ZX Spectrum Emulator Written in Small Basic | Hacker News Reader

ZX Spectrum Emulator Written in Small Basic

blogs.msdn.com

25 pointsingve7 comments

Am I missing something? If I understand, it doesn't emulate the Z80 processor? And it depends on some "extension" ( http://litdev.co.uk/ ) not just "Small Basic." And I can't find the link to the source to get the idea how the code looks like.

And for my taste Small Basic appears ugly for a beginner's language, the "Hello World" is:

    TextWindow.WriteLine("Hello World")

Compare that to

    PRINT "Hello World"

from the old times. I consider the later much much nicer.

I think this is it here:

http://smallbasic.com/program/?DNP796

or here:

http://smallbasic.com/smallbasic.com/program/?RHB445-0

The blog entry links to this forum discussion:

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/1e8c53bb-7974...

From what I can see each program has a code (DNP796 or RHB445-0 - which is mentioned in the above blog article) which you can look up on:

http://smallbasic.com/smallbasic.com/program/

Thanks. So it just makes a Spectrum-like environment with some new version of Basic in it?

And it seems that Small Basic can't even define a function, only a parameter-less subroutine? In spite of TextWindow.WriteLine() notation.

Not tried it to be honest, I'd run out of energy by the time I looked up all this, then saw the code, sucked in air sharply between my teeth, then decided I'd better things to do.

I just flipped through the tutorial and the "TextWindow.WriteLine" philosophy is used throughout the language. Want to write to a UI, it's "GraphicWindow". So for "standards" sake, I think it is ok. The tutorial was pretty good and it's a simple language.

Ultimately the original is simpler.

This seems like a very generous definition of the word "emulator"

this is not an emulator, its an interpreter for the zx spectrum basic dialect...

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