The Amiga computers not only had the misfortune to have had bad management and a bad technical department from the parent company, but also a host of equally incompetent programmers who muddied the platform with badly written software that created quite a few problems, especially when it came to video games (not to mention the famous demos that circulated).

English: https://www.appuntidigitali.it/23793/the-plague-of-bad-amiga-programmers/

I computer Amiga non hanno avuto soltanto la sfortuna di avere avuto un cattivo management e un pessimo comparto tecnico della casa madre, ma anche uno stuolo di programmatori altrettanto incapaci che hanno ammorbato la piattaforma con software scritto male e che ha creato non pochi problemi, specialmente per quanto riguarda i videogiochi (e non di meno le famose demo che circolavano).

Italian: https://www.appuntidigitali.it/23724/la-piaga-dei-cattivi-programmatori-amiga/

"I was recently able to discover in the largest amateur forum (EAB)" - Amateur ? It`s where you find the best and most skilled Amiga devs and users these days.

@kriz

Quote:

kriz wrote: "I was recently able to discover in the largest amateur forum (EAB)" - Amateur ? It`s where you find the best and most skilled Amiga devs and users these days.

But not only them: there are plenty of "just" users.

@kriz

Quote:

kriz wrote: "I was recently able to discover in the largest amateur forum (EAB)" - Amateur ? It`s where you find the best and most skilled Amiga devs and users these days.

Definition of Amateur:-
a person who engages in a pursuit... on an unpaid rather than a professional basis.

The vast majority of EAB members are 'amateurs'. That doesn't mean they aren't skilled.

@cdimauro

uhhh, what's your problem? go away if you don't like it

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@Mobileconnect

Quote:

Mobileconnect wrote: @cdimauro uhhh, what's your problem? go away if you don't like it

What's your problem? Do you feel touched? Were/are you a bad Amiga programmer?

Go away if you don't like the article.

@cdimauro

Quote:

cdimauro wrote: The Amiga computers not only had the misfortune to have had bad management and a bad technical department from the parent company, but also a host of equally incompetent programmers who muddied the platform with badly written software that created quite a few problems, especially when it came to video games (not to mention the famous demos that circulated).

You would be right not to mention demos, as they are only designed to 'demonstrate' special features of the hardware. As such they are expected to be hacks that may not work on 'non-standard' machines.

As for the 'competence' of programmers on the Amiga and their effect on software quality, there were two distinct groups with a vastly different backgrounds - those who received formal education in programming, and those who were self-taught on home computers. In general the best games were produced by the latter group. In some cases they didn't program the hardware 'correctly', but they gave us games that would not have appeared if left up to 'professional ' developers.

You say the Amiga suffered from a 'plague of bad programmers' with 'skills best suited for farm work', but this is belied by the fact that the vast majority of Amiga games work fine on the machines they were designed for. These 'farm hands' also managed to produce games with good design and playability, which is well beyond what would be expected of the average agricultural worker. Producing a good game isn't easy - especially on the Amiga - so we should appreciate the efforts these people made even if their coding wasn't the best.

Compared to most home computers of the day, the Amiga was an order of magnitude more difficult to program. The first problem was the complex multitasking OS, which added another dimension and was notoriously fragile. This was exacerbated by complex hardware which required a fully functioning OS for its operation. The uncertainties of this situation, combined with the lack of OS support for advanced techniques and the desire to wring the most possible out of stock machines, led many coders to kick out the OS and program the hardware directly. But that wasn't easy either, so it's not surprising mistakes were made.

I got a copy of the first Amiga hardware reference manual in 1986. It was a great introduction to the Amiga's powerful hardware, but it didn't prepare me for how difficult it would be to go from snippets of example code to a fully functioning game. I decided to do everything through the OS instead, and accept the resulting limitations.

However that was not how most developers rolled. Many were used to machines with simpler architectures that were routinely coded 'bare metal' without issues. The documentation supplied with those machines was often very terse, and the hardware so limited that tricks involving undocumented behavior were often applied out of 'necessity'. Even highly skilled developers brought that culture with them to the Amiga.

The availability of official documentation for the Amiga may also have been an issue. Most dealers didn't stock it. The books weren't cheap either. This led to second-hand information being passed around between developers, along with code that 'worked for them'. Of course this meant that some stuff just happened to 'work' even though it was wrong. But that applies to all coding - especially in asm where it is very easy to make a mistake and not notice it.

So let's not talk about a 'plague of bad programmers' (without whom the Amiga software scene would be far less prolific and interesting) and examine those bad examples in the retro spirit of learning more about the Amiga and improving our own coding skills, without judging the past.

BTW I can can show you some pretty horrendous code produced by 'professional' programmers who should have known better. Exhibit #1 is Amiga BASIC, which carried over the popular Mac technique of using the upper 8 bits of address registers for other purposes - directly in contradiction to Commodore's programming guidelines. Microsoft expected Commodore to pay them a lot of money for this turd. Such a pity too, because overall Amiga BASIC was a good effort - just let down by not being able to take advantage of 32 bit CPUs.

