Thanks for this, and for taking the time to reply!
You don't actually spell out who Cody is or was, either here or in the homepage. I had a glance at the PDF of the manual and I see a photo which tells me a little more, but still is not unambiguous or unequivocal. Cody is/was your dog?
I sort of see your points. I do see the appeal of something very simple and minimal, and that one can build oneself from just a few ICs. (Not that that's something I'd particularly want to do, myself.)
I think we have personally got mutually opposed philosophies about this, and some of them I coincidentally expressed in a recent article of mine, which has gone on to do rather well. You might find it interesting.
Young Americans in the '80s maybe got to explore computers via a C64, and aside from the pricy Apple II -- which wasn't better in every way, just more expandable -- that was home computing. (I don't know; I wasn't one.)
Young Brits probably got a Sinclair Spectrum, with much weaker graphics and sound, but a much better BASIC. But unless their parents were rich, if they dabbled in BASIC as I did, they probably aspired to a BBC Micro.
My take is this: give kids a good BASIC and a fairly unconstrained environment if you can. (The BBC Micro had hardware-driven "MODE 7" graphics using a Teletext chip, so you got most of the paltry 32kB RAM free. Most users chose that, and wrote programs that flipped into graphics mode as required. The cut-down Electron machine didn't have the Teletext chip, was thereby crippled, and flopped.)
The take here seems to be that '80s American kids' take away was "the Vic-20 was awful and the C64 not much better, but I got here fine, so that's enough."
My take, as an '80s Brit kit, "my BASIC was pretty good and I could get Beta BASIC, and given that, I did fine. I would give kids absolutely the best BASIC and graphics I could fit, and tailor my machine to fit that."
Re: Intentional constraints
Thanks for this, and for taking the time to reply!
You don't actually spell out who Cody is or was, either here or in the homepage. I had a glance at the PDF of the manual and I see a photo which tells me a little more, but still is not unambiguous or unequivocal. Cody is/was your dog?
I sort of see your points. I do see the appeal of something very simple and minimal, and that one can build oneself from just a few ICs. (Not that that's something I'd particularly want to do, myself.)
I think we have personally got mutually opposed philosophies about this, and some of them I coincidentally expressed in a recent article of mine, which has gone on to do rather well. You might find it interesting.
How a good business deal made us underestimate BASIC.
Young Americans in the '80s maybe got to explore computers via a C64, and aside from the pricy Apple II -- which wasn't better in every way, just more expandable -- that was home computing. (I don't know; I wasn't one.)
Young Brits probably got a Sinclair Spectrum, with much weaker graphics and sound, but a much better BASIC. But unless their parents were rich, if they dabbled in BASIC as I did, they probably aspired to a BBC Micro.
My take is this: give kids a good BASIC and a fairly unconstrained environment if you can. (The BBC Micro had hardware-driven "MODE 7" graphics using a Teletext chip, so you got most of the paltry 32kB RAM free. Most users chose that, and wrote programs that flipped into graphics mode as required. The cut-down Electron machine didn't have the Teletext chip, was thereby crippled, and flopped.)
The take here seems to be that '80s American kids' take away was "the Vic-20 was awful and the C64 not much better, but I got here fine, so that's enough."
My take, as an '80s Brit kit, "my BASIC was pretty good and I could get Beta BASIC, and given that, I did fine. I would give kids absolutely the best BASIC and graphics I could fit, and tailor my machine to fit that."
Does that make sense?