Re:Show HN: Old School Graphics Algorithms
by ggambetta on Sunday July 07, 2019 @05:15AM
(#20374252)
Lovely :) The examples remind me of the short programs for the ZX Spectrum published in magazines like Microhobby, which would create visually interesting images using PLOT, DRAW, and a couple of loops. Come to think about it, that might have been my first contact with Computer Graphics :)
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Old School Graphics Algorithms
by stevekemp on Sunday July 07, 2019 @12:33PM
(#20375918)
My first introduction to graphics was definitely the type-in-program listed in the back of the (orange) manual I received with my 48k ZX Spectrum. It drew a UK-flag.
Here's the source, which gives me a moment of nostalgia:
http://boriel.com/wiki/en/index.php/ZX_BASIC:Flag.bas
I wrote a simple BASIC interpreter recently, in golang, and hacked in support for outputing PNG images of code. I should see if I can get that sample to run (mostly) unchanged!
Re:Show HN: Old School Graphics Algorithms
by ggambetta on Sunday July 07, 2019 @12:57PM
(#20376100)
Nice! Some time ago I worked on a ZX BASIC interpreter in Javascript, so it could run on browsers. My idea was that kids these days™ don't have an environment as easily available and immediately gratifying as we did back then, so I wanted to make one!
Have you considered doing something similar with yours?
Re:Show HN: Old School Graphics Algorithms
by stevekemp on Monday July 08, 2019 @03:27AM
(#20380628)
I did embed it in a web-server, so that the user can enter BASIC into a <textarea> and have the output rendered by their browser as an image. I called it "visual basic" ;)
https://github.com/skx/gobasic/#80-print-visual-basic
Just a small example really of embedding, I suspect to make it really useful for new-programmers it'd need a lot of overhaul.
When my child gets old enough I'll probably just give them a BBC-emulator, or similar to get started with.