From: olsone@aix.rpi.edu (Erik G. Olson)
Subject: Re: TI developing: what's up, what's in, what's out there?
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 02:30:06 GMT

In article <wLFVPB2w165w@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca> andy-w@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca (Andrew webster) writes:
>_________________________________________________________________________
>
>You like Feb'web 3.5 over 4.x!!! Why? Do have an 80 col card and a RAM?
>__________________________________________________________________________
>
>Andrew webster              andy-w@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca 

Well, that's not why, and I don't quite see how it could be...

I got to like Fweb 3.5 one summer when I was using a plain P-box with a
color TV and an additional outboard disk drive. The only functions I
used were Edit, Assemble, Load&Run, with the occasional disk catalog
and homegrown utility program mixed in. 

(Actually a better description would be Edit, Assemble, Edit, Assemble,
Edit, Assemble, Load&Run, FCTN-QUIT, Load&Run, FCTN-QUIT...)

I did this out of the E/A cartridge. Fweb loaded when I pushed '5' and
Enter from its menu. The things I liked were that it didn't clutter my
disk or my screen-- two things that are eroded in later versions of Fweb.
Assembling big programs eats disk space fast, so small tools win. It's also
good to keep object code on one disk (with Fweb) and source by itself
on another disk. Disk swapping loses big-time. (I went on to endure
a Mac without a hard disk for almost a year. Now there's a machine that
burns resources.) Plus, all I had to do was hit a few number keys. This 
was welcome, because in debugging/developing assembly-- particularly a game,
as I was doing-- your motions are very repetitive. In Fweb 4.0, which I 
tried, there are annoying little pauses in more places-- at least the 
versions I've used.

Jesse Slicer did give me a recent copy of 4.x and I tried it out, but it 
failed the clutter test. I would use it as a grand main entrance instead of 
3.5 if I had a plain 4A, but for a quick-and-dirty assembly axe it's not
the right tool for me. At this point I would like to bow out and stop
encouraging sticking-in-the-past oldfashionedness. 

Incidentally, I did all that work with 3.5 while Lou had my Geneve on
repair. I actually got it back, in a timely fashion! (It had an extremely
simple problem, thankfully.) So I don't use Fweb at all except on rare
occasions; GenProg is awesome. The latest version of that 4A game depends
on it-- but it still retains some old characteristics, such as the habit
of segregating tools on one disk, along with MDOS, which bootstrap 
themselves into the software ramdisk, while the source code lives on
a disk by itself and is shuttled back and forth from ramdisk. (Which
is also good for making backups.) GenProg produces every-- I really mean, 
*every*-- kind of output file there is, so from MDOS my automated scripts 
kick out the 4A loadables onto the source code disk. Object code is never 
saved to floppy since GenAsm laughs at small programs that only fill up 
31K of memory, and it's cheaper just to do without REF/DEFs (wretched
things that they are) and assemble the whole darn thing into a single 
object file. Sort of like all the TI cartridges where the SOURCE was all
one file, all 5000 lines or whatever. (These, I guess, were assembled on
bigger machines, that at least had massive storage systems.)

Nowadays I get paid to write C on monster workstations, which raises
the question, why do I still have a TI? Well... it's fun to write a
little assembly now and then. I might even tackle a big program if
I had a killer C compiler. (No I'm not taking suggestions; I have
enough already. A cool game, or, heavens, another BBS program
that I actually did write ANSI C routines for just as an exercise (!),
or most unmarketable of them all, a GIS (Geographic Information System)
that interfaces to TI-Base. I think that would be really cute-- a mapping
program on a TI. You'd almost need a CD-ROM drive then...)

Ramble mode:

(I better post ramble separately.)
-- 
Erik G. Olson          =+ There was Virtue in the world before there was
olsone@rpi.edu         =+ Orthodoxy in it.
                       =+ --The Independent Whig (as quoted by John Adams)