Last edited by bhabbott on 30-Sep-2024 at 08:06 AM.

@cdimauro
As still a noob in programming, I guess I fall into the category of being a bad programmer

So if I happen to create some software, you mean I should not share or publish it anywhere?

@bhabbott
Thanks for putting this into a less discouraging context

@kriz

Quote:

kriz wrote: "I was recently able to discover in the largest amateur forum (EAB)" - Amateur ? It`s where you find the best and most skilled Amiga devs and users these days.

It's a typical defame from Cesare Di Mauro. EAB is a forum for exchanging Amiga-related information for diverse Amiga users. A mainstream example is Beyond3D's forum.

For example, Dread's programmer who is also an EAB forum member has a paid programming day job. In most cases, Amiga is just a hobby i.e. a favorite hobby outside the paid work.

Last edited by Hammer on 30-Sep-2024 at 09:42 AM.

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@amyren

Quote:

amyren wrote: @cdimauro As still a noob in programming, I guess I fall into the category of being a bad programmer

Being a bad programmer actually only depends on the result of your work.

You can be a noob and write software with good quality.

Being a good programmer is all about having a proper mindset. Specifically, as THE first requirement, willing to follow the rules when writing something.
Quote:

So if I happen to create some software, you mean I should not share or publish it anywhere?

See above. So, you can publish it. It's all up to you: do you feel that you're giving a good product to your audience?

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: @kriz Quote: kriz wrote: "I was recently able to discover in the largest amateur forum (EAB)" - Amateur ? It`s where you find the best and most skilled Amiga devs and users these days. It's a typical defame from Cesare Di Mauro.

Oh, and here's back the joke of nature which don't understand what people write and yet can't wait writing a load of b@lls.
Quote:

EAB is a forum for exchanging Amiga-related information for diverse Amiga users.

Correct.
Quote:

A mainstream example is Beyond3D's forum.

Not correct. Beyond3D is very well known for being populated by game developers.

So, it's a specialized forum and certainly NOT a generic one like EAB (which embraces ALL kind of Amiga users).
Quote:

For example, Dread's programmer who is also an EAB forum member has a paid programming day job.

Which, elementary logic at the hands, does NOT mean that EAB is a forum of/for programmers.

The opposite is obviously (!) true: programmers can be part of the EAB users.
Quote:

In most cases, Amiga is just a hobby i.e. a favorite hobby outside the paid work.

Right, and that's the reason of the Amateur term:

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/amateur

An amateur is someone who does something as a hobby and not as a job.
[...]
Amateur sports or activities are done by people as a hobby and not as a job.

And the Amiga is... rolling drum... a hobby!

So, you don't even know YOUR mother tongue, joke of nature!

@bhabbott

Quote:

bhabbott wrote: @cdimauro Quote: cdimauro wrote: The Amiga computers not only had the misfortune to have had bad management and a bad technical department from the parent company, but also a host of equally incompetent programmers who muddied the platform with badly written software that created quite a few problems, especially when it came to video games (not to mention the famous demos that circulated). You would be right not to mention demos, as they are only designed to 'demonstrate' special features of the hardware.

Right.
Quote:

As such they are expected to be hacks that may not work on 'non-standard' machines.

That's YOUR definition. In fact, you can write a demo for showing some feature of the hardware whilst following the guidelines for good software development.
Quote:

As for the 'competence' of programmers on the Amiga and their effect on software quality, there were two distinct groups with a vastly different backgrounds - those who received formal education in programming, and those who were self-taught on home computers. In general the best games were produced by the latter group. In some cases they didn't program the hardware 'correctly', but they gave us games that would not have appeared if left up to 'professional ' developers.

I've started as self-taught as well but... I've studied and applied the guidelines when I've developed my software.

Being self-taught does NOT mean that you should necessarily be an ignorant.

Also, developing good games (or demos) does NOT justify the bad programming.

That's all about elementary logic.
Quote:

You say the Amiga suffered from a 'plague of bad programmers' with 'skills best suited for farm work', but this is belied by the fact that the vast majority of Amiga games work fine on the machines they were designed for.

Do you mean that those games were reporting in their boxes / descriptions something like "it works only on an Amiga 500 with 512kB of additional memory in the trapdoor and only on Kickstart 1.2, so it doesn't work with accelerated systems and/or with expansion using Fast RAM and/or with future hardware chips and/or with future OS versions"?
Quote:

These 'farm hands' also managed to produce games with good design and playability, which is well beyond what would be expected of the average agricultural worker. Producing a good game isn't easy - especially on the Amiga - so we should appreciate the efforts these people made even if their coding wasn't the best.

Irrelevant: you can write good games following the guidelines for the good software development.

