Commander X16

Hi all,

I recently stumbled onto this website.

My reason for being here is mostly to track progress, and as a potential buyer when x16 is for sale.

I really like the project, it is almost like looking forward to the next cool computer, but a next cool computer in an alternative past.

I am a developer/techlead myself, doing solutions for b2b.

But as a Hobby I have spend tons of time playing with and programming the C64 and the Amiga, programmed basic, c & assembly 6502/68000.  Also other weird and wonderful languages, and a bit of hardware soldering.

No Python though, not really my thing. Right now though I am doing "hobby coding" in Javascript, a X16 sprite exporter to my paint program, and deciding if I will do some c or ASM stuff as well for the X16, or keep to BASIC.

I got here when I was playing around with BASIC a bit.  I started at a web page where you can directly type in and run Apple basic,  but soon ended up modifying Apple basic to become more like commodore basic.  (I was adding things like sprite support and so on to the Basic, and a commodore 64 sprite displaying capability.

Anyway while doing that I happen to stumble on the X16 emulator webpage, which already had all that.  So yeah apple basic with c64 sprites is how I got here ?

I really hope the web ide / emulator will continues to be developed, as I like it a lot, almost more then the "real" emulator. 

Fantastic project otherwise. keep up the good work! Same for the YouTube channels 8-bit guy, and retro recipes, just a tad to addictive ?

Greetings from Sweden

Welcome!  Sounds like we have similar backgrounds (including "no Python"), and similar reasons for being here.  

Thanks for the welcome rje ?



It's cool to be again coding in "old" BASIC, it's been years (feels like eons), I've completely forgotten the struggle with line numbers, 80 character limit, short variable names, and only global variable scope. 

Then again, it's lovely to poke directly to the hardware instead of going through magic layers that do it all for you.  I am liking how easy it is in Basic, but on ASM or C level it seems more tricky, as you need to go through a few registers and prepare them before you poke your data.  That'll be sure a challenge when/if manage to get around to code in C or Assembly.



For me the python deal breaker is more or less the syntax for blocks.  The invisible spaces / tabs, to indicate a subscope.  Not my cup of coffee. Give me curly braces any day of the week ? 

(Although I did try a neural network in it once, but it became quite annoying to swap to another language with curly braces and back, I kept messing up the tabs in both languages, anyway, I am rambling now, so I better stop, see you in the forums / software library projects ..)