Mini Micro Fantasy Computer

neomech a minute ago | parent | next [-]

Shame there isn't a Raspberry Pi version available.

the_af 2 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is this a similar project to the existing Pico8?

	▲	neomech 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Probably more like Picotron. https://www.lexaloffle.com/picotron.php

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K0balt 42 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I’d love to see something like this but designed to run on esp32 or raspberry pi 2530. Either can handle basic HDMI and USB. Or a little <$100 laptop with a 7” display.

Easy to think raspberry pi, but with a full Linux you won’t get that intrinsic understanding that you fully control the hardware, you never control the “bare metal” unless you are a much more advanced user.

IMHO the feeling of not being in full control of your computing device is not a good starting point. I’m very fortunate to have started out on my 8kb BASIC machine.

	▲	prmoustache 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		why not just use a vintage computer or game console then?

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alex_x 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wonder why all these easy-to-learn languages use indentation to denote scope, not something like curly braces. Isn't it actually harder to explain?

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NooneAtAll3 10 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

while everyone already pointed out that this time it's not the case, I want to literally answer the question you asked

"easy-to-learn languages" use indentation because otherwise newbies would not indent at all

I you try teaching programming, you'll find that indentation is one of things students "optimize out" - it is not important to the program, it is opposite of lazy and it's not noticeably harmful on the tiny scale of programs you learn programming from

Indentation discipline only starts to matter when you need to work on the same code for quite some time and code itself takes a lot of space - the "read more then written" situation. And most study paths do not encounter this regime

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jim_lawless 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It looks like MiniScript uses the keyword "end" followed by another keyword to denote the end of a specific type of block.

From the Quick Reference guide here:

https://miniscript.org/files/MiniScript-QuickRef.pdf

"Indentation doesn't matter (except for readability)."

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graemep 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think indentation is more intuitive. Even people using languages that use braces or similar usually use indentation to make code readable. If doing that you end up explaining both ideas (use braces and indent).

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Gormo 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

There's an important form/function distinction here, though. Indentation is useful for human readability, but braces function to give unambiguous direction to the compiler or interpreter. I think conflating these two different purposes together is a mistake: you shouldn't risk altering or breaking the logic flow of a program simply by adjusting its visual formatting.

The fact that we use whitespace for layout is precisely why it's a bad idea to assign it semantic value. I'm a fan of both braces and semicolons for that reason.

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latexr an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I get why people like indentation for this. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer and it’s a matter of personal preference.

That said, my preference is curly braces (or whatever) because I’ve found indentation is often a bother. Yes, most of the time you use indentation together with braces, but not every time. There are many occasions where code is clearer without (or with custom) indentation. Furthermore, indentation-based parsing makes experimentation and finding issues more difficult. Sometimes you need to extract a small part of a larger block to bung in a REPL or something and now you’re fighting with stupid errors because of formatting, adding to the frustration.

Regarding intuitiveness, for beginners I have some doubts it makes much of a difference, and if it does I also doubt indentation wins. If you know how to write (which is a prerequisite), you know what parenthesis and quotation marks are, you understand they encapsulate something separate from the rest. Indentation is a different concept.

	▲	btreecat an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I get why people blame indentation like this. I don't think it's right or wrong to ignore the tooling that directly addresses minor issues with indentation or matching braces honestly. That said, my preference is to use the tools built into my editor and available on the CLI or web to assist and fix formatting and syntax. You get instant feedback on incorrect formatting, and I generally find that synthetic scope mistakes (regardless of method) are eliminated.

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layer8 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The language (MicroScript) doesn’t require indentation, it’s only used for readability, like in BASIC, FORTRAN, PASCAL, and similar languages. Blocks are delimited by key words (“end if” etc.).

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echoangle 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It makes sure the thing you use to judge scope (indentation) matches the think the computer uses.

	▲	alex_x 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's a fair point for students, but as a beginner who simply wants to tinker with fun stuff, you can go very far without knowing of a program stack. I think I had the wrong audience in mind

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october8140 39 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Also check out Pico8 and Picotron.

https://www.lexaloffle.com/

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janandonly 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I was a bit confused until I realized that https://miniscript.org/ isn't the same programming language as https://bitcoin.sipa.be/miniscript/.

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layer8 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Apparently it’s high-level only, i.e. no underlying machine instruction set or addressable memory.

	▲	Rohansi 38 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That's how most of these fantasy machines are. Most people are only going to want to use a high-level language so it makes more sense this way.

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fivetomidnight 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Free but not Open Source? Did I miss that?

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helsinkiandrew 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Free but not Open Source? Did I miss that?

The miniscript language itself is MIT License:

https://github.com/JoeStrout/miniscript

The Minimicro code doesn't seem to have any license in the repository or code:

https://github.com/JoeStrout/minimicro-sysdisk

	▲	tokai 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		So Open Source but not Free (Libre).

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bmenrigh 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Mini Micro seems to be built on Unity. The MiniScript portion of it is open source https://github.com/JoeStrout/miniscript but the version packaged for use by Unity costs some money. I can't tell if the people behind MiniScript are the same people behind the Mini Micro.

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p2detar 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Looks cool. I most enjoyed the zombies game someone uploaded on itch.io. One thing to note is that game speeds feel very fast to me. I barely did anything in the asteroids game and the others also seem to run quite fast. It could be just me.

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pietje 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wonder how hard it would be translate this to Dutch. I would like my kids to start experimenting but that’s a bit impractical if they need to learn English first..

	▲	janandonly 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ik denk dat Claude dat zo voor je doet in een paar minuten tijd.

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__natty__ 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why not for 3 eur buy some basic arduino or other tiny hardware to tinker with and for another few eur, tiny i2c/oled display, wires and set of basic switches? You start programming with option to expand to the larger project in the future. You have constraints of real device, community is much larger and there are more learning resources.

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layer8 43 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Because those don’t boot into a fixed interactive programming environment with a BASIC-like language and REPL to easily do simple things on the same screen and using the same keyboard you also use for programming. Your proposed setup has more complexity and is less intuitive for a learner.

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Tepix 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For starters, there is way more friction both in buying hardware and waiting for it to arrive and developing on real hardware in general.

I agree however that it's super cool to have real hardware to run this on.

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newswasboring 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Because moving a sprite is much more exhilarating than blinking an LED.