At 12 years old in 1980, I bought Atari BASIC Programming (it wasn't yet called the 2600). Minutes after plugging it in, the idea of a computer clicked for me. That quickly led to getting bored with that game system and convincing my parents to buy me a "real" computer. Eventually that led to a long career as a software developer. Thanks for opening that door for me Atari BASIC Programming!
Someone really should DIY a real Atari "VCS," as in adequate bank switched RAM and something not unlike TRS-80 BASIC achieved without outlandish hardware for the time...
OMG! Someone pulled it off back in the day! I had no idea. So much for my retirement project idea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuMate
That's ok, I have a lot of years to go before I need one LOL
That was a false start, to say the least. There isn't a whole lot you can do with 64 bytes. After that, I begged for a Timex Sinclair 1000. 16KB of RAM isn't a whole lot, either, but it was enough to actually experiment and learn.
That said, I am perpetually amazed at what some people have been able to pull off on such a weak device. 120 bytes is nothing for memory compared to anything I have written on a modern computer; I worked very hard to optimize the shit out of my custom Swaybar, and that still took about 500kb.
The fact that games on the 2600 could even be playable is sort of an achievement in its own right, and when you see games that are actually legitimately decent (like the cassette tape version of Frogger, for example), I feel a bit of envy that I will never be that good at software.
BASIC Programming on the 2600 is similarly impressive to me. It’s not “fun” in any kind of objective sense, you can’t really do a lot with it, but the fact that there exists a programming environment in any capacity running directly on there is an impressive bit of engineering.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Chess provide some interesting background reading.
I don’t think it works on real hardware but I’m quite partial to Bad Apple : https://youtu.be/Ko9ZA50X71s?si=Ds7WuMgPHeubBNNz
It's quite a feat.
APL: challenge accepted
https://aplwiki.com/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life
A quick search has not found any implementations of an APL-family language on the 2600, so let this comment be an inspiration for one of you madlads out there to actually do it. The 2600 has only 128B of RAM, but a lot of consoles around this era had additional bankswitched RAM on the cartridges.
Also, the "Decker" Hypercard-alike has a K-inspired language that is pretty nice. (Yes, much more modern, but still feels a bit like something "of that era".)
