Why Commodore

by Rolf Miller

Since I continue to do most of my work using a Commodore 64, acquaintances ask, Why? That
curiosity is understandable because I have and use more powerful machines. 

My answer to the question is simply: The 64 isn't changing. It's true that the unit currently on the desk is
not the original one purchased. It is also true that its internal circuitry represents numerous revisions
from the original. But its operating system is the same. This means my knowledge of this machine
acquired over the years is still viable. So are the many programs accumulated. And that means I can
concentrate on doing work rather than wrestling with how. 

This is not to suggest that what is required never changes. However, much of the work in this office
ends up as text in one form or another, and the variations affect the form more than the underlying
work. Consider this article as an example. In times past these words would end up printed on paper,
copied, and mailed. Today they end up printed to disk, copied, and e-mailed. The effort to produce the
words in both cases is the same. While the difference in this instance is provided for by The Write Stuff
word processing program, not all variations are so readily accommodated. 

That is when knowledge of the 64 comes into play. Seldom is the occasion that writing a little routine in
BASIC doesn't answer the need. This familiarity with the 64 also allows programming to simplify jobs.
For example, when it comes to dealing with a data base which consists solely of text, I find it much
easier to create the base of data using the word processor. 

To use a word processor in this way needs only a BASIC routine or two to handle the resulting data
file. The most valuable aspect of this unchanging long-term relationship, though, is when it helps keep
my other long-term relationship from changing. The reference is to my spouse: like the time she
requested a sheet of paper printed with numbers 1 through 1000. Why? 

To understand this fully, you need to know she married her first date. Consequently, she reads romance
novels. She has hundreds of them. Fortunately, she trades them in from time to time. What triggers this
housecleaning is when books start filling her shoe racks. A recent trading junket, though, left her quite
depressed. She found she'd traded for a bunch of books already on her shelves. To understand how
this could happen, one need only look at the covers surrounding the lust-filled pages. But the publishers
sequentially number each book in a series. So, with a sheet of numbers, she could cross off the ones
already read. No problem. Directly executing this line of code did it.

OPEN4,4:FORX=1TO1000:PRINT#4,X;:NEXT:CLOSE4

Well, not quite. That's the trouble with extemporaneous programming. What seems right often isn't. But
since executing it demonstrates the result, there's no need to further describe the embarrassment.
Besides, that format isn't what she had in mind. She wanted the numbers to read down the page in
columns. 

After forty something years of marriage, you learn a few things. To get all you want, for instance,
requires not making remarks about the wife's imprecise declarations of what she wants. Furthermore,
there is no defense to, "You didn't ask." And this is especially true when you know that the first step in
writing any program is determining the WHAT. Formatted printing requires a little thought, and the wife
graciously granted the time. 

The following little routine produced the wanted results.

10 open4,4:forx=1to63:fory=0to15 20 print#4,right$(" "+str$(y*63+x),5);:next:next:print#4:close4


(From the Internet, via the Commodore Information Center,
http://home.att.net/~rmestel/commodore.html)