards--I designed a way to pack pages using groups of cards to maximize the use of same-page addressing. So after I'd written a program I would then manually pack the cards into pages. The programs thus made efficient use of memory. This was for an early hospital information system that tracked patients as they went through Kaiser Permanente clinics.

[@jordanphilipperris]

@@TheCodingTrain I could so picture you in a past collab with Bob Ross (I know of him because of an artist friend of mine) :) Anyways, I remember back in elementary school computer class, whenever we had any downtime, we would always be allowed to choose 1 of the following 3 games which are absolute classics: The Oregon Trail, Odell Lake & Number Munchers :) And don't even get me started about the Atari 2600 (I still have one, and it actually works!!) with games like; Crossbow, Frogger 1 & 2, Midnight magic, Pitfall 1 & 2, Time warp, Dig dug, Plaque attack, Pole position, Radar lock, Challenge, Mario bros, Donkey kong, Asteroids, Space adventure, Spider fighter, Moon patrol, Millipede, Mouse trap, Solaris, Pacman Jr, Mrs Packman, Galaxian, River raid 1 & 2, Desert falcon, Centipede, Ghostbusters, Crystal castles & Q-bert

[@robertmarmaduke186]

Back in the 1960s, you sat down at a card punch machine with your code scribbled on notes and CAREFULLY typed out the commands and syntax and punctuation, then took the card deck brick to the mainframe window, logged it in, and left. Next day you found that there was a typo _somewhere in the deck,_ and the program didn't run. Yet somehow, humans went to the moon on DOS 6.0, and designed the Golden Gate Bridge _without computers._

[@TheCodingTrain]

I would love to try this! Any recommendation on a vintage machine I could purchase and restore?

[@laincobayne]

I would have loved an alternate universe where Apollo ran DOS 6.0 It was an RTOS though, hard coded to core memory.

[@gabrielpaiz5954]

Plenty of people designed bridges that failed without computers too.

[@mikkirefur]

haha. the moon.

[@pseudocoder78]

DOS 6.0 was way more advanced than any computer software on Apollo. It didn't even come out until the 1990's. Also punch cards were used well into the 1970's. But, I get your point.

[@CrowMacnas]

This might be the best video that I have seen on the internet. It's like a kid's television program but for adults who were kids in the 80's. Makes me feel so good.

[@bitwize]

It's got a little bit of Bits & Bytes energy.

[@PracticalEngineeringChannel]

So good!

[@TheCodingTrain]

Thank you Grady!

[@palamz7027]

Hey Pratical Enginnering, I watch your videos every day and love all of them :D

[@oskrm]

Hey, an "Engineering like it's 1981" video would be cool too!

[@JohnPaulBuce]

hi

[@jonathandyer6385]

bro ive never seen a hearted comment that was replied to and the reply got a heart.. Nice 👌✌

[@grawl69]

That video brought so many memories. High school, 1987, we had one lesson of informatics a week. It was the first time I touched a computer. Archaic Polish Meritum, 32KB memory, 64x128 monitor pixels, programs loaded via even more archaic cassette recorders. As lessons were facultative, nobody cared much and most pals just played the snake. I was rather curious though and bought a Z80 processor programming textbook, just published. I learned the demands in machine code and started coding. It was easy! The first program I wrote was an improved version of the snake - ca. 800 commands + a short initial program in Basic. I remember how long it took me to type those 800 numbers without errors. But the result was fantastic. Pure satisfaction. You could accelerate the snake's movement from one side to the other by keeping the button pressed and slow down immediately by releasing it. Eating different signs gave different results. I even added some sound and visual effects. And the speed! Had to put a 1000x loop just to make it run slow enough to be playable. I was thinking about studying informatics but came to the conclusion that it would be boring as a life-long work. Missed opportunity, from today's perspective. I went humanistic and the next time I touched a computer was years later when I had to type up my MA thesis. On a borrowed comp. DOS, Windows, floppy disks, Microsoft Word! At first I had no idea how to get to a new line in Word and had to call my friend, who said "this big button, Enter". :D Have never coded again. Maybe I'll come back to it some day. But writing in machine code on a 8-bit processor was so much fun. I felt like a magician.

[@pedroteran5885]

Great story. I never got access to learning machine code as a kid, which was a great frustration to me.

[@devindepina7660]

this story made me laugh hahah

[@chromosundrift]

Yeah you’re gonna code again. Very soon. For fun!

[@CPSPD]

Omg, you really should jump in again! C was introduced in 1978 and it’s still overwhelmingly popular today. There’s a crazy depth to it now but it’s still fun, and the manual “The C Programming Language” by Kernighan and Ritchie who made the language is incredibly well written and gets you up to speed quickly. Im younger and never really looked up what the state of computer science and technology was in Poland over the years but I’ve always wondered, so thank you for sharing and shining a light on it. Trzymam kciuki :D

[@supermalavox]

You reminded me of my first computer, which I got in 1992. It ran MS-Dos, and had QBASIC as a programming language. It came equipped with a Braille display since I am born blind, and since Snake is a text-based game, I used to let the snake go one character at a time, pressed "p" to pause the game and continue its course when I could feel the distance between it and the number it had to eat. And that was challenging because my PC's Braille display only showed 40 characters and one line at a time. That was before audio games came around and I could hear my position on the board and my goals' position. I had fun! Thanks for the video!

