Month: July 2012

Being Blue

A year ago, a KFest acquaintance named Stavros Karatsoridis gave me a printed copy of his version of the Apple II “Blue Book”, the first Applesoft manual. His was the version that was written in November 1977, for the January 1978 release of Cassette Applesoft. The…

What Is A Demoscene?

KansasFest Report: Andy Molloy presented a session about the Demoscene of the 1980s. The “Demoscene” refers to programmers who created software that demonstrated the graphics and sound capabilities of various computers. Some of the original demos of this type appeared for the Commodore 64,…

Randy Brandt and AppleWorks

KansasFest Report: Randy Brandt spoke to us about his history with programming and with AppleWorks. He discussed his personal history, and getting his start in programming in 1976, learning FORTRAN in high school. This set the foundation for the programming work he did in the…

The Apple II Was About Games

KansasFest 2012 Report: In John Romero’s keynote speech at KansasFest this year, he pointed out the significant contribution to gaming that has been made by programmers over the years. It “forged the future”, by teaching these pioneers how to write tight, fast code that…