Thinking about Algol 68
I took my first computer science course in my second year at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. The course was a full year, starting in September 1974, and we programmed in Waterloo FORTRAN IV, which if memory serves was called Watfor or maybe Watfiv at the time. We also had a brief session with IBM 360 / 370 Assembler language. Both languages were available to us in the form of batch timeshare services where we wrote our programs on IBM 029 key punches and submitted the card decks to be run, generating printouts which were almost entirely compilation or execution failures interspersed with the occasional output of a program that generated the hoped-for results.
Code like it’s the 1980s
Our computers are so powerful today that it’s hard for younger developers to understand what early desktop computing was like. Even more experienced folks can...
Draw in color using Portable Pix Maps
Create colorful images using the Portable Pix Map format.
Grayscale images with Portable Gray Maps
Learn to write grayscale images using the Portable Gray Map format.
Write tiny images using PBM
The Portable Bit Map (“PBM”) image file format was invented in the 1980s as a way to transmit small black and white images as plain...
Reading a whole file at once
Two methods to load a data file into memory. Use mmap on Linux sysetms.
Old-school programming with Turbo C
Explore retroprogramming on FreeDOS with this popular freeware IDE.
Calculate pi by counting pixels
This is a very simple way to measure pi, but it was a fun exercise and I wanted to share it.
Perl and Raku Conference will be held June 27-29, 2025 in Greenville, SC, USA
David Both to be the keynote speaker The Perl and Raku Conference for 2025 is coming up June 27-29, 2025, and it’s set to be...
Using AI to translate code
I was impressed that AI did so well translating from an old language like FORTRAN 77 into a more modern language like C.
Cautions when using AI for coding
While AI agents can help streamline development, keep in mind these cautions when using AI for coding.
Draw a Cylon eye in DOS
Have fun by writing a program to simulate a Cylon’s sweeping red eye
Using enumerations in C
Using enumerations with enum makes it easy to store values in a program, yet keep the code easy to read.
Using bit fields and bit masks in C
Using bit fields and bit masks is a common method to combine data without using more complex structures.
Enjoy the holidays with this ASCII fireplace
Enjoy the holidays by writing a ‘fire’ program in ASCII text.