Distinguishing a program's return value from its side effects https://archive.org/details/akkartik-2min-2021-04-10 Further adventures in bootstrapping a computer up from machine code. Things to notice in this iteration: * Boots into an interpreter like old microcomputers * Menu at the bottom imitating WordStar Likely next episode: running programs outside the programming environment like Turbo Pascal. Previous episode: https://futureofcoding.slack.com/archives/C0120A3L30R/p1614240046005000 Main project page: https://github.com/akkartik/mu

what if you were to take one more step away from the teletype model?

Yes! I've been trying to do that. There's no escape sequences here and no scrolling. Printing in any direction is equally fast and convenient. Some constraints influencing the current state: • Text grid is more manageable for writing tests. Though vector primitives are also doable. Raw pixels get too unwieldy. • Fixed width font simplifies text rendering. • I haven't managed to get the mouse working yet. Ideas most appreciated.

One random direction: what if there's no

print

? Maybe, instead, the last return value is "drawn" to a vector canvas that understands text and shapes as first class entities. So

(circle 10)

at the REPL returns a circle, which is drawn to the canvas, etc.

First (red) pixel on the (center of the) fake screen.