Thanks for starting this series. I used C many years ago on Dos and WIndows (and recently started using it again) but never did Mac programming, so it's great to find introductory material to help get started.
In the early '90s @ Honolulu Community College there were Macintosh SE/30s with THINK Pascal. With what I learned in ICS 111, I programmed a simple program. It was supposed to print lines, but the program could only print one line with a LaserWriter.
Great. Reminded me of my first program in Lightspeed Pascal which resulted in the bland Hello World in a non Mac-like window. Time to get my SE/30 out of the attic, recap it and see if it can be brought back to life. Eagerly awaiting more in this series. I took Brian Kernighan’s class at Princeton years back and am still in touch with him. He would be pleased that people are still coming on board.
That was my start. Circa 1997 with think C 6, then code warrior, and then gave the apple developer thing (the one with the red dots in the menubar) a try. Adw I think. My book was "learn c on the Macintosh" by Dave Mark. Fun times, first you initialize all your managers (qd, windows, text, all that) and then you get to start your event loop (you fuck up here, you'll bring the entire system down, cooperative multitasking remember). For object oriented programming there was a library called power plant (of which the author said he didn't know what application to write so he wrote a framework). PCs were simpler to program for, amigas were more advanced. I started on a Mac, so my childhood memories. Oh yeah, memory management, you do it all by yourself, no help from the os. You manage to saturate the heap without releasing memory, it's a restart. The OS won't release your memory after the program quits. Welcome to start system 7.5. Have fun.
@@1BitFeverDreams not a veteran, just something I had to deal with, because I was interested in it. Mind you, you had to pay for all the software back then, and were completely at the mercy of your parents. Anyway, it's a great way to learn how stuff works, it was way simpler back then. Noticed that this video is a year old, if nothing else, a good history project, that teaches how stuff works, but oftentimes that's where the fun is. When I was dealing with MPW makefiles and stuff, on a Mac, that stuff was a mystery (easy to use had it's drawbacks), no internet like today (though I imagine that stuff is pretty hard to find). All the best. On the plus side, you'll get to learn how stuff works. It was only a decade before, a few guys invented QuickDraw, and that was cutting edge at the time. Again have fun.
Lightspeed Think C, Macbugs asm monitor, and a 512K Mac was what I learned C programming on. Then on leaving university, got paid to use Apple's MPW C to program on Mac Plus. Lightspped C was the Turbo Pascal for the Mac at the time.
awesome, you're an OG mac programmer, I was starting to learn MS Basic 2.0 with my Mac Plus in the 2nd half of the 80's, transposing code meant for TRS-80, VIC-20, throwing out colored pixels and focusing on the rest.
Great vid. I might look into this for my Mac Classic... Like you, I'm not a professional C programmer, but have poked at it from time to time (less than you I'm sure). And have to admit I was an Amiga guy. Still am (yeah, I know I have a Mac Classic; I like them both). Thirty some-odd years ago, I was writing a graphical solitaire game for my Amiga. I got it "working" but not finished and never released it back in the day. Lost all that code... Recently, I found a printout (yeah, on paper) of it and since I again have an Amiga, decided to see what I could do. Took a while, but got it working again! Felt great. I did put it up on Aminet, so it was 32 years or so from initial dev to release. ;-) I did end up doing it on the original compiler (DICE) that I had used back then, and it wasn't an IDE. ;-) I did try initially the "Cross compile it from your Windows machine route" but kept running into stumbling blocks... So went back to the old compiler... Except I did use Notepad++ to help me clean up code a bit from time to time... Might be fun to look at Mac C as well. I did some Mac Pascal back in college, but it's been a while. Thanx for the vid...
Thanks for sharing your still-68k experience, it counts! it's fun getting validation when the code compiles and run. can't wait to see what you have in store for the Mac side of things.
I hope it's recapped or at the very least, has the internal battery removed. In time, the power supply area also needs a recap to improve stability. It's a journey to keep em in shape!
One thing is "thinking about it", quite another actually writing functional code for it. lol I have always done assembly programming on the Commodore C64 and Amiga, while MAC's were always a big mystery to me. heh
With current day hindsight, would you have gone the MPW route now that the documentation is out in the open for the others? And what about if you started programming now for those machines if you were starting from scratch with no memory of MPW?