[@mihaelandnate1]

This is a fascinating look into older disability nerd culture, ty. How would you say games are nowadays considering blindness?

[@supermalavox]

@@mihaelandnate1, screen readers have evolved a lot, allowing us to play some text-based games like the old - but still fun - Colossal Cave Adventure and hear a good narration, virtual assistants also help us play voice-based games and even the video game industry provides some degree of accessibility, like spoken menu options, stereo positioning, normally silent items that can make noises to indicate how far we are from them, etc. Lots of work still needs to be done, but it is certainly much better than when I had to rhythmically play NES' Punch Out! and memorize moves! Thanks for asking!

[@mihaelandnate1]

@@supermalavox this is good to know! sorry I did not reply sooner, as I suffered from acute sinus infection that sent me to the hospital. The reason I asked is because a friend of mine is going blind, and his comfort game is skyrim, with mods enabled for easier godmode. He sits less than a foot in front of his 60 inch TV, and despite having difficulty seeing, I am impressed that his ability to locate enemies is spot on. If you wouldn't mind, do you know of any PS4 games that are exciting, let you kill things, and feature stereo positioning, or maybe even allow for interaction not based on vision?

[@supermalavox]

@@mihaelandnate1, I hope your health is getting better now. I have not played games for a while, especially the newer ones. However, if I am not mistaken, "The Last of Us 2" had some accessibility features for blind people. But surely stereo positioning is found in a lot of games. Even Metal Gear Solid for PS1 had that feature and the player could use it to locate Liquid Snake's helicopter by hearing its sound!

[@denizsincar29]

ooh great. I am also blind and didn't know that msdos supported braille.

[@wrkey]

In the mid 70's we got our first computer as my dad was programmer. I was immediately enthralled with it and soon learned to program. This game was the first program I wrote. It was on a Radio Shack TRS-80. I graduated HS in 1980, college in 1983 and in 1982 I started my 35+ year career in IT. Thanks for this video. I've been looking for an old PC just so I could do what you are doing!

[@joefish6091]

Amstrad CPC464 or preferably CPC6128 (disk) which can run CP/M. Amstrad seems to be the pinnacle of 8bit, they learnt the lessons from all the rest.

[@stickfigure31]

I don't know about Radio Shack TRS-80, but there is an Atari 800 emulator out there (you have to find the bios file separately, the dev indents you to rip if from your own atari but it's online found via google) it boots straight to a basic prompt and has a save/load function for your basic programs. I still rough draft ideas in basic before moving on to C when the emulator get's to slow to execute my code.

[@Exposingscammers]

Ah. The good old TRS80 (nick named it trash 80 as a kid :D ) A fellow student had one of those and I had my Commodore 16 or maybe Commodore 64 a bit later. I've never owned a TRS 80 but have owned atari 2600, commodore 16, commodore vic20, a few Commodore 64's, commodore 128, about 9 Commodore Amiga 500's, a few Commodore Amiga 600's, Amiga 1200, 2 Amiga 2000's, 1 apple IIe, 1 intellivision , a few PC's and even 3 Playstation 2's. Of course I've also had 3 laptops as well (still have 2 of them) plus my gaming PC

[@notjux]

I haven't coded anything in 15 years, but watching someone nerd out over something they love is seriously infectious. Easy sub!

[@jonathandyer6385]

Yeah i can relate

[@pjf7044]

I think learning to code on something like this is great. Gives you a solid base and forces you to think about details we don’t even realize these days due to abstractions and frameworks.

[@lastraven3017]

I taught myself how to program using the TI-83+ and had no idea I was even doing BASIC until years later. I had no one to teach me, only the manual. Managed to make Tic Tac Toe eventually. Had an AI player as well. I eventually became a desktop tech, took on learning Powershell to automate tasks. Then I became a web developer... I miss the days where I could make something without running into a ton of configuration headaches.

[@matanzohar6783]

Please do more coding challenges on vintage hardware, maybe even make it it's own series! Everything about this is perfect, from the way it's edited to your wardrobe. Your best format so far

[@flflflflflfl]

Yes!!! Would love to see some C64 or ZX Spectrum stuff!

[@_crys_]

Mat Zo? 😮

[@johnwilliams3075]

A TurboPascal challenge!

[@thephoenixsystem6765]

You captured the excitement of learning your first coding language 👌 Love the debug montage btw

[@mattstevenson1334]

Montage was 🔥🔥

[@leftfishjet4029]

The year is 1984 and I'm in my grade four classroom. The school had provided our class with a Commodore 64 and I watched a friend writing lines of code in Commodore Basic during recess (yes, we were those kids). I instantly fell in love with the notion of solving the worlds problems with code and the best parts of my day are still doing essentially the exact same thing that we did in that classroom so (SO) long ago. LOVE this video and would happily binge watch a series on Apple Basic.

[@yousuck6222]

The problem i had as a kid was no-one said you can make money with code. They were just trying to sell games. No-one said i could basically hack any bank with a phone line because that would have peaked my interest.

[@miblish5168]

1984 was the year of the Macintosh (well, 1983).

