My start with BASIC programming
Here’s how I wrote my first BASIC programs on the Apple II.
Read long lines with getline
Getline offers a more flexible way to read user data into your program without breaking the system.
Reading the command line with getopt
You can make your program much more flexible if it can respond to the user every time the program runs.
Exploring GNU Algol 68: Formatting numbers as strings for output
As I mentioned in my introductory article to this mini-series, GNU Algol 68 is in development, and as of the date of writing this article,...
Building a random text generator
Generate your own random placeholder text by writing a few lines in Bash.
Making FORTRAN 77 easier to read
If you’re getting started with FORTRAN, add this pretty printer to your programming toolkit.
A Small Algol 68 Project, Part 3
In memory of J. Kevin Douglas, a good friend and fellow fan of Algol 68 In the previous article in this series, we diverged from...
3 ways to write bugs with FORTRAN 77
Explore old-style FORTRAN programming with Arithmetic IF, Computed GOTO, and Assigned GOTO.
A Small Algol 68 Project, Part 2
In memory of J. Kevin Douglas, a good friend and fellow fan of Algol 68 In the last article in this series, we described a...
Code like it’s the 1980s
Our computers are so powerful today that it’s hard for younger developers to understand what early desktop computing was like. Even more experienced folks can...
Draw in color using Portable Pix Maps
Create colorful images using the Portable Pix Map format.
Grayscale images with Portable Gray Maps
Learn to write grayscale images using the Portable Gray Map format.
Write tiny images using PBM
The Portable Bit Map (“PBM”) image file format was invented in the 1980s as a way to transmit small black and white images as plain...
Reading a whole file at once
Two methods to load a data file into memory. Use mmap on Linux sysetms.
Old-school programming with Turbo C
Explore retroprogramming on FreeDOS with this popular freeware IDE.