Apex Pro

[Kellemora]

Way back when, hi hi, I used to write several games using Basic.
Made those little Apple II and II+ computers really hop.
I could do things on them that did not work on PC's.
In fact, most of my Basic programs only worked on the 6502 processor.
I did a few rewrites to make some of them work on an 8080a processor, but it just didn't have the oomph needed for some of the tricks I was doing.
Now when the 289 series of microprocessors came out, it opened up a whole new world, but by then I was too busy with real work and raising kids to have time to play games, hi hi.

On the early computers, the lines of code had to be numbered, and this is where renumber was beneficial.
You make a change and you had thousands of lines of code to renumber.
Also, we would write subroutines and try them out before placing them in our program.
This is also where Append and Renumber came in super handy.

We are so far advanced today than we were back then, as soon as technology started moving, it left me in the dust.

[yogi]

OOOOOhhhh yeah. I remember now. BASIC did indeed require line numbers. As I recall, functions or subroutines could be called by their label instead of referring to a line number. They always went at the end of the program to not mess up the main stream line numbering. I still don't recall any specific incident for using RENUMBER, but most likely I did use it. Programs got modified all the time and not only in the development phase.

While I can't be positive, I don't think line numbers were required for a lot of the program languages. It 's sort of like HTML where your editor has line numbers for your convenience, but they are not compiled or part of the execution.

[Kellemora]

If I recall properly, only the early versions of Basic required line numbering.
Did a little research here: Unstructured BASIC required Line Numbering.
Second Generation aka Structured BASIC did not use Line Numbering but KEYWORDS.

I finally figured out why I could never learn another programming language.
Dijkstra's famous judgement in 1975.
"It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC:
As potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
That explains it, hi hi.

[yogi]

I don't know Dijkstra, but I'm sure he has the right idea. BASIC is pretty much what they call linear programming while the rest of the world is object oriented. The methods and structure of BASIC require a different mindset, and it's hard to break out of that mold if you shift to another form of programming. Most of the programming I did for the test equipment was in the form of HP BASIC, which had line numbers but also allowed calls to labeled instructions. Maybe it was a kind of hybrid BASIC. In any case when I had to learn C++ it was quite a shock.

[Kellemora]

Now that I know what the problem was with me learning how to program I understand why.
All my life I think in logical order. But them most of the jobs I had over the years required that kind of thinking.
Inch by Inch, Step by Step, etc.

I guess HTML is linear also, since I understand it fairly well.

[yogi]

Strictly speaking of HTML, yes, it would be considered linear. However, style sheets have a property called inheritance. That is more object oriented. HTML can be written without the CSS. In fact that is how a lot of those do it yourself web pages are created. It's all inline and fine if you never change anything. The first time you want to modify an inline formatted web page, you are asking for trouble. LOL

My brain seems to need both conceptual an detailed thinking. That means the left side and the right side are equal and neither dominates. I understand details, as you might have gathered from my rantings about Linux. Lots of detail there. But, my retention isn't all that great. I can derive a solution or conclusion if I have the theory well organized so that I don't need to memorize a lot of detail. I can derive it from the concepts.

[Kellemora]

Yes, it was really hard for me to wrap my head around rebuilding my HTML pages to XHTML/CSS back when I first did it. But I did manage and could understand CSS a whole lot better afterword. Just a shame I forgot most of it since then. And now I need to do some work on my web sites again. Time to relearn, but I'm sure I have not forgotten all of it.

[yogi]

Google sent me an email complaining about the portal I use to point people to this web site. It's a single page and can't be any more simple. The last time they sent this kind of notice I went in and made it compliant. Nothing changed since then. So then I found another Google sponsored website that will verify how your creation looks on a mobile device. Mine passed with flying colors, which is the opposite of that they said in the email. I'm sure it all has to do with Google changing their ranking policies. Sites which are mobile friendly get ranked higher. I might go look at what they are complaining about. Some day. Maybe. If I have time. Otherwise I'll just take the hit and let them rank me any way they want. We are at the noise floor anyway, so I can't see us going any lower.

[Kellemora]

I get those from time to time also.
Although my sites are all user and mobile friendly, they are http, not https.
I'm not paying for https when everything on my website is public and I collect no data from anyone.

I've done a few searches from other computers to see where I come up on many of my pages, and it is always on Googles first page of hits, often at the top too. So I don't worry about the notices they send.

[yogi]

When I search Google for Brainformaion, we are at the top of the first page. That's a specific search and there are not many other places with the same name. When I search for chat forums, we are nowhere in sight. Generic searches are the ones that would benefit us if we ranked high. They talk a lot about security these days and I think HTTPS is a grand idea. Like yourself I don't do anything here that would justify the extra cost.

[Kellemora]

I just tried everything in the book to get BFCHAT to appear on a web search, and it never appeared.
All kinds of hooker sites came up though, despite my trying to eliminate them from the search.

It appears BF also stands for BoyFriend, hi hi.

[yogi]

hmm ... never tried to look for BFCHAT, but I do check out the domain name. I'm going to have to look into that a little closer. We might be missing an opportunity to increase our traffic. LOL

[Kellemora]

A friend who sells books asked all of his on-line friends to do a web search for his book by its title instead of his name, then scroll down until they find it. It always came up in the Amazon search, be he wanted them to find his web site without typing in the whole URL.
Within about three or four days, his website was on top of the list, ahead of Amazon even, hi hi.
Made him happy, but it did drop down to three below Amazon within a week, but still on the front page.

[yogi]

There is a whole industry dedicated to helping people get their web sites on the first page of a Google search. When this site was popular I studied up on SEO, search engine optimization, and did a fair job at improving our rank. I brought it up from being on page 10,000 to being on page 1000 of the search engines. LOL I really don't know how effective I was, but I did learn that Google, and others, keep changing how they rank web sites. Cross links and actual searches by keyword are powerful elements of the ranking algorithm, but they don't stay the same. For example, now and days you need to be "mobile friendly" to get any kind of rank. That didn't exist when this site first came on line. I'm not too worried about it all. I don't earn a living off this place. I'm just here for the pleasure of being here.

[Kellemora]

I hear ya!
Eons ago, when I was an active Ham, I had a bunch of stuff on my old websites that even major Ham Radio websites linked to. Naturally when I moved to a new host, all those links became dead, and only a small handful updated their websites with the new links.
So I fell from top on the list for certain antenna and other Ham related info, until eventually I was down off the first few pages. Other websites copied my data, so a search for an item I had brought up their websites instead, at least they gave me credit for the designs, hi hi.