But the pendulum swung from "sad PropTools is Windows only" to "we need a platform independent Software to support Window and Linux" to "If you want to run PropWare and SipmleIDE you need to install Linux on your new Windows10 Laptop".
Just great, isn't it?
Wait a minute. When did that happen? SimpleIDE still works on Linux and Mac does it not?
But the pendulum swung from "sad PropTools is Windows only" to "we need a platform independent Software to support Window and Linux" to "If you want to run PropWare and SipmleIDE you need to install Linux on your new Windows10 Laptop".
Just great, isn't it?
Wait a minute. When did that happen? SimpleIDE still works on Linux and Mac does it not?
Yes, I think that issue is related to PropWare, more than SimpleIDE and the fact PropWare + SimpleIDE is tested on Linux mainly.
Add in some version creep, and you get differences, as Parallax are slow to update their versions.
C has many good uses, but I believe COBOL (and COBOL programmers) will be around and in some demand for many times my lifespan. Every financial institution of any sort that has existed for a long while, many major business that have been around forever will not change rapidly if at all, simply due to the fact that no business of that size can afford to just dump every bit of COBOL code and go to XXXXX. Just the consider the monetary value of all that code over so many years, and the cost of writing and testing along with the risk to the business of failure of the new.
I agree with this. That code not only handles trillions of dollars, but it's function is baked into so much now, formally proving new code may actually present challenges people aren't asking for.
Just look at all the emulation and integration efforts going on right now. We arrived at the point where improving how old code runs can totally compete with authoring new code. Same for languages / environments.
Learning C may "save your job", as much as it's likely to open new opportunities up. It may just be worth doing to better understand how a lot of other stuff works. The same is true for assembly language. (and getting good at that can definitely open some doors up.) Look at the machine learning people and their growing need for very high performance computing. They are calling for assembly language programmers who can get every cycle out of their process that they can.
But the pendulum swung from "sad PropTools is Windows only" to "we need a platform independent Software to support Window and Linux" to "If you want to run PropWare and SipmleIDE you need to install Linux on your new Windows10 Laptop".
Just great, isn't it?
Wait a minute. When did that happen? SimpleIDE still works on Linux and Mac does it not?
As far as I was able to follow, this is what happened.
Davis Z. who is a quite smart guy and has a nice library to support C++ with PropGcc stumbled across this while trying to help Discovery to use his Library.
Parallax is just supporting some GCC version XX.XX while PropWare needs GCC y.yy sadly GCC y.yy does not compile on windows together with Simple Ide + Lobraries and the solution was that Discovery has to install Linux on his brand new Win10 Laptop.
It does not help that David Z. 'despised' windows, but he even tried to help out there, but was not able to do so since SimpleIDE and Libraries are not supporting never PropGCC Versions, but are frozen on a 2 year old version.
So I do not blame David Z. here at all, he even tried. The sad point is that Simple IDE ships with a old Version of PropGCC, not including at all the changes done in the last 2 years by the PropGCC guys.
And it looks like that even David Z. who really is into C/C++ on the P1, and running a build server to provide new Versions is not able to get newer Windows Versions running.
As said before I am not much into C/C++ but I really can feel the pain guys like Eric and David B. feel, and hope that Parallax and our community here cheer them on to get things going again.
Bui as of now you will need Linux to run up to date Versions, Windows is stale since 2 years.
Maybe you can use 'Bash under Ubuntu under Windows', or so, but there you do not have the serial ports so it is sort of - hm - lame also.
So, where does this leave us for development tools? I still use BST and prefer PASM for now. But where or how do I download or build a Linux (Debian stretch) version to play with some of the C stuff? Thanks..
The reason for separate memory and I/O spaces is history. When your memory is a rotating magnetic drum, ultrasonic delay line, or even read-destroy-rewrite magnetic core RAM, access to memory is much slower and more complicated than simply setting or sampling an I/O bit. I/O was also much more expensive per bit, but there were far fewer bits of I/O than memory. And conflating the two types of access in the CPU would actually have made it more complicated, as every access would have to start with a decision about which hardware to go to and the timing would be vastly different.
When we get to the integrated circuit CPU, for awhile there is a similar situation because practical high-density RAM chips are dynamic and have to be refreshed, again making them much more complicated than static I/O, so CPU makers continued to build in the I/O space. But refresh doesn't really interfere with I/O, and the time penalty wasn't that great, so the inexpensive early computers like the TRS-80 and Apple ][ used memory mapped I/O because sharing the circuitry was now cheaper. Eventually CPU makers realized the I/O map had become a waste of silicon and opcode space and stopped bothering with it.
Anyone know what the issue(s) is/are with the Simple Libraries?
I asked that question many months ago, and there was no response from Parallax about it. The PropGCC version that Parallax provides with SimpleIDE is lacking many of the fixes and enhancements that have been made to the codebase. It would be nice if users could go to one place to get the latest official version of PropGCC, SimpleIDE and the Simple Libraries with all the latest fixes. Sometimes I wonder why Parallax pays so little attention to keeping their development tools up to date.
Sometimes I wonder why Parallax pays so little attention to keeping their development tools up to date.
That's because it's harder when dev tools are the responsibility of outside sources. It was easier with PBASIC and PropTool stuff, which were done entirely in-house. It's not that outside sources are inherently unreliable; it's just that they have different priorities.