[@heyyou4686]

Man the camera angles reminds me of those old creative TV shows really love 'em. Please keep on coming

[@niclash]

Tip 1; Don't print the whole snake on each loop. New position gets the "S" and first position get a space. Tip 2; Use the screen memory for collision detection, rather than looping though the X and Y arrays. Same for border. Print a border all around, and a single check to see collision (if same character for snake and border). Tip 3; As someone pointed out, Read and Write pointers on a fixed array is far more efficient as the snake grows larger, and won't slow down the game speed as it grows. Tip 4; Forget "snake" and do multiplayer "tron" instead. Tip 5; Multi player; Keyboard not liking multikey presses then leads to some other input device, or use a separate computer connected with cables.

[@TheCodingTrain]

Ahhhhhh such good tips!!

[@niclash]

@@TheCodingTrain Well, wrote (with a friend) ~80 games in a year or so, on PET2001. Most of them in Basic, and figured out every trick to go a little bit faster, use the 7168 bytes (+1024 bytes of screen RAM of which 24 bytes weren't visible) as efficiently as possible. Those were the days...

[@bavidlynx3409]

@@niclash i envy you so much. Wish i was a teenager at that time when the tech was budding

[@niclash]

@@bavidlynx3409 There is always "budding tech", but few people has the mind set to dig into such. 3D printing, federated social media, nano technology, IoT, the maker community, open source architecture, and so on. We were a total of 5 on the school who were interested, out of 1100. Most of the others hanged out with friends, played cards or sports... I.e. the easy path, the equivalent of "computer games" and "Facebook" in the last decade or so.

[@-Jakob-]

Here we go, was looking for those hints 1 to 3 - which instantly came to my mind as I grew up in the 80s with PET, 4032, C64.

[@mediocrefunkybeat]

About ten years ago, my brother was studying for his PhD and a company in the UK offered to pay for a significant chunk of it if he spent the summers working for them as a coder. The company in question was a supercomputing firm and had a large legacy FORTRAN codebase. My brother's job was to convert from the legacy version of FORTRAN into a newer version and to optimise the code - 77 to 2008 (I believe). It just so happens that our Grandfather used FORTRAN in his job back in the 70s and my brother would call him for tips and tricks at least once a week. It made me laugh...

[@WilliamLeeSims]

I was a very young coder in this era. You totally caught all of the nuances of coding during this time. I loved watching every minute of it!

[@AleksanderFimreite]

This makes me appriciate modern IDE and text editors so much more than I previously was.

[@john849ww]

True! But i remember on the C64 i could do a List and then arrow up to a line and make changes, then hit Enter.

[@damianbutterworth2434]

I found arduino`s easy after learning BASIC in the 80`s. It`s like being a big kid again.

[@joe--cool]

@@john849ww You can also do that on the Apple 2. Originally ESC A was right ESC B left ESC C down and ESC D up. You were pressing ESC a lot. The Apple ][+ ROM made it better where ESC once enabled the cursor mode and I J K M moves it. Saves a lot of typing.

[@lovemadeinjapan]

@@john849ww That was f*ing annoying. C64 Basic was horror. List was ok with 10 lines of code, but I could do EDIT 2000 and then hit a key to edit the next line. It was also worth an applause if you could get the cursor where you wanted with those nasty 2 arrow keys. Also C64 did not have insert, so if you needed to put something in between, it was a nightmare. Last unbearable thing of C64 BASIC is the way it deals with upper/lower case and does not recognize commands if in wrong case.

[@juliusbecker8451]

I would love to see this as a series. I just love code writen with technical constrains

[@williamist]

oh yes, that would be amazing!

[@WindowsDrawer]

Same

[@loupax]

I love how I was always been taught that BASIC is an easy programming language for beginners, and here I am, realizing that it's basically syntactic sugar for Assembly.

[@dudenoway1267]

Easy to get started, but it can take years to really perfect an approach to it. You can go with something similar to what he uses in the video or with a little more modern basic that can make some pretty powerful programs depending on your style of programing. That's part of what makes BASIC so fun is you can do what ever you want with it, just depends on how much effort you want to put forth.

[@QuizmasterLaw]

yeah, basic is a great way to start learning assembly.

[@Vexxel256]

I mean a lot of languages are just syntactic sugar like kotlin, Go, Assembly itself is a syntactic sugar for binary.

[@C.K.MillerPoet_Extraordinaire]

@Stephen Porter Chris Sawyer is his name. you do well to show him the respect he deserves

[@moxxy3565]

@Stephen Porter that was a huge part of the games commercial success as well. Being written in assembly made it very small and fast. Could run on basically any computer of the era.

[@real2nick]

Nice...this was the programming language where I started my journey as a programmer back in the 90' in elementary school...I remembered everything

[@upir_upir]

Character 13 is carriage return - or, simply said, the "Enter" key you have pressed when executing the program. Anyway, this is a great video. I´m enjoying it a lot!

[@error.418]

The "RETURN" key on an Apple IIe ;)

[@johnman8673]

This brings back memories! BTW, you don't need to switch off and then back on the Apple to stop your running program - just hit control-C (which I see you use later on in the video!).

[@JacquesZahar]

When you showed the PEEK and POKE keywords, I lost my mind. Man, back then I actually USED these keywords on the Apple IIe! had completely forgotten about these. What a trip to memory lane (Just realized I'm getting old). Thank you for that!

[@masterstroggo]

If you ask me, Daniel Shiffman is the most important person on youtube. I basically own my current career within IT thanks to Shiffmans inspirational videos. I started following and recreating his projects many years ago in Processing 3 and have sticked around ever since. Thank you Daniel!

[@TheCodingTrain]

Thank you for your kind comment!

