[Coco] CoCo Coding: Wow, has it been a while.

[Rogelio Perea]

Of all the BASICs I have ever done, the CoCo's is the one I prefer the most,
followed with the TRS-80's Model III and I. The rest are too quirky or too
tight technically-wise (C=64, TI99, ZX81, VIC20, Apple, etc).

Still have on disk many of the programs offered in the user manuals for the
CoCo 1, starting off with those sample programs that came with big landscape
pages books originally shipped with the CoCo 1, there were some nifty
programs to type, the Dancing Robot is one that despite its simplicity, it
always amazed my visitors when at the time (remember, this was 1982/83)
would venture a question like: "A computer? what is it good for, what does
it do?", and after the usual math and school benefits explanation, a dancing
robot would always put minds at ease.

There was no better way for me to learn how to program than to type the
sample programs from the books. When I got my MC-10 the only source of
programs to try on were those of the CoCo 1 books, minor modifications to
allow the MC-10 way of doing some things (have I ever missed the ELSE and
EDIT statements!).


-=[ Rogelio ]=-


On 7/26/07, Jim Cox <jimcox at miba51.com> wrote:
>
> I sat down and typed in some of the first few programs
> from "Extended Basic" and I cannot believe how much the
> little CoCo could do with just Basic, and how different it
> is from modern coding (noticed I used different instead of
> difficult :)
>
> It's going to take a little getting used to, but I think
> it's going to be fun.
>
> Jim