
Spacewar written in Apple Logo - empressplay
https://paleotronic.com/2018/09/27/ancient-tongues-logo-spacewar/
======
reaperducer
There was a very interesting letter to the editor in Byte magazine in the late
70's (?) that I re-read recently.

It was from the guy who wrote Logo for MIT. He was really quite mad, and
surprisingly candid about how MIT was screwing with his project.

He claimed that he'd made a perfectly lovely, functional Logo for the Apple
//, but MIT wouldn't release it. He felt like it should be released because
the whole reason he was asked to make it was so that it could be released to
the public for public benefit ("Public domain" software, similar to "open
source" for you young 'uns).

He contended that MIT was withholding Logo from the public because Texas
Instruments was a big donor to MIT and asked that it not release Logo. TI, he
said, only wanted Logo to exist on the 99/4A, to help boost sales in the
educational market.

This aligns with my memories of the day, when Logo was only a TI 99/4A product
for a very long time. I don't remember if it ever make it to Commodore or CP/M
machines, which is where I was at the time.

Anyway, it's an interesting tale because it shows that corporate interference
in this sort of thing is nothing new.

Plus, Logo!

~~~
effish
This is so not true. I wrote the TI 99/4 Logo at MIT (translated from an
implementation in Pascal by Gary Drescher). The Apple II implementation was
overlapping, started a little later, the guys doing it had the next desk. It
was licensed by MIT to Terrapin Inc and released ('82) not long after the 99/4
version ('81).

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/migcvjvgu31qaz9/LogoHistory_Microc...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/migcvjvgu31qaz9/LogoHistory_MicrocomputerEra.pdf?dl=0)

~~~
larsbrinkhoff
We also have Drescher's Pascal Logo incoming soon.

Preview: [https://github.com/PDP-10/its-
vault/blob/master/files/aplogo...](https://github.com/PDP-10/its-
vault/blob/master/files/aplogo/plogo.767)

~~~
effish
Cool, though I have a printed copy of that. I looked through it recently
trying to remember some details for an upcoming paper

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protomyth
Logo sucked you in with the turtle graphics and making cool shapes. It is
basically a computer etch-a-sketch, but it does get boring at some point. I am
so grateful that I had a teacher that pointed out there was an amazing
language just past cute turtles. Logo was a real change from programming in
BASIC, FORTH, and 6502 assembler. It was one thing to read about all the cool
languages in Byte Magazine, but it was quite another to actually get a shot at
programming one of the cooler ones.

~~~
jrd259
Logo was more than turtle graphics. It also provided list processing with
slightly friendlier names: Logo BUTFIRST is Lisp's CDR. This makes possible a
great deal of purely linguistic programming, e.g. "20 questions game", text
based adventure, etc. (I was one of the implementors of Logo for Apple II.)

~~~
protomyth
thus I said _I am so grateful that I had a teacher that pointed out there was
an amazing language just past cute turtles._

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peterburkimsher
Logo was my first programming language! I recently rewrote my own version of
it so that I could draw a time-proportional train map. I wrote "fd 5" for 5
minutes, for example.

[http://peterburk.github.io/tra/](http://peterburk.github.io/tra/)

The version I wrote can read values from a spreadsheet, so could be used in
other applications too. I think this kind of thing could be a great way for a
young person to go from a homework project to the front of Hacker News. If any
of you have kids, I'd be happy to help gather the data for some other subway
networks!

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zellyn
The paleotronic folks have been on fire lately. Their Apple II emulator,
microM8 is fast becoming one of the most advanced, cross-platform emulators.

[https://paleotronic.com/microm8/](https://paleotronic.com/microm8/)

~~~
peterburkimsher
How do I contribute? I recently used ADTPro to copy a lot of old Apple II
software onto my MacBook Pro as DSK images.

5.25 floppies:

[https://mega.nz/#!yDITXIZC!8fREZdAruk2yYLv859jKABGSWeG4UkRoC...](https://mega.nz/#!yDITXIZC!8fREZdAruk2yYLv859jKABGSWeG4UkRoCN4_feKnmIM)

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/sets/72157672562...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/sets/72157672562505858)

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/sets/72157672589...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/sets/72157672589613188)

I've also got a larger selection of DD floppies, HD floppies, JAZ disks, SCSI
disks, IDE disks, MacFormat and other CDs. Please tell me if you want the
links!

~~~
sehugg
You might want to contact Jason Scott at the Internet Archive, especially if
some of those are copy-protected:
[http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5180](http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5180)

~~~
abstractbeliefs
I know HN doesn't really do "this" or "me too" comments, but I want to
underline this isn't just another option, this is the canonical option. Jason
Scott is really an important and respected archivist and the IA should really
be the first port of call before anyone looks at sending disks elsewhere.

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aogl
It's quite cool that Logo’s turtle occupies a certain position in Logo
"space", and can be moved relative to that position by using commands such as
fd (forward), rt (right turn) and so forth.

It's like the concept sets an absolute space relative to something and all
positions within that are relative from the baseline coordinate. Much as CSS
container wrapping works when you set an absolute within a relative.

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aidenn0
There was another logo for apple IIs (logowriter I think it was called?) that
was very nearly a 2d game engine. You could have multiple turtles, change the
image used for the turtles, and hide turtles, which could be (ab)used as a
simple sprite engine. There was even a command to check if two turtles
overlapped, making hit detection fairly easy.

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Marisoul
[https://www.guerra-espacial.rufina.link/](https://www.guerra-
espacial.rufina.link/) Spacewar! written in Common Lisp

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mycall
Strange, but Spacewar (arcade version) is still my all time favorite game.
Portal is close second.