[@byronrobbins8834]

@@TheCodingTrain now we have a video upload of what coding had looked like in the analogue days, comparison to what is in the digital era.

[@eekee6034]

@@byronrobbins8834 What? That was very much the digital era. Analog computers were something else entirely; totally alien even compared to this. :)

[@rdear]

My favorite character, hands down, is this.dot! Can’t wait to see their story arc this season! You’re awesome, Dan!!!

[@daw162]

I haven't been to your channel before, and am not a programmer. But the look was so legit from the 80s - shirt, glasses, etc, that I had to think for a few seconds about whether or not the video was taken now or 35-40 years ago.

[@Amr-Ibrahim-AI]

This is so nostalgic! Reminds me of my very first coding attempts in GW BASIC on MS DOS in 1988! Thanks for sharing the warmth, Daniel!

[@Amr-Ibrahim-AI]

@ghost mall Yes! Same here :) I had been trying to simulate buttons on text mode, too :)

[@BountifulOne2024]

OMG!!! This is the most fun I've had in years! Takes me right back to 1981 and having to learn to operate the Apple IIe for the company I worked for. Gosub was always my favorite too. Thank you sooooo much for this!

[@TheGuyThatEveryoneIgnores]

The Apple //e was released in 1983.

[@MiloDC]

This is awesome! Took me STRAIGHT back to my TRS-80 Model I programming days from grade school to junior high school in the 1980s! ❤ (Today, I'm a senior software engineer specializing in C++/C, F#, and C# at a major corporation, coding SDKs and services for other programmers worldwide.) Such an immensely exciting period of discovery and growth. What a time to be alive! When he started talking about switching program flow to another function, I said out loud, "Here comes GOSUB," LOL! And I *KNEW* that he would use line number 1000, classic!

[@NeilBeresford]

I was exactly the same, shouting GOSUB 1000! I started coding at school in 1979, so at 14, I worked on a RM 380Z programing CESIL and BASIC. I always remember the power I felt, when I coded my first program and it appeared on the old black and white valve televison! Fantastic. Now, I am a senior embedded software engineer, but started my coding career as a games programmer. in the 80s. Thoses were amazing times and I worked with some amazing people. I feel very lucky being very old! :-)

[@rinka4560]

Wow. I'm taking C++ classes at my college, and I've become pretty familiar with how to code basic things, but in the style of a modern programmer. Seeing just how coding works on something just a bit more primitive is actually so amazing to see. Something as simple as a computer dedicated to making programs and drawing things is really neat and I want to see you do more things like it. I actually really interested in reading up on the manual to see all the sorts of cool stuff these computers can do. Thank you for sharing both your computer and your programming expertise :)

[@marksmith2738]

It may look like a computer dedicated to programming and drawing stuff but actually, some of the most popular uses of this computer were playing games (there were thousands of them), connecting to bulletin boards (which were sort of like sites on the internet, without the internet part) and there was even productivity apps like VisiCalc and WordPerfect. You could also expand the computer with other cpu's and memory cards and run programs like dBase. dBase, as its name implies, had a pretty sophisticated database system built into it, but it was also an incredibly powerful general purpose programming language. I wrote a program in dBase (released in '83) that emulated what google does today, but there was no internet to speak of back then so it just indexed your local machine, but it did allow you to host the resulting index online for dialup access and searching using the TBBS bulletin board system.

[@AbelShields]

This is really cool, I made a snake game almost exactly like this on a graphing calculator in a basic-like language. It's so fun to deal with the constraints of the hardware - initially it was O(n) and visually slowed down as the snake grew before I switched to a ring buffer structure. Very fun!

[@Ludix147]

Yeah, i also made snake for my graphing calculator! Good times. Though I only ever added on on the front and didn't move the end of the snake. my snake was infinitely long, and the goal was to make it through predrawn mazes without hitting the wall

[@zzzsleeper-_-3653]

You just brought back a lot of memories. I was always curious what that screen meant

[@alexmcd378]

I think the slowdown is from shuffling the snake segments through the arrays as you move. You could speed it up dramatically by using something like head and tail pointers into the array. Then instead of N operations for an N segment snake, you only have 2 for any length >=2. Draw the new head and delete the old tail.

[@DylanMatthewTurner]

I love old hardware. I have this old graphic LCD, a raspberry pi, and a mechanical keyboard that I was gonna turn into a digital typewriter to take to coffee shops, but maybe I should make it so it can also run some kind of basic so I can make little games for it.

[@TheCodingTrain]

If you do please share!!

[@david203]

Implementing a programming language is called systems programming, and I did it for 40 years. It can be done and it's lots of fun.

[@voidseeker4394]

For some reason i feel so wrong about using powerful modern hardware to simulate old weak hardware... Raspberry Pi is a real modern computer, it can run modern linux, it can do tasks like speech and image recognition, it can run high-resolution graphics... definitely an overkill for digital typewriter. If i were you I'd rather buy real old system on ebay, restore and use it for fun, or recreated one with microcontrollers or something of comparable resource capacity.

[@DylanMatthewTurner]

@@voidseeker4394 Why would I buy something else when I already have like 10 raspberry PIs lol?

[@shawn4990]

Oh the joys of Apple line code... 'goto' takes me back to writing my own programs in high school - the simplicity , the ease, the joy. I aced that class.

