HOWDY !!
Welcome to Scott's Gopherspace.
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(Last Updated 9/15/2023) 

September 2023

September 15, 2023
BOOK REPORT: ( in progress ) 
I've been amazed by spaceflight ever since I saw the early Space Shuttle flights on TV.  My grandmother kept every issue of National Geographic Magazine she'd ever had, and I'd pour throught them while the adults talked in the mid 1980s.  Engle and Truly, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, the Vikings and the Voyagers.  What a time !  Over the years I've read the different astronaut biographies and read ( and reread ) Andrew Chaikin's From The Earth To The Moon.  ( definately see the HBO Miniseries by the same name )

BUUUUTT... to go along with this summer's theme of computer programming ....   what about a space biography of a software engineer ?   Sunburst and Luminary by Eyles is just that.  You can read other books about the Apollo Guidance Computer (ex:  Mindell or O'Brien, both of which I love and have marked and sticky tabbed them to Hell and back ) but Eyles was there.  And he's confirmed the suspicions I have developed of late ( since I come have back to programming for fun lately), that's it is as much art as a science.  I'd do snips of x86 assembler or the typical "Hello World" stuff in C or FORTRAN back in college, but now that I do what I want to do (for fun atleast) along comes Eyles talking about jobs he'd present to the high-level Interpreter language on the AGC and what tasks he'd want to do in "Basic", which was more of an assembler.  

Anyway, more to follow as I'm just 63 pages in.

73 
Scott

BOOK REPORT:
!WOW!  I've really enjoyed a couple books from Mark Jones Lorenzo this summer.  !WOW!
  
The FORTRAN book was hard to put down.  I really enjoyed hearing about how the aviation industry (an early user of computing horsepower), computer industry users groups and standards groups guided the development of the language.  Of course, releases of FORTRAN also track major developments in the computers themselves.  
IBM  704 FORTRAN
IBM  709 FORTRAN II
IBM 7090 FORTRAN IV
IBM 7040 WATFOR
IBM  360 WATFIV
         FORTRAN 66
         FORTRAN 77
	 Fortran 90 and "modern Fortran"  
In college our engineering department required FORTRAN.  So in 1994 I took an intro course in FORTRAN 77.  It was my first real exposure to "structured programming."  Later on, my EE degree "with computer option" flowchart had me in Pascal, C and x86 assembly.  But it all started with microcomputer BASIC and FORTRAN.  This book got me excited enough to tinker around with an online FORTRAN (https://www.onlinegdb.com/)  I also hauled out my Heathkit ET-3400 microcomputer, which uses a simple Monitor and a 6800 CPU.

Endless Loop is another quick read.  Everyone has heard the "Bill Gates stole MS-DOS story."  In this book you'll hear about how DEC's BASIC influenced Microsoft BASIC.  Also, a lot of time is spent recounting how Tiny Basic evolved into Apple's Integer BASIC and the other microcomputer BASICs.  As a kid I spent many Texas summers tiker

Finally, GOSUB... Is a deep dive on many of the stories in Endless Loop.  I must admit to skipping ahead some, but it's still reccommended.  

See this Gopherspace for some BBC Basic code I put together.

As for Mr. Lorenzno, later this winter I'll likely pick up his two books on GW-BASIC. Do you remember the GW-BASIC / BASICA / QuickBASIC that were distributed with DOS ?   Did you play Gorillas.bas ? 

Until next time, Happy Coding.
 
2019:  Abstracting Away the Machine: The History of the FORTRAN Programming Language (FORmula TRANslation)

2017: Endless Loop: The History of the BASIC Programming Language (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) 

2022: GOSUB Without RETURN: Between the Lines of the BASIC Programming Language (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code)

September 8:
Fired up Windows and used RT Russell's BBC Basic for a few hours.
I rather like the structured BASIC ! 
See the BBCBASIC directory for the rocket program.
We have some procedures, a data structure, some loops, a splash of physics.  

September 4:
Remembered I hadn't been on Gopher in, like, 5 years.
Ha!  It isn't 2017 anymore.
Jon Moller is still around tho.

September 3:
Working on learning some structured BASIC with BBC Basic.  
Using the version for Windows by RT Russell.
See the BBCBASIC directory for the start of a caculator program.
You'll be presented with a stack and then prompted for arguments.
Finally, there is ( just one ) operator you can opt to use.
ENJOY !!