On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 08:09:49PM -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote: > "H. S. Teoh" <[email protected]> wrote in message > news:[email protected]... > > On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 06:01:37PM -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote: [...] > >> Heh, as bad as this might sound, I think what I basically want is > >> more or less Windows Explorer on linux ;) [...] > > Maybe if you write one in D... ;-) Perhaps *that's* the killer D app > > that we've been waiting for, that will take the world by a storm. :P > > > > I've seriously been wanting to, but it's one of many things I haven't > been able to get around to yet. > > I suspect, though, it might not end up so popular. Linux people like > the command line. Although it might help further popularize Linux > among WinXP fans...
Only true for the old guard, hardcore people like myself. Newer Linux users tend to like their GUI desktops better. Even if they do use the command-line every now and then. In another generation or two I don't think many of the old guard people will be left. > But it's looking like Vlad's D forums might be on their way to being > D's killer app anyway ;) Well in that case, we'd better get our act together and produce more awesome D apps, so that when D starts hitting the media headlines and people start searching for us, we'd have something to show for it besides saying "oh, D forums, that's the only really significant thing we've done so far". :) [...] > > Ah, good ole Wozniak. Wasn't he the one who practically > > single-handedly coded up the entire Apple II ROM? Or am I just > > mixing up urban legend with reality? :) > > > > My understanding is that he designed the whole damn machine, period. > And I have a tendency to believe it, because those older systems > really *are* simple enough that it's totally possible for one person > to understand every byte, every clock cycle, every chip and every > wire. I believe it too. The man's a bona fide genius. Man I love those old days when I spent hours memorizing assembly opcodes just to... no, wait, I didn't *deliberately* memorize them, it was just that I coded in assembly so much I could memorize almost all of the common instructions. Yikes. Where did my childhood go?! :P > Hell, that's a big part of what makes those machines such a dream to > work with anyway. And also what made them cheap enough for average > consumers - *especially* the Atari VCS/2600 - That's just an > absolutely beautiful design in it's minimalism (had to be, to be > useful and only ~$200). Ever coded for it? It makes even the Apple II > seem enormously complex and powerful. It's sooo fun. [...] OK, you beat me there. I never owned an Atari. :( But yeah, even the Apple II had its complexities. I still remember puzzling over how Apple DOS can somehow "magically" add DOS commands to the BASIC prompt without the BASIC interpreter even knowing anything about DOS. Until one day I discovered that Apple DOS was hooking into the *keyboard interrupt vector* and listening in on keystrokes to sent to the BASIC interpreter's command line. When it saw a newline, it checked to see if the command buffer contained a DOS command. If not, it lets the newline through and the BASIC interpreter interpreted the command. But if the buffer contained a DOS command, the newline would be swallowed by DOS, which then proceeds to run the command before erasing the buffer and returning to the BASIC interpreter, as if no command had ever been typed. Apple DOS also hooked into the console output vector to catch those programmatic DOS commands which you put in your programs by doing something like: PRINT;PRINT ^DBRUN FILE;PRINT. The magic sequence was newline followed by ctrl-D followed by DOS command. Such output sequences were "stolen" from the ROM's output routines and put in a temporary buffer, so that instead of being written to screen they ran a DOS command at the next newline. It was clever tricks like these that inspired me to become a programmer. T -- It won't be covered in the book. The source code has to be useful for something, after all. -- Larry Wall