[@Noycey64]

I bought a Sinclair ZX81 with 16k RAM expansion in 1981 when I was in high school. I wrote my own Snake game on it and loved playing it, I got the idea from a snake game I saw on a TRS-80 that the school owned.

[@JSYoutuber2]

I wrote a snake game for the TRS-80 that I sold through the Radio Shack Software Catalog. Maybe that one :-) I wrote it in a hybrid of basic and machine code. The Machine code was to overcome the obvious performance limitations. My parents wouldn't buy assembler so I wrote it in machine code completely manually. Wish I still had the code to look at but my dad said that computers where a fad and sold the whole thing out from under me and wanted me to not learn any more computer stuff. He said it was a waste of time so I did and took 20 years before I returned to the profession after missing some of the best years.

[@mikkirefur]

@@JSKZbinr2 wow. i wrote the game snake in 1982 or 1983. maybe i was inspired by you. i cant remember what inspired me though. I continued with programming, but went from vic 20, 4k memory, to a Kaypro II CP/M system, business computer. so i learned databases and spreadsheets, it did not have built-in graphics. I sometimes also wonder what would have happened if I got a Commodore 64 or Amiga, and really got into graphics. If we would have only known then, what we know now.

[@lifeinbitsmedia7681]

@@mikkirefur I created a dBase database for managing a local baseball league as a internship in college on a system with CP/M in the 80's. Don't remember if it was a Kaypro II or something else.

[@mikkirefur]

@Life in Bits Media I created a dice (random6) game for a fantasy baseball game my friend created. He loved stats and would roll through whole games and seasons. I used his logic (walk, xo, 1b,2b,3b,hr,etc) and kicked out games in seconds. I look back at all these early programs (print invoices for dads friend company, moving company software) and realize I had million dollar business starting so early. Well, here's to crypto, ai, web3, and promoting integrity

[@lifeinbitsmedia7681]

@@mikkirefur I did similar things like create a program to track golf scores for my Dad's golf group, printing out baseball game score cards for my brother who liked to score baseball games while watching them, though those efforts were a little later in the IBM PC days. And they said home PCs what never sell because people would have no use for them. The one thing I did in that time period that I was most proud of was create a solitaire game. That took a while.

[@deckarep]

Oh my goodness, the nostalgia hurts so good. Cheesy intro check! Retro computing check! Synthwave music and graphics check! And one heck of a shirt check! Love it! Daniel, since you are going down this path would love to see some content on coding for a fantasy console such as Pico-8 or Tic-80!!

[@dvircafri9811]

Wow, seeing that Beagle Bros poster ejected my brain right back to the 80s when I was using it to code my Apple IIe. I think I even have it somewhere in my storage. Long forgotten memories...

[@lobsangbarriga5324]

Super insightful video, the last key pressed at 8:08 was ASCII 13 = CR (Carriage return) which is the return/enter key on apple. Fun fact the Carriage return is named like that because of mechanical typewriters (the steel lever to return the carriage is named the same way) 😆

[@TheGuyThatEveryoneIgnores]

I have always thought that Apple got it right by using the carriage return as the new line character. After all, the carriage return lever on manual typewriters not only moved the carriage so that the next key typed would be at the left edge of the paper, but it also advanced the paper up by one line. Unix used the line feed character as the new line character and Microsoft could not decide, so it used both.

[@danbailey9591]

@@TheGuyThatEveryoneIgnores And we've been dealing with that decision ever since :) Computer Science in the early 80s, we pretty much memorized the ASCII chart. My machine then was the 16K Tandy Color Computer.

[@tecnoworldsgamingchannel5341]

That was incredible, you made me feel like a little kid in front of my Commodore 64 (the BASIC was very similar to the one you used here). I still remember the Baloon coding example in the C=64 manual... those were the days

[@rena10009]

0:53 expected to see him dragging the apple 2 on the leash before i noticed it in his hand lol

[@Mutual_Information]

I’m bringing an Apple 2 to my next coding interview - for flex purposes exclusively.

[@david203]

I don't think an Apple 2 will flex very much before it breaks.

[@JanWestin]

The thought process and iterration is the star of the show. Great content!

[@YugoZex]

I used to write programs in basic in 80's when I was a kid. So similar to this but different. You brought me back 40 years when I was doing this. Thanks so much fun and remembering old tricks.

[@DielsonSales]

How was it different?

[@YugoZex]

@@DielsonSales It's different in some details. With small adjustments it can be used on different computer with basic. First difference is number of characters on screen (lines and columns), second is number of pixels, third basic vary from basic to basic. This basic is 90% similar to Sinclair ZX spectrum but there are differences how you write the line.

[@damianbutterworth2434]

@@YugoZex Was a lot fast typing in the code on the Spectrum when you got used to all the keywords. Still got my ZXSpectrum.

[@Luis0n7i]

This is so cool!! I'd absolutely LOVE to see more of this old-time coding content!!

[@OlafDoschke]

I actually once did this in the late 80s while I was chronologically on an Atari ST already, when we had Apple IIe in school in computer science lessons (yes, back then already it was a school subject). I did reuse my 6502 knowledge from C64 programming and the snake mainly was implementing a stack (well, or a queue. I used two indexes on a memory array. You could literally do this in your array implementation, too, which removes the need to shift array elements). I added levels with barriers as I knew from one snake clone game on the ST and the computer science teacher told me his son actually enjoyed playing this.

[@TheCodingTrain]

Thank you for sharing this story! (And great tip too!)