Again, it's elementary logic. Unless you want to blindly justify everything only because we're talking of products for the Amiga (AKA: I want to defend the platform at all costs), which is out of logic, of course.
Quote:

Compared to most home computers of the day, the Amiga was an order of magnitude more difficult to program. The first problem was the complex multitasking OS, which added another dimension and was notoriously fragile. This was exacerbated by complex hardware which required a fully functioning OS for its operation. The uncertainties of this situation, combined with the lack of OS support for advanced techniques and the desire to wring the most possible out of stock machines, led many coders to kick out the OS and program the hardware directly. But that wasn't easy either, so it's not surprising mistakes were made.

Mistake = bugs, and I've already stated that I nothing to complaint about them: they part of the software development, and I don't know of any developer which have written software without bugs (meynaf included, despite the load of b@alls that he says about that).
Quote:

I got a copy of the first Amiga hardware reference manual in 1986. It was a great introduction to the Amiga's powerful hardware, but it didn't prepare me for how difficult it would be to go from snippets of example code to a fully functioning game. I decided to do everything through the OS instead, and accept the resulting limitations.

Your choice: I've appreciated both bare metal and OS programming, and I've developed complex products in both cases (maybe I show something in future articles).
Quote:

However that was not how most developers rolled. Many were used to machines with simpler architectures that were routinely coded 'bare metal' without issues. The documentation supplied with those machines was often very terse, and the hardware so limited that tricks involving undocumented behavior were often applied out of 'necessity'. Even highly skilled developers brought that culture with them to the Amiga.

Which is bad. I was coming from the same environment, but I never used undocumented opcodes and something like that: even with my Plus/4 first and the C128 after I've followed the document and the obvious (!) good sense: don't touch unknown things and use only documented stuff.
Quote:

The availability of official documentation for the Amiga may also have been an issue. Most dealers didn't stock it. The books weren't cheap either. This led to second-hand information being passed around between developers, along with code that 'worked for them'. Of course this meant that some stuff just happened to 'work' even though it was wrong. But that applies to all coding - especially in asm where it is very easy to make a mistake and not notice it.

So, they developed stuff being ignorant.

That's not necessarily a problem, unless you develop professional software. Then you have no excuses: you're being paid for your product and you should develop them following the guidelines. And you should have the money for buying the needed documentation.
Quote:

So let's not talk about a 'plague of bad programmers' (without whom the Amiga software scene would be far less prolific and interesting)

You still want to justify them only because they delivered. No, absolutely not! It's the same excuse.
Quote:

and examine those bad examples in the retro spirit of learning more about the Amiga and improving our own coding skills, without judging the past.

I worked in the same past and I've delivered as well, so yes: I can judge. I'm fully entitled to judge.
Quote:

BTW I can can show you some pretty horrendous code produced by 'professional' programmers who should have known better. Exhibit #1 is Amiga BASIC, which carried over the popular Mac technique of using the upper 8 bits of address registers for other purposes - directly in contradiction to Commodore's programming guidelines. Microsoft expected Commodore to pay them a lot of money for this turd. Such a pity too, because overall Amiga BASIC was a good effort - just let down by not being able to take advantage of 32 bit CPUs.

Do you think that I justify Microsoft for this bloat? No!

In fact, I've already reported this precise example in one of the many threads which started on some Amiga pages on Facebook.

Guess why: because I'm coherent.

@bhabbott

Payment decides pro or a amateur ? Many programmers sell their games on itch.io and similar from Eab... And the best most skilled programmers from the demo scene, do not sell anything, so i dont think it will fit...

Back to topic, both system friendly software and hardware banging software is presented at Eab daily ..

@kriz

Quote:

kriz wrote: @bhabbott Payment decides pro or a amateur ? .

Well, that is definition of professional and amateur.


Neither say anything bout skill levels or work ethics.

Last edited by Kronos on 30-Sep-2024 at 06:33 PM.

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@Hammer

I agree, it is the biggest Amiga forum around and got almost all the elite coders so i think it was a very rude article.

@Kronos

Then there is many pros in the forum since many sell their games.

@kriz

If they make a living of it (or at least come close to it).

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@cdimauro

What’s stopping you from creating some quality code yourself?

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@kriz

Quote:

kriz wrote: @bhabbott Payment decides pro or a amateur ? Many programmers sell their games on itch.io and similar from Eab... And the best most skilled programmers from the demo scene, do not sell anything, so i dont think it will fit... Back to topic, both system friendly software and hardware banging software is presented at Eab daily ..

Nevertheless, it's a hobby. That's what's the Amiga is.
Quote:

kriz wrote: @Hammer I agree, it is the biggest Amiga forum around and got almost all the elite coders

Which doesn't mean that it's a forum only for them, right?
Quote:

so i think it was a very rude article.

What you think is clearly wrong: see above.

Question: is it a developers-only forum or a general Amiga forum?

You can draw your conclusions from that...

@Kronos

I doubt anyone is making living of coding for Amiga, they might be making a living of write a multiplatform program or game, however. However if my living experience was a lot lower then perhaps, if moved to Thailand or some African country.

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