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Action was the best 8-bit programming language

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90 points rbanffy | 4 comments | 04 Sep 25 19:25 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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SeenNotHeard ◴[04 Sep 25 23:16 UTC] No.45133316[source]▶
One limitation not mentioned is that Action! didn't support recursion. This had to do with how local variables were stored.

Whether it was the best language for 8-bit programming, it certainly was a great fit for the 6502, as the language targeted the peculiarities of that chip. Accessing hardware-specific features of the 8-bit Atari's was a snap, which was necessary in order to do anything more interesting than sieves or print loops.

Action! probably could've been ported to the Apple line, but 8-bits were winding down by the time it was released. Porting to 16-bit machines like the IBM PC or Mac (or even the Atari ST) would have been a tougher sell, since Pascal and C were better established by that point, and worked well on those machines.

Two bad things about Action!: Charging a license fee to distribute the runtime, and that dumb bang in the name.

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keyle ◴[05 Sep 25 06:15 UTC] No.45135475[source]▶
Wasn't recursion a problem for early C and Pascal in those days anyway? They didn't have tail call optimisations.

As in after X recursion, you'd get in trouble as the memory kept allocating new stack frames for every recurse...

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pasc1878 ◴[05 Sep 25 07:44 UTC] No.45136010[source]▶
C and Pascal still don't have TCO.

But you still need some recursion and C and Pascal can do that.

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1. keyle ◴[05 Sep 25 08:25 UTC] No.45136261{3}[source]▶
When would you absolutely need recursion that couldn't be fulfilled with a while loop?
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2. unnouinceput ◴[05 Sep 25 09:25 UTC] No.45136624[source]▶
Never, but I can counter with "when do you absolutely need switch that can't be fulfilled with if-else"?

It's a nice to have that makes your life easier

3. gavinray ◴[05 Sep 25 14:59 UTC] No.45139341[source]▶
Many algorithms are more simply expressed as recursive functions than stack-based iterators or "while" loops.
4. AnimalMuppet ◴[07 Sep 25 22:05 UTC] No.45162618[source]▶
Adaptive quadrature is an algorithm for numerical integration. You have a function of one variable, and two endpoints of a range, and an error limit. You want to return the value of the integral of that function over that range, a value that is no further from the correct value than the error limit.

What you do is, you do a three-point approximation and a five-point approximation. The difference between the two gives you a fairly good estimate of the error. If the difference is too high, you cut the region in half, and recursively call the same function on each half.

That calling twice is what makes it hard for a while loop. I mean, yes, you could do it with a work queue of intervals or something, but it would be much less straightforward than a recursive call.