c++

134 Articles

UNIX For A Legacy TI

September 26, 2025 by 13 Comments

Although now mostly known as a company who cornered the market on graphing calculators while only updating them once a decade or so, there was a time when Texas Instruments was a major force in the computing world. In the late 70s and early 80s they released a line of computers called the TI-99 to compete (unsuccessfully) with various offerings from Commodore, and these machines were fairly robust for the time. They did have limited memory but offered a 16-bit CPU and plenty of peripherals, and now there’s even a UNIX-like OS that they can run.

This version of UNIX is called UNIX99 and is the brainchild of AtariAge forum member [mrvan] who originally wasn’t looking to develop a full operating system for this computer but rather a set of standard C libraries to help with other projects. Apparently the step from that to a UNIX-flavored OS wasn’t too big so this project was born. While the operating system doesn’t have a UNIX certification, it has most of the tools any of us would recognize on similar machines. The OS has support for most of the TI-99 hardware, file management, a basic user account system, and a command shell through which scripts can be written and executed.

That being said, the limitations of the hardware do come through in the operating system. There’s no multitasking, for example, and the small amount of memory is a major hurdle as well. But that’s what makes this project all the more impressive, and [mrvan] isn’t stopping here. He’s working on a few other improvements to this platform, and we look forward to seeing future releases. UNIX itself is extremely influential in the computing world, and has been used a the model for other homebrew UNIX-like operating systems on similar platforms of this era such as the Z80.

Thanks to [Stephen] for the tip!

Photo courtesy of Rama & Musée Bolo via Wikimedia Commons

Learn C With A Lisp

August 9, 2025 by 19 Comments

One reason Forth remains popular is that it is very simple to create, but also very powerful. But there’s an even older language that can make the same claim: LISP. Sure, some people think that’s an acronym for “lots of irritating spurious parenthesis,” but if you can get past the strange syntax, the language is elegant and deceptively simple, at least at its core. Now, [Daniel Holden] challenges you to build your own Lisp as a way to learn C programming.

It shouldn’t be surprising that LISP is fairly simple. It was the second-oldest language, showing up in the late 1950s with implementations in the early 1960s. The old hardware couldn’t do much by today’s standards, so it is reasonable that LISP has to be somewhat economical.

With LISP, everything is a list, which means you can freely treat code as data and manipulate it. Lists can contain items like symbols, numbers, and other lists. This is somewhat annoying to C, which likes things to have particular types, so that’s one challenge to writing the code.

While we know a little LISP, we aren’t completely sold that building your own is a good way to learn C. But if you like LISP, it might be good motivation. We might be more inclined to suggest Jones on Forth as a good language project, but, then again, it is good to have choices. Of course, you could choose not to choose and try Forsp.

Coroutines In C

July 14, 2025 by 20 Comments

It is virtually a rite of passage for C programmers to realize that they can write their own cooperative multitasking system. C is low-level enough, and there are several ways to approach the problem, so, like Jedi light sabers, each one is a little bit different. [Christoph Wolcher] took his turn, and not only is his system an elegant hack, if that’s not an oxymoron, it is also extremely well documented.

Before you dig in, be warned. [Christoph] fully admits that you should use an RTOS. Or Rust. Besides, after he finished, he discovered the protothreads library, which does a similar task in a different way that is both more cool and more terrible all at the same time.

Once you dig in, though, you’ll see the system relies on state machines. Just to prove the point, he writes a basic implementation, which is fine, but hard to parse and modify. Then he shows a simple implementation using FreeRTOS, which is fine except for, you know, needing FreeRTOS.

Using a simple set of macros, it is possible to get something very similar to the RTOS version that runs independently, like the original version. Most of the long code snippets show you what code the macros generate. The real code is short and to the point.

Multiprocessing is a big topic. You can have processes, threads, fibers, and coroutines. Each has its pros and cons, and each has its place in your toolbox.