@@1BitFeverDreams I knew about the THINK and other languages. I had colleagues using them, whom I would help with programming problems. MPW was for me the most powerful of the lot. Why settle for anything less? Before that, there was MDS (Apple’s “Macintosh Development System”). I don’t know if you remember that. That was a pain to use, but it’s how I got started in Mac programming.
that's cool! thanks for sharing! I was 99% into games with my Mac Plus at that time, still. My dad wanted me to upgrade to THINK Pascal from MS Basic 2.0 near that time, but I couldn't wrap my head around it without proper books on the subjects available to me in French at that point in time, so I never did.
bought a IIcx, Think C and Turbo Pascal in '89 from my college computer store . . . . I'd been saving for this for 2 years, since the Mac II came out in '87. I felt like a god among men
Thanks for taking the time to write that you appreciate the start of the series. I indeed have many episodes planned and I'll return to it right after I push out this unexpected video about a piece of new gear I can use with my early macs. Since you're keen on wanting the next think c video, I'll write down the topic of the 2nd upcoming one: minimalistic game programming (few quick methods to display a graphic, game loop, mouse and keyboard input)
@@1BitFeverDreams Excellent! Both sound like great topics. I have very little (read none) C experience so I thought following your series might be a fun way to learn the basics. Something very charming about the classic B&W 68k Macs.
Dang. Just discovering this now. I obviously should have paid more attention to MARCHINTOSH '23. Well, hello world for MARCHINTOSH '24 . . .better late than never. And now for coding fun . . .
this was my era as a new professional programmer in the late 80s, and this particular tool was really great. X Code, VS Code and VS are bloated messes, while ThinkC was laser-focused on making old-school Mac apps in C and later C++.
Resedit is so cool to use for non-programmers. It gives a sense of checking things out under the hood without getting entangled too much in the madness. I still have the ResEdit book we bought ages ago while shopping in this computer-specific library we used to visit in the downtown area of the city I grew up from
Resedit is what I first started using before Pascal and c I had both think c and Mac C and 7.5.3 and 7.5.5 is what 6.0.8 should have been and hypertalk with applescript you can basic do what ever you wanted with that machine, however I do need to make this note because it is important the ROMs are not the same, say you make something using a Plus ROM don't expect it to be completely compatible with say the SE or SE/30 or Classic ROM, system errs and trap errs will happen when you least expect it. Another good app to use is Norton's Disk Editor especially for binhex editing, macBugs is also worth using as well. @@1BitFeverDreams
Thanks for starting this series. I used C many years ago on Dos and WIndows (and recently started using it again) but never did Mac programming, so it's great to find introductory material to help get started.
I'm glad it seems to be doing the job to reduce the entry level by a step or 2!
In the early '90s @ Honolulu Community College there were Macintosh SE/30s with THINK Pascal. With what I learned in ICS 111, I programmed a simple program. It was supposed to print lines, but the program could only print one line with a LaserWriter.
probably would have been possible with the humble but mighty ImageWriter II ! thanks for sharing your story
Great. Reminded me of my first program in Lightspeed Pascal which resulted in the bland Hello World in a non Mac-like window. Time to get my SE/30 out of the attic, recap it and see if it can be brought back to life. Eagerly awaiting more in this series.
I took Brian Kernighan’s class at Princeton years back and am still in touch with him. He would be pleased that people are still coming on board.
I hope you got the SE/30 to work. I wish I had an old one.
Wow, nicely done!! And super cool you've already provided entire disk images to get started with 😀
Glad you like it; I impatiently await your demoscene Mac C coded works of art, my friend!
WOOT!!! This is a very balanced introduction and explanation!
I'm setting up this environment and following along.
Thanks!
You have no idea how generous that comment feels like coming from the Hypercard Meister
I’m not a RUclipsr, but I do the exact same type of C programming on my Atari ST, another 68000 computer! Excellent video!
Nice going! Have you fallen into the assembly rabbit hole yet for your Atari ST?
@@1BitFeverDreams Yes, assembly language and I have a love/hate relationship! Lol Anyway, I’ll be following this series with interest!
