Re:Spacewar written in Apple Logo
by reaperducer on Thursday September 27, 2018 @02:50PM
(#18087525)
The 6502 just doesn't have enough CPU/RAM to do anything where you need a powerful language
I'm not sure about this assertion. Pretty much every major high-level language of the time was available for the 64, including C, FORTH, FORTRAN, COBOL, and I think even PASCAL.
Even pascal? Pascal can be compiled (1) in a single pass. That makes it easier to write a compiler for it than C if memory is tight.
And indeed: https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Pascal lists seven different pascal compilers for the C64; https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/C lists only four C compilers. I don’t know how complete these implementations were.
(1) not optimally, but many people would compare the speed and size of compiled code with interpreted Basic (if you really needed speed, you would use assembly), so that often didn’t matter much.
The 6502 just doesn't have enough CPU/RAM to do anything where you need a powerful language -- or to run a self-hosted compiler (I assume that's what it was). It was easy to draw "high resolution" lines (at 320x200, or about twice the pixel count of a fingertip-sized iOS icon) but it was so slow you could see each line being drawn. The compiler ran at "go take a snack break" speed, even for short programs.
It was possible to make the 6502 run faster than its clock speed suggested, but you needed to take advantage of features (like zero page) that HLLs didn't seem to be able to optimize for. I didn't use a compiler until we got a 16-bit computer, and I didn't like them until I got a 32-bit computer.