I remember writing flicker free graphics in z80 assembler. You had to put the hex on line 10, then execute a poke to turn it into line 0 which then executed as machine code. Ah, halcyon days…
Some context. Every key press caused the screen to flicker, in fact every operation did. Removing it was quite a feat.
Back when people were really creative :
But I’m off topic. My apologies. Nurse will be around soon.
off topic is nice, especially when I can see how many of “us, veteran programmers” are here!
Actually my very very first experience with computers were on ZX81 too, infact, I want to learn programing because of a ZX Spectrum! But a year later, when we bought our very first computer, c64 was already ruled the world… in mid eu for sure. I can see that people in England was most likely bought zx81 or ZX Spectrum from Sir Sinclair
The most creative app on a c64 was a music player for me, using the floppy disc motors, spinning them the way it will generate sounds. I heard a Madonna song coming out of a C64’s floppy first
I’m sure we did not had discussion over strong and loosy typing, neither frameworks or cloud computing instead we have LDX, LDY… and sprites
vic20, c64, c128… this was dual boot, basic or cpm!
Good times!
Then the DOS popped up, I got a portable, an 8086 similar to this one (my brother called it “the microwave”)
The display had only 4 shades of gray and I couldn’t play Tetris, because the blue blocks had the same shade as the black background.
So I became a local legend when I made a TSR (terminate and stay resident program made in assembler) that was scanning the graphic card memory 18 times per second and changed the color of the blue blocks as they were coming down.
Good times!
Thanks @attila for giving us a post we could hijack and go down on memory lane.
Interesting topic… I have been hestitating to use anvil for a long time with speed, coding in the browser, widget limitations and layout being my main concerns but I am glad I chose Anvil. I am a big Flutter fan which was the first platform for me when I started to write my app. The problem with Flutter was that most of my logic code is in Python and I had to write an API to access that logic with all the problems of authentication, docker images etc etc. State management in Flutter was also a complicating thing as well as connecting to my databases etc. I also tried Django but I hate to be writing Python and Javascript and CSS and HTML… then I used Streamlit which is nice but limited and then I found Anvil. So far I am very happy with Anvil… development time is really fast and it’s nice to only focus on writing Python code and connecting to my Python libraries. I still think I have a lot to learn and I do have some things that I do not like (mostly the web editor and the code I need to run on a seperate Digital Ocean droplet for all missing dependencies (I am on the personal plan but my package isn’t supported… which makes sense because I would probably be the only user ) but I hope to find ways to be even more productive. But it is such a relief to not have to struggle with database connections, authentication, publishing to web etc. etc. so that’s the biggest plus I get out of using Anvil. I still like Flutter and if I had the time and money I would probably still use Flutter but for a one man team with a lot of domain knowledge in Python code there is no way I could be as productive without using Anvil.
after some hesitation, I decided to go with Anvil.
There were many answers, pro and cons, which helped me a lot to get my head around and make a decision.
Why I choose Anvil over other solutions?
very good and live forum, tons of good hints, quick turnaround times, useful answers
very good support (by email I mean Anvil here)
python is great to working with data, and that is my main goal with my next app
I had read multiple success story here from real people, giving me the go
There is a reason why I’m searching for other solutions then .Net Core or other common “industrial” solutions, obviously I was searching for something better (quicker, easier, faster and productive)
I already has virtual servers and DBs setup and running for other projects, which I can reuse or share, so using them or Anvil’s own servers almost does not matter to me, but it gives me extra flexibility and safety. I can go both ways, anytime I feel right about.
What I was really surprised is the people here… I found some sharing similar background and I got myself just login to see what is going on here in the forum, which is not what I usually do. It seems more than just a forum, but a real community.
Also, looking at the speed of bugfixes is amazing. Reminds me to some of my ex works, where we were pushing just like Anvil does… fixes within 1hr from posting, even in 2am midnight.
So let’s see how it goes!
And finally, I want to say THANKS GUYS! to all of you who did helped me to understand what Anvil really provides.