I still have a Lightspeed Pascal manual kicking around here somewhere.
Awesome video! It's time to break out the Mac emulator. Thanks for sharing
Love your instruction style. Ready for PT2 when you are!
yeah, the next 2 videos are WIP right now. games part 2 about removing flickering/tearing and games part 3 is doing time measurements
That was my start. Circa 1997 with think C 6, then code warrior, and then gave the apple developer thing (the one with the red dots in the menubar) a try. Adw I think. My book was "learn c on the Macintosh" by Dave Mark. Fun times, first you initialize all your managers (qd, windows, text, all that) and then you get to start your event loop (you fuck up here, you'll bring the entire system down, cooperative multitasking remember). For object oriented programming there was a library called power plant (of which the author said he didn't know what application to write so he wrote a framework). PCs were simpler to program for, amigas were more advanced. I started on a Mac, so my childhood memories. Oh yeah, memory management, you do it all by yourself, no help from the os. You manage to saturate the heap without releasing memory, it's a restart. The OS won't release your memory after the program quits. Welcome to start system 7.5. Have fun.
thanks for sharing that! it's not every day that a veteran relates the experience from that time directly.
@@1BitFeverDreams not a veteran, just something I had to deal with, because I was interested in it. Mind you, you had to pay for all the software back then, and were completely at the mercy of your parents. Anyway, it's a great way to learn how stuff works, it was way simpler back then. Noticed that this video is a year old, if nothing else, a good history project, that teaches how stuff works, but oftentimes that's where the fun is. When I was dealing with MPW makefiles and stuff, on a Mac, that stuff was a mystery (easy to use had it's drawbacks), no internet like today (though I imagine that stuff is pretty hard to find). All the best. On the plus side, you'll get to learn how stuff works. It was only a decade before, a few guys invented QuickDraw, and that was cutting edge at the time. Again have fun.
Lightspeed Think C, Macbugs asm monitor, and a 512K Mac was what I learned C programming on. Then on leaving university, got paid to use Apple's MPW C to program on Mac Plus.
Lightspped C was the Turbo Pascal for the Mac at the time.
awesome, you're an OG mac programmer, I was starting to learn MS Basic 2.0 with my Mac Plus in the 2nd half of the 80's, transposing code meant for TRS-80, VIC-20, throwing out colored pixels and focusing on the rest.
Absolutely Awesome!
You're too kind!
I haven't ever owned a mac (vintage or new) and haven't used C since I learned rust, but this was entertaining anyway. Thanks!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Insanely helpful! Thank you!
Great series concept! You almost have me believing that I could code.
I believe you can do it, one can show it's similar to electronics
Great vid. I might look into this for my Mac Classic... Like you, I'm not a professional C programmer, but have poked at it from time to time (less than you I'm sure).
And have to admit I was an Amiga guy. Still am (yeah, I know I have a Mac Classic; I like them both).
Thirty some-odd years ago, I was writing a graphical solitaire game for my Amiga. I got it "working" but not finished and never released it back in the day. Lost all that code... Recently, I found a printout (yeah, on paper) of it and since I again have an Amiga, decided to see what I could do.
Took a while, but got it working again! Felt great. I did put it up on Aminet, so it was 32 years or so from initial dev to release. ;-)
I did end up doing it on the original compiler (DICE) that I had used back then, and it wasn't an IDE. ;-)
I did try initially the "Cross compile it from your Windows machine route" but kept running into stumbling blocks...
So went back to the old compiler... Except I did use Notepad++ to help me clean up code a bit from time to time...
Might be fun to look at Mac C as well. I did some Mac Pascal back in college, but it's been a while.
Thanx for the vid...
Thanks for sharing your still-68k experience, it counts! it's fun getting validation when the code compiles and run. can't wait to see what you have in store for the Mac side of things.
Really Really! good video, much appreciated thanks!
Glad it was helpful!
This is great! I still have my first Mac, a Mac Classic. I’d like to use it again. And I always wanted to learn to use the Toolbox, (or not) lol
I hope it's recapped or at the very least, has the internal battery removed. In time, the power supply area also needs a recap to improve stability. It's a journey to keep em in shape!
