We have come a long way since 1974

Nedd Ludd

Active member
I started my computing at a certain government communications centre just as Zilog Z80s and 8080s were appearing. I learnt low level languages first then having mastered the dark art of machine code, hex and assembly moved onto high level languages. My first computer was a Research Machines 380Z and with its 32K of soft BASIC it was the bees knees of the computing world. Now I have just spent the last few weeks going over a spec with my grandson for his Uni computer course. Quantum leap does not even begin to describe it. I wonder where we will be in the next 50 years? (I know where I will be and that's puishing up daiseys).
 
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SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
Hiya

Welcome to the forums. Yes, it's incredible just how fast everything has moved on, even if we're only factoring in the last 10 years, the improvements to CPU performance and graphical power is just insane.

Are you looking for advice on a build? If so, if you can post your maximum budget, what it's being used for and what monitor it's pairing with, then we can advise further.
 

Nedd Ludd

Active member
Thanks for the response. I posted the spec on the laptop forum. It's funny but I found that my grounding in low level languages as well as architecture has allowed me to keep more or less on top of what is happening. As a comment, when we took our exams in machine code programming of the Z80s, we were told that 80 lines of code a day (including de-bugging) is the maximum any good coder could achieve. Marks were deducted for wasted code. This makes sense when you consider the speed at which the early computer ran. I have no idea of how much is expected today but I think it is more than 80 lines.
 

Bigfoot

Grand Master
I too spent some time with the Z80 (a bit new fangled}, 8080/8085 and 6500 and 6800 processors. Binary, hexadecimal and assembly language, including hand assembly, made for a good understanding. It is amazing how little processing capacity and memory we had then compared to what we have now. A few years later I was programming on the equivalent of today’s laptop - IBM and Compaq ’portable’ PCs, with twin floppy disk drives and up to 640 kB of RAM.
 

Nedd Ludd

Active member
I too spent some time with the Z80 (a bit new fangled}, 8080/8085 and 6500 and 6800 processors. Binary, hexadecimal and assembly language, including hand assembly, made for a good understanding. It is amazing how little processing capacity and memory we had then compared to what we have now. A few years later I was programming on the equivalent of today’s laptop - IBM and Compaq ’portable’ PCs, with twin floppy disk drives and up to 640 kB of RAM.
This almost makes us pioneers in computing. Glad to see that someone else has gone down the binary road as well. I used to love using a hex assembler and would spend hours after lectures going over the code to see if I could save a few bytes. Today I simply use my desktop as a storage device for all of my film and series collections. I have 22 TB of storage and I am even running out of that. Kids today don't know how good they have it.
 
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