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Re: Some cc65 optimizations...

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"Harry Potter" <rose.joseph12@yahoo.com> wrote>
>Well...I think I have an AppleSoft BASIC book at my mother's house.  I 
>certainly have a couple Apple 2 emulators on several computers.  I 
>understand what you're saying: that I should learn the basics first.

And that is all I am saying. Every single thing that I wrote for any 
computer came out of books first and then out of my head, and not the other 
way around. I have no reason to believe that it is any different for any 
other programmer and I've worked with thousands of programmers directly over 
the years and directly managed some smaller number. There have been very few 
who were not as smart as me. We rise to the level of our own incompetence.

As far as books go, everything is already online. You don't need to read a 
whole book to learn about subroutine locations and how to use them. But you 
do need to write code and not just read about it.

Leave the C programming instructions to the C programming experts. There are 
guys around who have written compilers all their lives. No matter what you 
think you are not going to teach guys like that anything at all. In fact 
that kind of guy is almost the only kind of guy around usenet who uses a C 
compiler these days...

No matter which old piece of hardware you are writing for, if you are 
writing C code, you need to look at examples in every language.

There are only 3 languages so that is easy as ABC:

- Assembly Language
- BASIC
- C

On the Apple II you will need an AppleSoft BASIC example and an Assembly 
language example (or snippets) to follow along in C. You will then first 
write the program in AppleSoft and then translate it to C. Whatever you 
can't do in C (cc65 in this case) you will then write in a mix of C and 
inline assembly. Finally, you will decide if you should write a 6502 
assembly language module to link with your C program. When you get better at 
it then you will know what to do without so much trouble.

You will test every line of code a thousand times if necessary before 
announcing to the world that your code is available but has not yet been 
tested. And that Mr. Harry Potter is a start, because there will be errors 
that you will need to fix after that. Including conceptual errors that you 
will need to eat.

If you do not however do that, then you'll get nowhere with this crowd. All 
that's left is pretty hardcore people that go way back, or geniuses except 
for a couple of guys like me who like to write and play with old programs 
and who don't care if you've optimized something to save a byte of memory.

Start with the Beagle Brothers Peeks Pokes and Pointers chart. That's how 
lots of us learned a few things. Also use google extensively instead of 
asking where you can find stuff. That way when you actually need something 
that does not exist online you may even get it from somewhere magic.

Bill 

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Some cc65 optimizations... Harry Potter <rose.joseph12@yahoo.com> - 2014-11-22 06:05 -0800
  Re: Some cc65 optimizations... D Finnigan <dog_cow@macgui.com> - 2014-11-22 12:54 -0600
    Re: Some cc65 optimizations... Antoine Vignau <antoine.vignau@laposte.net> - 2014-11-22 13:14 -0800
      Re: Some cc65 optimizations... Harry Potter <rose.joseph12@yahoo.com> - 2014-11-22 13:51 -0800
        Re: Some cc65 optimizations... qkumba <peter.ferrie@gmail.com> - 2014-11-22 21:37 -0800
          Re: Some cc65 optimizations... Harry Potter <rose.joseph12@yahoo.com> - 2014-11-23 04:56 -0800
            Re: Some cc65 optimizations... "Bill Buckels" <bbuckels@mts.net> - 2014-11-23 12:55 -0600
              Re: Some cc65 optimizations... Harry Potter <rose.joseph12@yahoo.com> - 2014-11-23 13:53 -0800
                Re: Some cc65 optimizations... "Bill Buckels" <bbuckels@mts.net> - 2014-11-23 17:47 -0600
                Re: Some cc65 optimizations... opengeek@gmail.com - 2014-11-24 09:55 -0800
                Re: Some cc65 optimizations... Harry Potter <rose.joseph12@yahoo.com> - 2014-11-24 16:07 -0800
                Re: Some cc65 optimizations... D Finnigan <dog_cow@macgui.com> - 2014-11-24 14:22 -0600

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