One thing is "thinking about it", quite another actually writing functional code for it. lol
I have always done assembly programming on the Commodore C64 and Amiga, while MAC's were always a big mystery to me. heh
Wow, this was great. It will be a few months until I'll have time, but I definitely want to do a Hello World on System 7!
we'll make a HAXXOR that ROXXORs with you in no time
It was always MPW for me. (C, Modula-2, Pascal)
With current day hindsight, would you have gone the MPW route now that the documentation is out in the open for the others? And what about if you started programming now for those machines if you were starting from scratch with no memory of MPW?
@@1BitFeverDreams I knew about the THINK and other languages. I had colleagues using them, whom I would help with programming problems.
MPW was for me the most powerful of the lot. Why settle for anything less?
Before that, there was MDS (Apple’s “Macintosh Development System”). I don’t know if you remember that. That was a pain to use, but it’s how I got started in Mac programming.
MPW had scripting and automation which THINK C didn’t.
I remember buying THINK C brand new at Egghead software in 1989.
that's cool! thanks for sharing! I was 99% into games with my Mac Plus at that time, still. My dad wanted me to upgrade to THINK Pascal from MS Basic 2.0 near that time, but I couldn't wrap my head around it without proper books on the subjects available to me in French at that point in time, so I never did.
bought a IIcx, Think C and Turbo Pascal in '89 from my college computer store . . . . I'd been saving for this for 2 years, since the Mac II came out in '87. I felt like a god among men
ahhh memories...😂
What about Retro68k? That way you get to use modern toolchains and compilers instead of having to rely heavily on emulation for the coding part
You have successfully identified one item in my ever growing to-do list related to vintage computing!
I really liked this 1st video but I haven't seen anymore show up in the series yet. Will you be doing more of these soon?
Thanks for taking the time to write that you appreciate the start of the series. I indeed have many episodes planned and I'll return to it right after I push out this unexpected video about a piece of new gear I can use with my early macs.
Since you're keen on wanting the next think c video, I'll write down the topic of the 2nd upcoming one: minimalistic game programming (few quick methods to display a graphic, game loop, mouse and keyboard input)
@@1BitFeverDreams Excellent! Both sound like great topics. I have very little (read none) C experience so I thought following your series might be a fun way to learn the basics. Something very charming about the classic B&W 68k Macs.
Dang. Just discovering this now. I obviously should have paid more attention to MARCHINTOSH '23. Well, hello world for MARCHINTOSH '24 . . .better late than never. And now for coding fun . . .
welcome to this corner of vintage. I've had entry #3 half baked since August '23. Plan is to use Marchintosh 24 as leverage to get it complete.
Maybe ThinkC is better. I am a professional programmer, but, I installed MPW, and lost a bunch of time just figuring out how to get started.
I heartily recommend Think C over MPW. The latter is heavy handed and has a much higher learning curve.
ThinkC was make by mythical "10X" genius programmers. MPW, Lisa people.
Who still code on 30 year old pc, crazy
Amigas, Apple II and C64 all get some love still today. thanks for stopping by
this was my era as a new professional programmer in the late 80s, and this particular tool was really great.
X Code, VS Code and VS are bloated messes, while ThinkC was laser-focused on making old-school Mac apps in C and later C++.
I really loved using ResEdit.
Resedit is so cool to use for non-programmers. It gives a sense of checking things out under the hood without getting entangled too much in the madness. I still have the ResEdit book we bought ages ago while shopping in this computer-specific library we used to visit in the downtown area of the city I grew up from
I created thousands of icons with it in my teens.
Resedit is what I first started using before Pascal and c I had both think c and Mac C and 7.5.3 and 7.5.5 is what 6.0.8 should have been and hypertalk with applescript you can basic do what ever you wanted with that machine, however I do need to make this note because it is important the ROMs are not the same, say you make something using a Plus ROM don't expect it to be completely compatible with say the SE or SE/30 or Classic ROM, system errs and trap errs will happen when you least expect it. Another good app to use is Norton's Disk Editor especially for binhex editing, macBugs is also worth using as well. @@1BitFeverDreams