Dearest C++, Let Me Count The Ways I Love/Hate Thee

July 11, 2025 by 59 Comments

My first encounter with C++ was way back in the 1990s, when it was one of the Real Programming Languages™ that I sometimes heard about as I was still splashing about in the kiddie pool with Visual Basic, PHP and JavaScript. The first formally standardized version of C++ is the ISO 1998 standard, but it had been making headways as a ‘better C’ for decades at that point since Bjarne Stroustrup added that increment operator to C in 1979 and released C++ to the public in 1985.

Why did I pick C++ as my primary programming language? Mainly because it was well supported and with free tooling: a free Borland compiler or g++ on the GCC side. Alternatives like VB, Java, and D felt far too niche compared to established languages, while C++ gave you access to the lingua franca of C while adding many modern features like OOP and a more streamlined syntax in addition to the Standard Template Library (STL) with gobs of useful building blocks.

Years later, as a grizzled senior C++ developer, I have come to embrace the notion that being good at a programming language also means having strong opinions on all that is wrong with the language. True to form, while C++ has many good points, there are still major warts and many heavily neglected aspects that get me and other C++ developers riled up.

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Open A Portal To An NES Emulator

June 13, 2025 by 2 Comments

The Portal games were revolutionary not only for their puzzle-based, narrative-driven gameplay, but also for their unique physics engine, which let players open portals anywhere and conserve momentum and direction through them. They’re widely regarded as some of the best video games ever made, but even beyond that they have some extra features that aren’t talked about as much. Namely, there are a number of level editors and mods that allow the in-game components to be used to build things like logic gates and computers, and this project goes even further by building a working NES emulator, all within Portal 2.

The main limitation here is that Portal 2 can only support a certain number of in-game objects without crashing, far lower than what would be needed to directly emulate NES hardware. The creator of the project, [PortalRunner], instead turned to Squirrel, the Portal 2 scripting language, and set about porting an existing NES emulator called smolnes to this scripting language. This is easier said than done, as everything in the code needs to be converted eight bits and then all of the pointers in smolnes need to be converted to use arrays, since Squirrel doesn’t support pointers at all. As can be easily imagined, this led to a number of bugs that needed to be sorted out before the game would run at all.

For those interested in code golfing, porting, or cross-compatibility, this project is a master class not only in the intricacies of the Portal 2 scripting language but in the way the NES behaves as well, not to mention the coding skill needed to recognize unique behaviors of the C language and the Squirrel scripting language. But eventually [PortalRunner] is able to get Super Mario Bros. running in Portal 2, albeit with low resolution and frame rate. Since we heard you like games within games, someone else put DOOM inside DOOM so you can DOOM while you DOOM.

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C+P: Combining The Usefulness Of C With The Excellence Of Prolog

March 14, 2025 by 7 Comments

In a move that will absolutely not over-excite anyone, nor lead to any heated arguments, [needleful] posits that their C Plus Prolog (C+P for short) programming language is the best possible language ever. This is due to it combining the best of the only good programming language (Prolog) with the best of the only useful programming language (C). Although the resulting mash-up syntax that results may trigger Objective-C flashbacks, it’s actually valid SWI-Prolog, that is subsequently converted to C for compilation.

Language flamewars aside, the motivation for C+P as explained in the project’s README was mostly the exploring of macros in a system programming language. More specifically, by implementing a language-within-a-language you can add just about any compile-time feature you want including – as demonstrated in C+P – a form of generics. Even as a way to have a bit of fun, C+P comes dangerously close to being a functional prototype. Its main flaw is probably the lack of validation and error messages, which likely leads to broken C being generated.

Also mentioned are the Nim and Haxe languages which can be compiled (transpiled) to C or C++, which is somewhat of a similar idea as C+P, as well as cmacro (based on Common Lisp) and the D language.

C++ Is 45 Years Old. [Stroustrup] Says You Still Don’t Get It!

February 9, 2025 by 117 Comments

We were surprised when we read a post from C++ creator [Bjarne Stroustrup] that reminded us that C++ is 45 years old. His premise is that C++ is robust and flexible and by following some key precepts, you can avoid problems.

We don’t disagree, but C++ is much like its progenitor, C, in that it doesn’t really force you to color inside the lines. We like that, though. But it does mean that people will go off and do things the way they want to do it, for any of a number of good and bad reasons.

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