News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Spacewar written in Apple Logo. Parent comment

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.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Spacewar written in Apple Logo by Someone on Thursday September 27, 2018 @03:42PM (#18087902)
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.

[ Parent | on HN ]