Sometimes I wonder why Parallax pays so little attention to keeping their development tools up to date.
That's because it's harder when dev tools are the responsibility of outside sources. It was easier with PBASIC and PropTool stuff, which were done entirely in-house. It's not that outside sources are inherently unreliable; it's just that they have different priorities.
-Phil
I would normally agree, but how many updates did PropTool get in the past 10 years?
Even fixes were like extracting teeth!
That's why Brad and Michael wrote bst and homespun, with extra features such as conditional compilation.
Sometimes I wonder why Parallax pays so little attention to keeping their development tools up to date.
That's because it's harder when dev tools are the responsibility of outside sources. It was easier with PBASIC and PropTool stuff, which were done entirely in-house. It's not that outside sources are inherently unreliable; it's just that they have different priorities.
That's exactly the point! Parallax is not expending the resources to maintain the tools internally. As far as I know they're not even paying the people that maintain them externally. For a company that claims to be responsive to the customer they have a very poor record in responding to problems in the development tools.
The lack of support on the Prop Tool is one example of this lack of support. Eventually Parallax dropped support on the Prop Tool entirely and went with a new solution with OpenSpin and Propeller IDE. They did pay for that development, so kudos to Parallax for doing that. However, it appears that there are still a few unresolved issues that are sitting in limbo.
Parallax also funded the PropGCC development for the P1 and SimpleIDE. They also developed the simple library internally. But as I have stated, these have been stagnant for a few years, and they don't contain the latest fixes and enhancements in one place available from the Parallax website.
Comments
Wait a minute. When did that happen? SimpleIDE still works on Linux and Mac does it not?
Add in some version creep, and you get differences, as Parallax are slow to update their versions.
Learn C and save your job? Nah,
All bow down now to the almighty R.Adm Hopper!!!
Just look at all the emulation and integration efforts going on right now. We arrived at the point where improving how old code runs can totally compete with authoring new code. Same for languages / environments.
Learning C may "save your job", as much as it's likely to open new opportunities up. It may just be worth doing to better understand how a lot of other stuff works. The same is true for assembly language. (and getting good at that can definitely open some doors up.) Look at the machine learning people and their growing need for very high performance computing. They are calling for assembly language programmers who can get every cycle out of their process that they can.
Flat out arms race in that field right now.
As far as I was able to follow, this is what happened.
Davis Z. who is a quite smart guy and has a nice library to support C++ with PropGcc stumbled across this while trying to help Discovery to use his Library.
Parallax is just supporting some GCC version XX.XX while PropWare needs GCC y.yy sadly GCC y.yy does not compile on windows together with Simple Ide + Lobraries and the solution was that Discovery has to install Linux on his brand new Win10 Laptop.
It does not help that David Z. 'despised' windows, but he even tried to help out there, but was not able to do so since SimpleIDE and Libraries are not supporting never PropGCC Versions, but are frozen on a 2 year old version.
So I do not blame David Z. here at all, he even tried. The sad point is that Simple IDE ships with a old Version of PropGCC, not including at all the changes done in the last 2 years by the PropGCC guys.
And it looks like that even David Z. who really is into C/C++ on the P1, and running a build server to provide new Versions is not able to get newer Windows Versions running.
As said before I am not much into C/C++ but I really can feel the pain guys like Eric and David B. feel, and hope that Parallax and our community here cheer them on to get things going again.
Bui as of now you will need Linux to run up to date Versions, Windows is stale since 2 years.
Maybe you can use 'Bash under Ubuntu under Windows', or so, but there you do not have the serial ports so it is sort of - hm - lame also.
So, yes the pendulum swung full backwards.
Mike
https://github.com/parallaxinc/propgcc
That is looking quite old, but from what I read above works with SimpleIDE. Also available from the Parallax github repos.
More interestingly you can build newer prop-gcc by David Betz from his repo here:
https://github.com/dbetz/propeller-gcc
Which I gather is using a newer version of GCC.
Perhaps it does not work with SimpleIDE but that is OK. I use Microsoft Visual Studio code for most editing now a days. Or vim is good
Anyone know what the issue(s) is/are with the Simple Libraries?
When we get to the integrated circuit CPU, for awhile there is a similar situation because practical high-density RAM chips are dynamic and have to be refreshed, again making them much more complicated than static I/O, so CPU makers continued to build in the I/O space. But refresh doesn't really interfere with I/O, and the time penalty wasn't that great, so the inexpensive early computers like the TRS-80 and Apple ][ used memory mapped I/O because sharing the circuitry was now cheaper. Eventually CPU makers realized the I/O map had become a waste of silicon and opcode space and stopped bothering with it.
-Phil
Even fixes were like extracting teeth!
That's why Brad and Michael wrote bst and homespun, with extra features such as conditional compilation.
The lack of support on the Prop Tool is one example of this lack of support. Eventually Parallax dropped support on the Prop Tool entirely and went with a new solution with OpenSpin and Propeller IDE. They did pay for that development, so kudos to Parallax for doing that. However, it appears that there are still a few unresolved issues that are sitting in limbo.
Parallax also funded the PropGCC development for the P1 and SimpleIDE. They also developed the simple library internally. But as I have stated, these have been stagnant for a few years, and they don't contain the latest fixes and enhancements in one place available from the Parallax website.