What retro or technical book are you currently reading?

[+pixelpedant]

1 hour ago, TVsHasselhoff said:

Me jumping in months later...

Why this Pascal book over some others.  This is a harder one to find, so I was curious as to what you liked about this one.

 

Mainly, that it is focused on addressing the p-System as a cross-platform operating system, rather than simply interested in teaching you Pascal.

 

Secondly, that it is well situated in history.  In 1983, at a time when p-System implementations had reached their point of greatest diversity.  Such that it can address this ecosystem fairly meaningfully:

 

 

 

[retrodroid]

9 hours ago, pixelpedant said:

 

Mainly, that it is focused on addressing the p-System as a cross-platform operating system, rather than simply interested in teaching you Pascal.

 

Secondly, that it is well situated in history.  In 1983, at a time when p-System implementations had reached their point of greatest diversity.  Such that it can address this ecosystem fairly meaningfully:

 

 

 

I recall taking a PASCAL course in high school that used the Apple II variant of this system. A few years later I got the opportunity to develop some educational video games using Borland's Objective Pascal (my choice at the time). Good memories. 

[+FarmerPotato]

TI invested a lot into Pascal around 1980. I suspect it was centered in their Bedford, UK plant. Pascal was the focus of one advertising campaign for TI computers (990s and such.)  

 (Mini-Micro Systems; I've got a thread indexing the TI mentions) 

You can see the influence in TI's Software Development Handbook 2nd Ed (Bitsavers),  which covers the structured programming ideas of the day. 

Because that book cites Wirth, and Dijkstra, I was inspired to go read the classics. I learned that Sir Tony Hoare taught corporate seminars on CS at one other company in Bedford.  There's a lot to be gained by reading their works. 

 

Now I'm still not clear on which TI Pascals were UCSD, but they  gave the option of pseudo-code or assembly output.
 

Obviously they put UCSD onto the 4A. TI Pascal 1.8 is the one  for the TI 990 compiler. Microprocessor Pascal   targets the small DS990/1 and TM990 industrial microcomputers.  

 

I'm  taking a look at the (incomplete)  archive  of MPP on Dave Pitts' 990 page. 
 

[+pixelpedant]

1 hour ago, retrodroid said:

I recall taking a PASCAL course in high school that used the Apple II variant of this system. A few years later I got the opportunity to develop some educational video games using Borland's Objective Pascal (my choice at the time). Good memories. 

 

My computers/programming course (can't recall what it was actually called) in high school was also based around Pascal, but under a relatively obscure Canadian mainly DOS-based Pascal environment known as Watcom Pascal which was used here in Ontario for quite some time. 

 

I consequently have some nostalgia for it, myself. 

 

It was seemingly also released for C64:

 

 

[+Ksarul]

I actually remember seeing information/articles on WATCOM Pascal for a while, before TurboPascal pretty much overwhelmed every other commercial Pascal implementation out there. . .

[Keatah]

DESCANSO Monograph Series

[Appeelicious]

Introduction to assembly language for the TI home computer

 

It's been a slow burn since I'm reading the first 100 pages before I try programming anything, but so far it's been thorough and interesting

[TVsHasselhoff]

On 3/4/2023 at 12:38 AM, pixelpedant said:

 

Mainly, that it is focused on addressing the p-System as a cross-platform operating system, rather than simply interested in teaching you Pascal.

 

Secondly, that it is well situated in history.  In 1983, at a time when p-System implementations had reached their point of greatest diversity.  Such that it can address this ecosystem fairly meaningfully:

 

 

 

Thanks for the feedback!