[@OlafDoschke]

@@TheCodingTrain Also thank you for reminding me of these times back in school. I don't know by how much the two index queue accelerates the snake, it I guess it gives a bit headroom for turning up the difficulty level.

[@madcommodore]

Well in 1982 coding on the Commodore VIC-20 was pretty simple, even in machine code, thanks to excellent books and magazine articles and a user interface superior to the $4000 IBM PC :)

[@Breakfast_of_Champions]

The Commodore fullscreen interface/editor was the definition of elegance, but hunting down the handful of relevant books and tips in magazines was very pedestrian!

[@madcommodore]

@@Breakfast_of_Champions I had the VIC-20 programmer's ref guide plus Commodore User UK magazine had lots of programming tutorials. Finding this info again now is tricky without the magazines, took me months to find out how to do a full screen reverse scroll in BASIC again so I could write a car game with the sprite on the bottom of the screen. Sad but loads of information for little hacks like that are very difficult to find in the age of the internet.

[@mr.deenamiq]

Your enthusiasm about coding in BASIC on a system 40 years old is infectious. It makes me remember the time I - as a 10 year old - wrote a BASIC program on an MSX-1 system that would function as a catalog program for my dad's vinyl collection. Took me days to complete, but it was worth it. I never had any experience with Apple computers though. My first system was a MSX-1 and I learned BASIC on it. Some years later I moved on to a regular IBM 386 system and worked with QuickBASIC. Eventually I started coding in PHP & JavaScript and build my own web-applications.

[@pyhead9916]

Those were the days, I remember them well!

[@thefroable]

I wish I could have watched this in the late 80s when I was a little kid reading the BASIC books in the library and programming on my parents Apple IIe. Brought back a lot of good memories.

[@xnick_uy]

This brings back memories. I didn't own an Apple, but when I was a kid our family got a Coleco Vision system, and a few years later I was very lucky to come in contact with a full-fledged PC with DOS. I tried my hand at several Basic programs, and had lots of fun (but I never got to a full-fledged understanding of all I needed). I recall that I attempted to create a chess board in Basic, which was kind of cool for the time, but very difficult to program and maintain (the graphic resources for Basic are quite limited).

[@1robhook]

I started out on a Coleco ADAM as well. They had their flaws but were actually cool systems. I still have a couple of them.

[@KennTollens]

Qbasic was my first language and I did goto also. I remember a computer coming into the class in the 80s and everyone was so excited. We were allowed to play the snake game on it. Then we let it count for the day to see how high it could get.

[@IcelandCastleford]

Watching this brought back many happy childhood memories of typing out game programs that used to be printed in magazines back in those days on my Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K. Myself and dad used to take it in turns of one typing while the other read out the code. I still remember some of the terms we used to use for speaking some of the special characters. A colon was read out as two dots whereas a semi-colon was a dot and a comma. I used to rip the programming sections from those magazines and but them in folders to type out at a later date. Wish I’d kept them.

[@VideoNOLA]

Brings back fond memories.

[@NathanRichHotpot]

I was at the age that this Basic was crappy to use, because MS had its QBasic. And that almost exclusively is why I used PC/DOS rather than Mac. Great video ~ loved the execution. I remember almost all of those commands :D

[@thebeardedgnome766]

I learned coding with a "game" called Basic on a toy laptop when I was seven or eight years old. Didn't even know what "programming" was but I thought it was a fun game! Nostalgia hardcore here.

[@Lenore4Evermore]

MEEE TOOO!!!! :)

[@smileychess]

I sent this to my dad. He always tells the story of how he coded a full featured Monopoly game in BASIC, with over 10k lines of code. But unfortunately his program was too big and he ran out of memory, so he scrapped the project. He said this video brought back lots of good memories.

[@PeanutNore]

This was a really enlightening video. I ended up understanding the code well enough that I was able to port it to Commodore BASIC for the C64. This meant replacing the HTAB and VTAB statements with POKE. So placing the food becomes: 2020 poke 1024+fx+40*fy,6

[@diymicha2]

26:22 you don't need an error check for the food, just use LET W = 39 : LET H = 23 LET FX = INT ( RND (1) * W) + 1 LET FY = INT ( RND (1) * H) + 1 so you'll always get 1 to 40 and 1 to 24 as result. Oh, and for the snake I would first print the new position, and in the next lines delete the old one, this way it doesn't flicker that much. The eye won't recognize that for a few commands there is one piece of snake to much on the screen.

[@zixvirzjghamn737]

@@JB-mm5ff speedrun though

[@ImDissonance]

I'm 1 year into my career as a software developer and I always wonder what it was like coding back in the day. Thank you! By the way I love your enthusiasm!

[@TheCodingTrain]

This is why I made this video, yay!

[@mikewalker1081]

I had to punch cards and do the same thing this guy is doing, except had to wait on the program to be compiled, put into a que , then wait for it to run,, the horrors! I hated CS classes, had to learn all the dead languages, FORTRAN, SAS, and COBOL.

[@robertholtz]

You could stop (“break” was the term) any program by simply pressing Ctrl-C. You didn’t need to turn the whole computer off. That was still a nice walk down memory lane.

[@henrikkniberg]

Loved this, gave me lots of childhood memories :) Quick silly question: How did you record the screen?

[@TheCodingTrain]

Analog video splitter to HDMI converter to capture card!

[@mrgps4393]

he has a modern pc somewhere...

