[HN Gopher] Calculator Construction Set ___________________________________________________________________ Calculator Construction Set Author : cyanf Score : 52 points Date : 2023-11-09 11:26 UTC (11 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.folklore.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.folklore.org) | tromp wrote: | The name reminds me of the Calculus of Constructions [1], the | type theory underlying proof assistant Coq. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_constructions | macintux wrote: | Reminds me of Dubl-Click's calculator construction kit for | classic MacOS. I spent, I think, $75 on it back when that was a | lot of money for an underemployed kid; never got any real value | out of it, but was fun to play with. | | https://www.macintoshrepository.org/1894-calculator-construc... | jhbadger wrote: | There were a lot of "construction kits" around that time, Bill | Budge's 1982 "Pinball Construction Set" was perhaps the first. | but there were things like the Adventure Construction Set, | Music Construction Set, etc., that let people make their own | versions of a program, typically (but not always) games, using | a visual interface (even on 8-bit computers). I wonder where | these things have gone. Yes, today we have things like Scratch, | but that's more a programming language even if it is visual. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball_Construction_Set | lioeters wrote: | I remember seeing a screenshot of the Music Construction Set. | It's fascinating how they were able to achieve such complex | interface given the size/resolution of the screen and other | technical limitations like memory constraints. | | It also reminds me that SimCity started as a kind of city | construction set. As a genre of software, it does seem | related to end-user programming. | zanderwohl wrote: | The thing that makes a truly brilliant programmer is the ability | to manage your bad manager -- to draw out demands they're | incapable of articulating. | ace2358 wrote: | Excellent story. Does anyone else wish we could go back to a time | where designs lasted more than 2-3 years and CEOs cared a bit | about it? | DonHopkins wrote: | I hacked an X11 window manager to take a command line argument | telling it which window id to treat as the root window, then ran | xcalc, discovered its window id with "xwininfo" or some such | utility, then ran the window manager on the calculator, putting | window frames around each of the calculator's buttons, so you | could resize them, move them around, open and close them to | icons, etc! That was a truly customizable calculator. | Zelphyr wrote: | Here's the result: | https://i.insider.com/5443c4556bb3f7f05dbaa658?width=1014 | billyhoffman wrote: | I love Andy's early history of the Mac at Folklore.org. It's a | great read. | | A few years back, with Andy's blessing, I extracted all the posts | and converted them to Markdown, to address a few issue I found | with Folklore.org: | | * Does not have a mobile friendly layout | | * Missing images | | * Low res-thumbnails used in articles, requiring links out to | high resolution ones. Missing copyright/license information about | the images | | * Broken links | | * Accessibility issues (images without ALT text, etc) | | * Formatting issues | | * No Metadata | | * Table-based layouts with complex and obtuse HTML markup. | | I find this an easier reading experience. | | Project: https://github.com/acidus99/folklore.org-export | | All the posts in Markdown: | https://github.com/acidus99/folklore.org-export/tree/main/Po... | NelsonMinar wrote: | This reminds me of modern software that exposes all these design | layout decisions to the user. Sizes of UI elements, fonts. | Detailed colors. People say they love the customizability and | there's a whole world of sharable themes for things. Me, I'd | prefer the software had the right visual design out of the box | and didn't need me configuring it. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-11-09 23:00 UTC)