# Simple Computing

There appears to be emerging a renaissance in retro computers and
retro computing technologies. My own earliest memories of computing
are of playing games on my ZX Spectrum 48k and using BBC Model B's at
school. In those days both hardware and software were much more
simplistic and because of it, more accessible to hobbyists.

Over 20 years have passed since I embarked on a career in I.T. and to
be honest it was drudgery for the most part. Sometimes I was able to
come up with some neat simple solution of my own devising but it was
not often I had the freedom to craft something from the ground up. I
also spent most of that time contributing to the commercial web for
which I now have a lot of resentment.

I much prefer tinkering with my old computers, they have character!
Unlike the glossy screened featureless rectangles of today's masses.

Not because of age, but because of the speed at which computing
technology has moved on in my lifetime, I am a dinosaur of the
digital age. To me this stuff isn't retro, it's what I grew up with,
what I feel at home with and I will do my best to hold onto all that
was good.


## Tools to create 

Every home computer in the 80's came with a built in programming
environment and documentation allowing the new owner to extend the
system by writing their own programs. A whole generation of game
studios and legendary programmers emerged from this perfect storm.
Unfortunately as commercial software took off the included tools
allowing you to create your own steadily disappeared.

In hind sight, if I were at the beginning of my career again, I 
would have learned C, Lua and POSIX shell. Forth has also recently
come to my attention and intrigues me. Interestingly the Jupiter
Ace[1] personal computer from the 80's came with a Forth interpreter
as opposed to the usual basic interpreter of the time. Operating
systems such as Collapse OS and Dusk OS are Forth based. 

We should be eternally grateful to those who have contributed to free
and open source software. They have given us a lifeline from the
tyranny of commercial operating systems and development software. I
do believe however that much of it is far too complex...


## Plain text

There are many text editors and command-line tools designed to work 
with plain text and this format is truly cross platform. I tend to 
write all my articles using markdown so that they can be converted 
easily to other formats which support text attributes like **bold**, 
_italic_ and headings etc. Although I rarely use anything other than
headings and foot notes... 

I use vim for everything. Choose an editor and learn to use it well,
this is your most important tool for working with text.


## Gopher

Due to my resentment of the commercial web, and in some attempt to 
repent, I have become a gopher advocate and contributor. Through 
providing some small services (Gutenberg Search, Quarry Search
Engine, Podcast Search) and writing content unique to gopher I hope
to encourage its use and popularity.

Gopher has not lost its community feel. Unlike the majority of the
WWW, you don't have to look far to find content that has been created
because it mattered to the author to share their knowledge or their
opinion.


## A consideration

To quote Solderpunk[2] "The dominant use of personal computers in the
21st century is the functional simulation of non-computers.". The
emulation of analogue devices (clocks, calendars, 
typewriters, music players ...) and tasks. In response to that I'd
simply like to say that it was only after the tools of creation were
no longer distributed along with these devices and they lost the
primary means of interacting with them in a meaningful way (a real
keyboard) that they became devices of consumption. The clue is in the
fact that the screen is the most significant part of them. To write
software for android it would appear you need to download android
studio which runs on what I would consider a real general purpose
computer. They are not self contained multi purpose computers like
those in the 80's.


[1](gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Jupiter%20Ace)
[2](gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/%7esolderpunk/phlog/do-you-even-compute-bro.txt)