[@erlking9910]

5 years ago you got me interested in coding and now I’m a teachers assistant and a computer science major 👌

[@joshuagolembiewski5383]

Simple times but seeing that set up really helps to showcase how individuals that started with these early machines really have a good in-depth understanding of programming in general, more so than say a student gets in their introductory classes today. Foundational truly.

[@slendi9623]

Very cool episode. Would be cool to see some assembly too!

[@christianh2581]

Some years ago I also programmed snake for fun on the original gameboy in assembly (however while using a modern computer to do so)

[@pocoapoco2]

13 is the [return] key. If you want to speed up your program use "%" after all of your variables that don't need to have a decimal. By default applesoft treated all unspecified variable types as floating point variables. Using the % after a variable makes it an integer (16 bit) variable.

[@TheGuyThatEveryoneIgnores]

Numbers in Apple's FP BASIC (Floating Point BASIC) were stored as character strings. Converting the character string numbers to binary numbers, as the BASIC program ran, was very, very slow. I wrote a simple BASIC compiler that only understood the hi-res instructions (HGR, HGR2, HCOLOR=, HPLOT, and TO) and hard-coded coordinates. My compiler did the work of converting the character string coordinates to binary numbers and then generated machine code to call the same ROM routines used by the hi-res instructions. A program written in BASIC literally ran a hundred times as fast once it was compiled. Most of the BASIC program's execution time was the number conversions, not the line drawing.

[@mcresearch]

I used to code on an Apple II and this was a brush with nostalgia. The machine was ahead of its time and had me captivated.

[@firstnamelastname2552]

When I was kid in the mid 80s my dad got a big book with the code for a couple of different games. It was a project we would work on together sometimes. We'd take turns one would read it out loud and the other would type it. We ended up with a semi-functioning game that we were always tinkering with and trying to modify with our own ideas and trying weird stuff with the code. I learned a lot from it and we had good bonding time.

[@wristocrat]

So nice to see how quickly it boots up

[@Domarius64]

As a fan of retro tech and retro video games, I love that you're so aware of 4:3 ratio that you notably transition from it back to wide screen after the intro. Very refreshing after seeing so many "lets' plays" of DOS games being played stretched into WIDESCREEN!! >:(

[@chrizzzly_hh]

One of the greatest creators. Brining wisedom, fun, and smiles while coding. Love all your videos! :) and you did a great nostalgic feeling for the one of us from the c64 generation :D

[@MattReidy]

What a blast from the past - I started coding on an Apple II myself around 1983. I had that same Beagle Bros poster too! :)

[@stvj]

Yep. I took a course in school around 1982 where we learned Basic on a Apple II Europlus (6 Apples, 1 floppy drive for all of them). At the end I've coded a tennis game for 2 players using the graphics mode. That mixed graphics / text mode really made debugging easy. Keyboard input from 2 players didn't really work well, but I still have fond memories of the Apple II.

[@hockeyguy9974]

This guy is an amazing human being. I feel like a kid again in the 80s-90s when I was incredibly obsessed with my first computers.

[@widearchshark3981]

Ahhhh, I had a nostalgia rush there, although for me it was with the ZX Spectrum. But I honestly think this was almost exactly the same! You're a madman, but eminently watchable. We need more people like you in this world :)

[@deang5622]

Must have been awful programming on a rubber keyboard..

[@widearchshark3981]

@@deang5622 You know, you got used to it. One thing about the Spectrum was that each key would be a shortcut for a function. So pressing "H" for instance, and the Spectrum typed "GOSUB" for you. The biggest problem I think was that BASIC was pretty rubbish (and I include AppleSoft BASIC as well), even back then. If you wanted proper games you really had to use Assembly. But because you only had 48K, and the expectation of graphics was MUCH MUCH lower, it was pretty incredible what you could create. You should never have asked... I could go on all day ! It was a sea change over the ZX81 I had. Don't even ask about that "keyboard" !!

[@TheGuyThatEveryoneIgnores]

@@widearchshark3981 Yes, BASIC was pretty much useless when it came to writing video games that could run in real-time. I never had an assembler back in the day, so I thought in assembly and typed in hexadecimal (machine code). However, BASIC was useful for figuring out some things. I once wrote a 3D maze program in BASIC that animated ten frames to advance one space in the maze and eighteen frames to turn left or right. My BASIC program took about two and a half minutes to draw one frame! Once I had fully debugged it though, I manually converted the program to machine language which made it run a thousand times as fast.

[@Klawifiantix]

You are a legend, so well done - beautiful! Thank you!

[@RolandRegus974]

Bro, I just want to let you know you are my favorite coding channel and I LOVE your personality and the work you put into your video's. I appreciate it.

[@ddognine]

I remember when I was in 4th grade in the 80s, our class got an Apple II. We were allowed to program it, so my friend and I programmed Breakout on it. It took us about a thousand lines of code, and it worked. IIRC, we even had a second level (we didn't have time for more levels). And not to be outdone, I decided it needed some music, so I programmed the Raiders of the Lost Ark theme which was really popular at the time. Looking back, I am amazed that two 9 year olds were able to do that without any prior experience or knowledge. We just sort of figured it out on our own because our teacher was no help. And it didn't take us that long either seeing it was just sort of a project we managed to do during class. My adult mind would probably balk at the task paralyzed by the obstacles it would envision. My kid mind didn't care and just got it done, and everyone in our class wanted to play it.

