[dragontamer]

> Except you have no reason to use those things, unless you specifically go out of your way. In Woz's day, you HAD to work on that level to work with budget systems.

In Woz's day, most people were playing outside yelling "NERD" at the people who were working on computers. No one had to stay inside to practice coding or working with the machine back then.

I think people forget how antisocial it was considered to actually work on computers back then. I got the tail end of it as a 90s kid, but it was probably much worse in the 70s and 80s.

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In any case, I'd say its cheaper and easier to know about things today than it was back then. Sure, select communities would be photocopying the Unix source code (ex: Lions Commentary on Unix), but you still had to hope such tomes existed in your local library. It wasn't like today where you can just download obscure documentation on chips for free and instantly.

Do you want to know how AMD GPUs work? Just read the docs. https://gpuopen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/RDNA_Shader_I...

You used to have to pay money to get printouts of such docs. I'm pretty sure my local library wasn't holding holding the processor manuals or schematics for the Amiga back then.

Realistically speaking, if its the 80s, you were getting by on the Commodore 64 User's guide alone. https://www.lemon64.com/manual/

Frankly: There's far more information available today for Rasp. Pi or Arduinos than the 192-page Commodore 64 book (as influential as the Commodore 64 book was... it was still one beginner-level book).

[basementcat]

The C64 Programmer's Reference Guide was available at many bookstores; is the GPU of the Raspberry Pi documented?

[dragontamer]

https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv/wiki/VideoCor...

Documented as much as Lion's documentation on Unix. Gotta dance around NDAs an all, but they had to deal with that in the 80s as well.

[monocasa]

And mean, there's no public source for the videocore processor. You can't get it even with a wink and a nod like you could with Lion's commentary.

[dragontamer]

The Lions commentary was basically a work of literature for the 80s developer. Very few people were running DEC-PDP11s in the 80s, you couldn't really run the code.

Don't get me wrong: the data in the Lions book inspired later operating systems and is very important. But its a very difficult read, ill-suited for the general audience. The code does NOT run outside of DEC-PDP11 (and almost no one had that computer by the 80s, nor the compilers or tools needed to actually generate the code), so it really was just a work of literature and OS-study more-so than actual technical documentation.

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In contrast, you can buy a complete Rasp. Pi system for $35, with a myriad of books and materials on programming (Python, C, Java, even GPU-coding).

Then you can buy an Arduino for $20, and a breadboard kit (wires, breadboard, resistors, etc. etc.) under $100 and get cracking today. Complete understanding of the machine, and very cheap and accessible.

Even the Commodore 64 was $500+, in 80s money (so inflation adjust as appropriate).

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The 2010s is way better for learning programming than the 80s ever was. Not only is computing respected hobby these days... but its so cheap and information is freely available.

[monocasa]

Tons of people had access to PDP-11s at the time, they sold half a million or so of them. It was super common for high schools to have one or two for instance. And vast majority of them were running UNIX since you could get it for the cost of the blank tape at the time; AT&T was forbidden from selling it due to antitrust regulations.

And you're acting like it's some impenetrable tome. Give it a read, it's a better intro to OS dev than Tannenbaum, IMO.

And a RPi has tons of still hidden bits, and an Arduino is even less powerful than most PDP-11s.

[dragontamer]

> And you're acting like it's some impenetrable tome. Give it a read, it's a better intro to OS dev than Tannenbaum, IMO.

That's not my point. Virtually no one was reading in code from Lion's book and compiling it.

Today, if someone has a bunch of code written for Rasp. Pi, you can download it from Github, change a few lines (to blink a different light or something), and then run your own changed version yourself.

The C64 manuals of the 80s were the most similar in this regard: people would faithfully type the code written in the C64 manuals into their C64, and "learn" by tweaking those programs.

In contrast, the Lion's book was basically theory. You wouldn't actually change the code, it was there for deeper learning purposes.

> And a RPi has tons of still hidden bits, and an Arduino is even less powerful than most PDP-11s.

Arduino is the beginner microcontroller. You'll quickly graduate to STM32 if you need to push more processing power.

But with that being said: Arduino / ATMega328p is built like a tank. The lax electrical characteristics make ATMega328p much better for beginner electronic engineers: you can be quite far off on voltages and still have a working system.

In contrast: send 5V down a 3.3V pin on STM32, and you'll fry it. ATMega328p can actually take that kind of abuse in most cases.

STM32 is fully open and small enough to fully understand as well. But I dare say that most people probably only need the power of an Arduino / ATMega328p for most electronics projects. Having wider tolerances is better IMO, rather than spec-chasing.

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Or hell, buy both. The STM32 is $10 and the ATMega328p boards are also $10.

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/stmicroelectronics...

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/microchip-technolo...

This isn't a $500+ investment like it was back in the 80s. Things are way cheaper and easier to do, with plenty of free documentation. I mean, we have Github these days to share code and examples with friends. Its just so much easier to collaborate and learn compared to the past.

[stevekemp]

I would say that I started programming in BASIC, and then later Z80 assembly solely as a result of reading the manual that came with my ZX Spectrum:

https://www.worldofspectrum.org/ZXBasicManual/

One of the things that made computers back then interesting was that they were well-documented. (Of course I only started this because I received the computer for Christmas, and the cassette-player was broken so we couldn't load any of the bundled games for about ten days. The local computer shop didn't open again until the new year!)

[StanislavPetrov]

>In any case, I'd say its cheaper and easier to know about things today than it was back then.

That might be true but it isn't required. Its cheaper and easier to access information today than its ever been, but doesn't mean people are more literate and more informed - they aren't. Years ago using computers and getting everything to work required that you learn at least the basics and how to tinker with different things and get a basic understanding for them to work. These days most people are using tablet and other simple, graphically designed interfaces that don't require (or in many cases allow) any substantial tinkering in order to get them to work or do what you want them to do.

Necessity is the mother of invention, not availability.