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Brent Jenkins wrote: I still toy with the idea of getting hold of a second hand Amiga or C64 from eBay..
I bought a fully working Amstrad PPC 640 (the first portable computer a company ever issued me with), full of the joys of nostalgia -- but you forget how much work you had to do just to use the damned things!
It was a joy to set it aside and get back to pointing and clicking.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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The Amiga was point and click most of the time 
it'd be interesting to have one just to show the kids.. they'd probably wonder what on earth I was raving about
How do you know so much about swallows? Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Brent Jenkins wrote: it'd be interesting to have one just to show the kids.. they'd probably wonder what on earth I was raving about
"Siri doesn't work!"
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Brent Jenkins wrote: BBC Archimedes; laughable compared with the Amiga I had at the time
laughable in what way? Were you programming the Amiga or playing games?
I had an Atari ST, Amiga and Archimedes - and the Archie was by far my favourite - the OS was exceedingly well thought out- way ahead of its time - the RISC chip powerful - it just suffred from a lack of software IMO
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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Quote: it just suffred from a lack of software IMO
True, very true, it was at the time the first WIMP system I played with, I still think having an Icon for the floppy was a work of genius the Amiga (which I still own, some where...) clicked all the time never really got too near an Atari ST to see how that handle it, plus it had an A to D built in a boon for electronic geeks like myself!
Mind you the Amiga's predilection for C was a major plus in my book
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_Maxxx_ wrote: it just suffred from a lack of software IMO because no-one wanted to code in that god-awful BBC BASIC!
Don't leave sentences unfinished.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Programming.. I'm not into games, although these days I'll play a casual game on an iPad if I've got a few minutes to kill.
My VIC20 came with one game which I played for about 5 minutes on Christmas morning before learning BASIC programming from the manual - it came with a memory map at the back which led me into machine code programming
The C64 was VIC20 on steroids - more colours for graphics apps (including sprite support), more RAM, better CPU and access to the internet (Compunet as it was back then).
At school our IT lessons (BBC B's) consisted of moving a green turtle to various locations around the screen, creating a Ceefax screen or an occasional beep if our teacher felt rebellious enough. No wonder most kids turned away from computers.
At home, I moved onto the Amiga A500 when it came out and it was a whole leap forward from the C64. 4,096 colours, multitasking, a decent OS which actually allowed you to get things done. This is where I learned event driven programming and UI development, file IO, etc. At 14 years old, I was selling Amiga apps on floppy disks at school
I didn't like the Archimedes OS at all - it seemed seriously lacking compared with the Amiga. Perhaps it was the lack of decent applications, like you mentioned, that killed it. Hardware's nothing if you haven't got anything to run on it.
The ST was pretty good, but seemed more to find it's place in the music arena. I probably would have gone for a ST if the Amiga hadn't been around (or if they hadn't made to A500 - the A1500, A2000 and A3000 were well out of my price range).
How do you know so much about swallows? Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Using BBCs in schools was subject to all the problems associated with IT in schools - mainly because it tended to be taught be teachers who hadn't got a clue and struggled to get "Hello World" working themselves!
The thing I loved about the Archie OS was that it was well designed and documented, and simple. It was easily extended too.
The three button mouse wasn't just stuffed on there - they defined what the functionality should be in every application and, generally, people stuck to that, so once the basics were grasped, every program just worked!
By comparison, neither the Amiga or ST were so easy to work with.
All of the other computers in the BBC time (vic, speccy etc.) were prettier, I think, and because of all the games available, kids were attracted to them - in the 'good' schools, teachers moved beyond the Logo crap and got the kids doing real, integrated stuff (one school, for example, had the older kids writing programs to read data from various devices (like temperature sensors) to use in science classes for all the kids.
Then the kids coming through the school could look at the programs and come up with their own ideas of stuff to develop.
they wrote timetable software, educational games for the littlies, all sorts of stuff that they were interested in, and was educational not only from a learning to program point of view, but also in thinking logically, planning etc.
I think you are one of the people that the BBC really wasn't so useful for - partly due to your teacher, but also because you had the interest already.
I originally cut my teeth on a Commodore Pet - so just having bit mapped graphics was awesome!
& I really wanted the power that assembler gave me - and being able to write it out of the box inside a Basic program was awesome - it allowed very fast development compared to the Pet (where I hand-wrote every line and entered the byte-code)
My preference for the ST over the Amiga was partly due to the music side, partly the cost, and partly due to the fact that I got a job working for Atari ST User and ST World magazine!
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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_Maxxx_ wrote: I think you are one of the people that the BBC really wasn't so useful for - partly due to your teacher, but also because you had the interest already.
I don't think they were useful for any of the kids in my school - those interested already had a computer in some form, but those not interested certainly weren't going to be swayed by the Beeb - you couldn't have come up with a machine more likely to put kids off.
It's a wonder the kids weren't provided with brown corduroy trousers as part of the lesson
You must be a bit older than me? I didn't leave school until '89. I've always felt I missed the 80's by a few years (I wish I'd been about 10 years older in the mid-80's), they were very cool times.
How do you know so much about swallows? Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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I once came across an app (can't remember if it was Silverlight or WPF) that showcased various features of XAML, with things like transitions, drag/drop, and a whole load of other things, which you chose from a list down the left-hand side.
I think the project had a bit of a weird name and was written by one of the XAML team at MS. I can't remember what it was called though, or where to find it. Anyone?
modified 13-Mar-15 4:27am.
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MVVM Light?[^]
Also, there's tonnes of sample projects under New Project => Online >= Samples >= C# => Desktop => WPF
modified 13-Mar-15 4:54am.
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I found it - it's called the "WPF Bag of Tricks". The app was originally at bot.codeplex.com, but this has now gone and it can instead be found here: https://github.com/thinkpixellab/bot[^]
Not sure why I thought it was something to do with Microsoft - perhaps the guys running this company were employees once.
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As the blurb says:
Kevin was working at Microsoft on v1 of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). He was blogging a lot of code samples and wanted to keep them all together and ensure everything kept working as features changed and evolved as WPF moved towards shipping.
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See my post 4 or 5 threads below.
About an hour to go and in the bistro waiting for my garlic prawns to turn up.
Having a schooner of VB in the mean time.
Should be a good night.
Michael Martin
Australia
"I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible."
- Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
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Michael Martin wrote: a schooner of VB
Version 6 or .NET?
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V6 of course - you can't drink beer with a net!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Movie Quote Of The Day
Jason's body has disappeared from the morgue.
Which movie?
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Classic Greek mythology: Jason and the Argonauts.
Modern Greek mythology: How to pay your debts.
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
If software development were a circus, we would all be the clowns.
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Saturday the 14th.
Try Hovercraft for Android, voted "a game" by players.
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Thursday the 12th
Your time will come, if you let it be right.
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Hangover
if(this.signature != "")
{
MessageBox.Show("This is my signature: " + Environment.NewLine + signature);
}
else
{
MessageBox.Show("404-Signature not found");
}
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Weekend At Bernies
Mongo: Mongo only pawn... in game of life.
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Bourne Supremacy
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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