Making slow and steady progress on my little #AROS mastodon client. Except now it's grown to half a dozen source files. I secretly love the stage in a coding project were it starts to need non-trivial organization!
Hopefully I'll have some very provisional UI prototype screenshots to show you very soon.
@remotenemesis What is it like developing an application on #AROS?
AROS is still sans memory protection, right?
@profoundlynerdy yeah.. no memory protection, it's a bit like the wild west ;) I already crashed my virtualbox VM twice today and I have to fix another crash bug tonight.
The OS boots in no time and will often let you soft reboot on error.
Development experience is exactly like developing on a rocket fast mid-nineties #amiga with a modern hi-res display. #AROS feels very much like a late Amiga setup with a bit of an open source _unfinished_ vibe that is part of the charm in some ways.
@remotenemesis It's good to see people working on #AROS. I went from #C64 and #Apple2 to an i286... missing the Amiga entirely.
Yet, some how the system has grown on me through emulation and SFX from 90's TV shows like #Babylon5. I'm looking forward to the release of the Apollo V4, so I can try it on 68k hardware. The devs really impressed me when they managed to build open source replacement Kickstart ROMs.
@remotenemesis Not recently. But, I have spun up copies in the past just to look around. The Apollo v4 got me excited about it again.
I'm a #Linux guy by day and enjoy checking out niche/alternative OS's every now and again. I spin up a copy of #ReactOS (open source Windows) every so often, too.
That said, I do *a lot* of retro-computing leveraging #Python. But, that requires some explanation.
@remotenemesis I got fascinated with how tiny micros from back in the day did things. That, and this happened: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/news/a18831/star-trek-floppy-disks-restored/
I decided it might be a good idea to reverse engineer and document old school file formats. It's a frustrating hobby, but I like it.
I'm working on a SpeedScript to ODT filter, now. Eventually, I want to write a geoPublish to Scribus filter; but that's a long way off.
@profoundlynerdy that's some priceless work. I wonder if the folks at archive.org are interested?
@remotenemesis Good question! I had not thought of that.
Every time I mention it in retro computing circles I hear, "Ooh! Are you on GitHub?"
The problem is it's slow going and I am actively learning Python in the process. So, my coding skills are not yet fully up to snuff.
That said, I could always write up top notch documentation and then slowly upload code as my skills improve.
@remotenemesis I'm definitely going to have to learn 6502 assembly to truly grasp all of this. Text documents are easy to follow in a hex editor (even with a custom encoding) but more opaque binary formats like Spreadsheets and CAD are much harder.
Yes, there really were CAD programs for the #c64 back in the day.
@profoundlynerdy one of my nested side projects is learning 68k assembler! I had an 8bit computer as a kid and they were capable of quite a few things!
@profoundlynerdy hmu if you want a second opinion on any Python code. It's never been a primary language for me (Go and C right now) but I've written Python professionally.
@remotenemesis Sure!
I'll post some stuff on GitHub this weekend and send you the link. Some folks on Reddit recently asked me about this, too. Thanks.
@profoundlynerdy the Vampire v4 could be extremely interesting. I went a different route with an A1200 and am working through some minor issues on the road to upgrade with a native 68k accelerator card. I'm very interested in how the standalone v4 could turn out.
@remotenemesis that's cool. I seriously considered an A1200 but they're getting pricey on e-Bay.
@profoundlynerdy@mastodon.tech I regretted parting with my A1200 in the late 90's. What's fascinating to me are the efforts to modernize the platform in that twilight time period post-Commodore.
@profoundlynerdy are you running an x86 native #AROS system?