Commander X16

Hello! My real name is Vesa, but no, I have nothing to do with mounting your displays, graphics standards and the like. Also not to be confused with Vera nor Visa. If you are in a need of a Finnish etymology lesson (which you most likely aren't) vesa means a sprout, most often in the meaning of a young tree. I like the name in that no matter how old I get I would always be young if I were a tree.

So I'm one of those whose dad bought the C64 in the early 90's, and an IBM Aptiva PC past the halfway, most likely in the attempt to have their son benefit of it as a profession. So sure, I've been pretty much a programmer'ish guy since then. Although I've never been a pure single interest guy and I've found my way to all sorts of topics around programming and computers. But took my sweet time until I became programmer as a professional, only eight years down that road by now. But while the money is nice I would kinda prefer the freedom more since doing the stuff as a job is quite taxing for the mind and that kills a lot of the past enjoyment around programming. But at least I can be proud of having built one of the most robust and used ecommerce checkouts in Finland ?

My current active skill set is focused around the web, HTML/CSS/JS combo but at the moment through the Pure Evil of React and TypeScript. And just to cover my opinion better, there is nothing wrong of either really, it is just that those two get used in the web front-end in ways they shouldn't be used ? Besides Commodore 64 I've also "had fun" with Visual Basic 6, PHP, MySQL, C++, and many other things that likely makes no sense to even try to remember. I've only written a little bit of C64 assembly a couple of years ago. Basically been at the level of being able to pick up anything for a long while by now, yet I've found time to be an issue. Oh and the day job draining my brains.

The other stuff around programming includes games, modding, localizing games to Finnish, even some occasional little pixel art which I probably should do more of, and building PCs old and new. I also have a couple of websites, but in general my interest towards the web has shrunk over the years as there are less and less limitations to web technologies these days which takes away some of the out-of-the-box challenge there used to be. So I guess that is why Commander X16 has some attractiveness in my eyes as it is a platform with limitations, but not as bad limitations as Commodore 64. There is that little bit of hope to get onto something and try pushing it a bit, even though I don't know how I end up contributing at this point. Like, I have several game ideas but each of them requires way too much work and would be massive games if adapted for a platform like Commander X16 (and impossible for C64 due to memory limitations).

But I guess this is already way too much introduction ?

Hello and welcome!

I get you about work being taxing for the mind. And I don't have especially long work weeks. At work I mostly use C and C++, which I'm OK with; and VB6, which I'm less OK. So being able to code in assembly on retro machine is a breath of fresh air. Still, finding motivation is not always easy.

Like you, I think the X16 hits a sweet spot wiht its limitations (8-bit 65c02) and also relative power (8 MHz, chunky 256 color mode, dual layers, lots of sprites...).

 

Hello and welcome!

On 4/28/2021 at 11:00 PM, Merri said:

I also have a couple of websites, but in general my interest towards the web has shrunk over the years as there are less and less limitations to web technologies these days which takes away some of the out-of-the-box challenge there used to be.

I also had big interest in web in times of HTML3 and HTML4. But I wouldn't say that modern web has so few limitations. It's just that modern web dev tools make you think like that, and many modern web developers create their web sites without thinking about limitations. And that is why most modern sites turn out very heavy, sluggish and buggy. So there is still place for thinking about limitations in web, but I agree that it is less fun in modern web.

3 hours ago, Cyber said:

Hello and welcome!



I also had big interest in web in times of HTML3 and HTML4. But I wouldn't say that modern web has so few limitations. It's just that modern web dev tools make you think like that, and many modern web developers create their web sites without thinking about limitations. And that is why most modern sites turn out very heavy, sluggish and buggy. So there is still place for thinking about limitations in web, but I agree that it is less fun in modern web.

Did you guys hear of Gemini? I have a Gemini capsule that I do way too little with. I had some fun exploring the Gemini space; it attracts an interesting crowd.

Did you guys hear of Gemini? I have a Gemini capsule that I do way too little with. I had some fun exploring the Gemini space; it attracts an interesting crowd.

Never heard. Post a link. Google gives many results.

Yeah, it is not the most distinctive name, I guess. Here you go: https://gemini.circumlunar.space/



I suspect you may have heard about Gopher. This is kind of a recent reboot of that with some improvements, although the creators explicitly state that they are not seeking to replace Gopher (or html, for that matter). 

It's good to know that someone's not seeking to replace Gopher in 2021.

Yaknow, in the context of how things were "back then," Gopher makes a lot of sense. Everything was a menu, and a global menu of menus just seems like a logical extension. Then HTML/HTTP came along, and menus were passe' forever. Now it's just "Hey Google, what's 4 plus four?"