Some people slander retrocomputing as an old man’s game, just because most of those involved are more ancient than the hardware they’re playing with. But there are veritable children involved too — take the [ComputerSmith], who is recreating Conway’s game of life on a Macintosh Plus that could very well be as old as his parents. If there’s any nostalgia here, it’s at least a generation removed — thus proving for the haters that there’s more than a misplaced desire to relive one’s youth in exploring these ancient machines.
So what does a young person get out of programming on a 1980s Mac? Well, aside from internet clout, and possible YouTube monetization, there’s the sheer intellectual challenge of the thing. You cant go sniffing around StackExchange or LLMs for code to copy-paste when writing C for a 1986 machine, not if you’re going to be fully authentic. ANSI C only dates to 1987, after all, and figuring out the quirks and foibles of the specific C implementation is both half the fun, and not easily outsourced. Object Pascal would also have been an option (and quite likely more straightforward — at least the language was clearly-defined), but [ComputerSmith] seems to think the exercise will improve his chops with C, and he’s likely to be right.
Apparently [ComputerSmith] brought this project to VCS Southwest, so anyone who was there doesn’t have to wait for Part 2 of the video to show up to see how this turns out, or to snag a copy of the code (which was apparently available on diskette). If you were there, let us know if you spotted the youngest Macintosh Plus programmer, and if you scored a disk from him.
If the idea of coding in this era tickles the dopamine receptors, check out this how-to for a prizewinning Amiga demo. If you think pre-ANSI C isn’t retro enough, perhaps you’d prefer programming by card?
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