ZX Spectrum at 40: a look back

Re:ZX Spectrum at 40: a look back by noobermin on Saturday February 19, 2022 @02:09PM (#30399599)

I could have a rant about your last line there. I even long for the days of the 00s when web programming was much more simpler albeit a little hairy. The obtuseness of modern js development is obscene and with little sincere justification. I think it's true capabilities bring about some minimum level of complexity but the level of complexity in modern software sometimes seems rather unnecessary.

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Re:ZX Spectrum at 40: a look back by mdb31 on Saturday February 19, 2022 @02:25PM (#30399728)

I sort-of get what you're saying here, I think, but I'm not sure you're right.

As an inquisitive young person, you are, quite likely, at some point confronted with something that seems like magic.

If you're truly (or perhaps excessively?) inquisitive, you try to dissect that magic. Sometimes that leads to true understanding, sometimes just to confusion, or at best the understanding that you don't understand.

The "home computers" of the 1980s were still simple enough to allow "true understanding". But only up to some point: I could find my way around a ZX Spectrum memory map just fine, but could I have built such a machine from scratch? No way!

In hindsight, I only understood a very small portion of the technology I was working with, even though that understanding was absolutely mindblowing at the time. Today, that portion would very likely have been "higher up the stack": let's say, I would be an absolute master of the DOM using Javascript, instead of a master of the ZX Spectrum ROM using Z80 assembly.

But would that portion be less "worthy" or less useful? I'm not so sure...

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Re:ZX Spectrum at 40: a look back by laputan_machine on Saturday February 19, 2022 @02:45PM (#30399883)

I don't think GP is talking about JavaScript dom manipulation, i think they are talking about typescript/babel/webpack/esm basically even before nyou start programming in a high level language like js you have to use a bunch of tools that you don't even know how they work, it's just some magic config you set up and cross your fingers.

But maybe I'm reading too much into their post.

I'm a dev of 12 years who cut my teeth on assembly and c, i currently write "modern" js and I feel this way, if it's far too complicated for me, it's going to be even worse for a newbie

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Re:ZX Spectrum at 40: a look back by noobermin on Saturday February 19, 2022 @02:57PM (#30399989)

Nope, you're 100% on the money. I'm talking about any modern web app's dependencies and the mountain of tooling overhead, it's all so complicated it's hard to really understand completely.

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Re:ZX Spectrum at 40: a look back by pvg on Saturday February 19, 2022 @03:01PM (#30400015)

Every desktop browser can drop you into a full-blown, highly interactive IDE at the press of a button. It's far more capable than any 8-bitter ROM BASIC but just as accessible.

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Re:ZX Spectrum at 40: a look back by int_19h on Saturday February 19, 2022 @10:42PM (#30403015)

That's great, but most web apps aren't full-blown interactive IDEs, yet the usual dev approach uses the same extensive scaffolding and layering.

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Re:ZX Spectrum at 40: a look back by pvg on Sunday February 20, 2022 @03:49AM (#30404262)

I'm talking about the IDE built into the browser. High-complexity tooling, etc is not some inherent property of programming-as-you-can-do-it-on-a-computer-today, just like the simple BASIC environments weren't the only way to program an 8 bit computer of yore. You could definitely make it much more complicated for yourself if you wanted or needed to.

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