[@atlantic_love]

@ghost mall One way might be to adjust the angle based on the speed and direction of the paddle when the ball hits it. And if IIRC in breakout you could reverse the direction of the ball (send it back from where it came).

[@gasun1274]

i want that childlike curiosity and motivation back, it's been a while.

[@aspol12]

@@atlantic_love yes 4th grade stuff

[@atlantic_love]

@@aspol12 Are you making fun of OP?

[@error.418]

This was me on the TI-84 calculator with TI-BASIC and using the link cable to share it with everyone since that calculator was a class requirement.

[@musilicks]

Wow... I hadn't watched a video of yours since back when I was learning JS a few years ago, but this truly reminded why I loved watching you so much back then. You're so entertaining Mr. Shiffy.

[@bunmonk1903]

This just took me back to elementary school in the 80s. I had a vague memory of doing all of this and now it has all come flooding back. Thank you!

[@CedLePingouin]

Well, I wasn't expecting that. What a pleasant and nostalgia-filled surprise. Very good video. I got into computers and programming in the 80s on a PC XT with GW-BASIC (like Amr Ibrahim), not really knowing what I was doing. It spawned a passion that I still have today... and a career as a programmer.

[@wekesirken6961]

All I can do is appreciate how far we've come and admire early day programmers

[@PhG1961]

A wonderfull trip down memory lane. I feel really sorry that I sold my Apple II+ many years ago!

[@inkmime]

Oh my god that intro get up really does make him look like some bedroom programmer who just got out of the late 1970s with his wire glasses and beard, absolutely brilliant

[@b4ux1t3-tech]

Started programming as a kid in the 90s on my grandparents' Commodore 64. Good ol' Commodore BASIC! This brings back so many memories. Programming as a whole is better today. It really is. But there's something about numbering your own lines and poking around the computer's memory that gets my nerd juices flowing. Great video! Not one I ever expected to see from you, but a fun watch in any case!

[@acjazz01]

I was there, I started coding at 18 programming in Basic language with a TK-90, a ZX Spectrum computer like. It was an inexpensive and easy-to-use computer, a small box connected to a TV monitor and everything is ready to go.

[@atlantic_love]

I was going through a very rough time in my life, dealing with physical abuse at the hands of my father. Around my senior year I took a computing course and we were learning BASIC. This was 1990. I can remember drawing a bomb and creating a wire from it to a house that I made. Thank GOD I never went any further, nor did my father (my brother and I were pulled from our home and I lived with my aunt and uncle).

[@trickysoft]

40 years ago I was on my second and favourite computer of all time, the Acorn BBC micro. The BASIC had structured constructs and I believe only had line numbers at the BBC's request. The BASIC also had a built in assembler which I think was unique at the time. I only had the user guide which covered part of the OS and BASIC and the advanced user guide which had more OS, assembler and all the hardware. The machine also came with a copy of the circuit diagram!

[@The_washing_board]

We grew up learning how to program and then how to build a PC. No tablets or Google :)

[@erikhendrickson59]

The mere sound of that keyboard gives me some serious childhood nostalgia~

[@xotmatrix]

This could be made much more performant by treating the position arrays as ring buffers and advancing head and tail positions. Then you only need to draw and erase one character per step. It will run at constant speed no matter how long the snake is. More in-depth Apple II knowledge will help when it comes time for collision detection. It is possible to read the screen memory directly, which will save a lot of time compared to iterating over the length of the snake, allowing it to run in constant time. Because the text screen and low resolution graphics share the same memory, the graphics function SCRN() will do the trick.

[@TheCodingTrain]

ooooh, this is such amazing info! Thank you for the comments and feedback!

[@Trashbd]

Really, you just need the start and the end of the snake, for each frame clear the end and move the start in correct direction. Since you just check if the head is written on a byte that contains a space or food, when hitting food you just dont delete the end until the food is consumed.

[@TheCodingTrain]

@@Trashbd this is such a good point! I'm not sure how I missed this! That said, for the expanded version where I check if you've lost the game I use the array to check all the existing positions of the body. Maybe there's a clever trick around that too?

[@Trashbd]

@@TheCodingTrain When you draw your next position you just need to check if the position you draw it at already have a drawn body, if it is food or if it is empty space. This breaks down to a really simple gameloop. that possibly could be made in like ten to twenty lines of readable code.

[@Trashbd]

The point is that when the head have entered a legal portion of the screen it becomes a part of the body in the next iteration and all you have to focus on is the ends of the snake.

[@kallek5655]

Nice, this reminds me of my C64 times, the BASIC there was pretty similar from what I remember. I did program Snake, but some time later, for DOS in x86 assembly, that was fun, too :)

[@romievthedon]

I've barely gotten past the opening theme and this is already interesting😂

[@FloatingSunfish]

Makes me appreciate how far we've come in terms of programming, especially for making games. Having to deal with line numbers sucks.

[@guga_en]

Thank you for showing how to make coding on old times

[@Speed-TV]

Yo this video is super high budget, it pains me that even dream's videos are still more popular than this

[@artful1967]

i did my A Level in computer science on a BBC model B using BASIC. The nostalgia is strong ( and my first computer was a Spectrum 48k also with BASIC or if you were super clever machine code on Z80 Zilog. would love you to take us on a trip down amnesia avenue. Do you remember using overflows to make self modifying code?