Thanks, friend...
I code mostly in C, and in any flavor *asm you may care to mention.
I have written emulators and assemblers... never yet a compiler, though.
The chicken simply pecked at a flashing light - there was a chicken psychologist who trained it - and the "random" timing at which the chicken threw that switch determined which of a few select moves it would make.
I remember the sound of the Apple ][ floppy very well... all 128K bytes of it! :D
A friend of mine had advised me to write a text editor for Apple ][ back in the day when there were none... I should have listened! I'm sure an editor would have sold much better than the stuff I did write! ;)
Its been a year since I last earnestly attempted to adhere C# to my mind.
The day for me to succeed in such has not come. It might not ever - and thats OK. I am coming to terms with working around my shortfalls - but such is still a work in progress (I admit to feeling envy ;c).
Your chicken interfacing experiment sounds quite ambitious. Did you have any level of success?
Ah yes. A text editor back then was a big thing. It was still a big thing upon the Atari, let alone for the Apple ][. Still, I suspect that like myself you once saw programming as being a means toward an end rather than as the end itself.
I appreciate your insights and also your time here. These exchanges have been pleasant and I look forward to getting into further exchanges in the future. :c)
The chicken machine was not my own project - I was a subcontractor, paid only to do the firmware coding. It was, in fact, my very first consulting gig! ;)
And it was a great success. Several units were made and they made the rounds of fairs and shopping malls. There is something about a person's pride that makes it difficult for him to walk away after being beaten by a chicken at Tic-Tac-Toe. The temptation is too great to keep putting money into the machine until you beat the chicken, or at least until there is a draw.
As I programmed it, the firmware had two settings, selectable by a switch in the back. One setting guaranteed "Chicken will never lose." The worst case for the chicken would be a draw. The other setting was "Chicken may lose," and interestingly enough, the chicken seemed to win more often on that setting... :D
I too have enjoyed our conversation, and look forward to more! ;)
To land a consulting gig normally requires either intimate knowledge of the somebody in the loop, or a sterling reputation. I'd suspect the latter.
Well either way, you've worked on some really interesting projects even if they may not have been your own. ^_^
Hearing more about the chicken project makes it all the more intriguing to me. Very rightly said about pride. The psychology at play will have people demanding repeat chances until they manage.
I will certainly be seeing you around. Thank you for sharing your experiences! :c)