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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: RedWarrior on October 29, 2012, 08:51:40 AM

Title: Any coding languages still alive for Amiga?
Post by: RedWarrior on October 29, 2012, 08:51:40 AM
Just wondering if there are any computer languages still alive that will run on Amiga (1200 or 600) - I have the hardware, and some ambition- I even have some smart coder friends - but they're younger than these machines and well, is there anything they can code on a mac or PC that will run on an Amiga these days?

I'm guessing not, but thought it would be worth asking... =)

Thanks in advance.
Title: Re: Any coding languages still alive for Amiga?
Post by: bloodline on October 29, 2012, 09:24:27 AM
68k asm isn't going anywhere... And gcc still has a 68k backend.

Blitz and AmigaE are still usable too.
Title: Re: Any coding languages still alive for Amiga?
Post by: vidarh on October 29, 2012, 09:48:42 AM
Quote from: RedWarrior;713001
Just wondering if there are any computer languages still alive that will run on Amiga (1200 or 600) - I have the hardware, and some ambition- I even have some smart coder friends - but they're younger than these machines and well, is there anything they can code on a mac or PC that will run on an Amiga these days?


Pretty much any language you can think of apart from some more esoteric "young" languages designed in the last ten years or so should have implementations that will run on Amiga 1200's and 600's.

The issue isn't the languages, but that unless they stick to very restricted API subsets, they'll need to learn at least some of the quirks of the Amiga platform to write for it, and ideally they'd need to learn parts of the AmigaOS API.
Title: Re: Any coding languages still alive for Amiga?
Post by: bloodline on October 29, 2012, 10:45:11 AM
Fair point, programming languages are usually quite easy to pick up once you know a few... The AmigaOS API is a bit weird from a modern perspective, and no young coder even understands how to hit the hardware anymore :(
Title: Re: Any coding languages still alive for Amiga?
Post by: chris on October 29, 2012, 11:26:33 AM
Quote from: RedWarrior;713001
is there anything they can code on a mac or PC that will run on an Amiga these days?

If they're coding in C it's a simple matter of recompiling (as long as they're not using Windows or Mac specific APIs).  GUI-based programs are inherently non-portable without a lot of rewriting though.
Title: Re: Any coding languages still alive for Amiga?
Post by: Iggy on October 29, 2012, 12:12:12 PM
Quote from: chris;713021
GUI-based programs are inherently non-portable without a lot of rewriting though.

Which, basically, explains why it is so hard to port anything from another platform.
Title: Re: Any coding languages still alive for Amiga?
Post by: Crumb on October 29, 2012, 12:26:17 PM
Quote from: Iggy;713027
Which, basically, explains why it is so hard to port anything from another platform.


That applies to any platform: try to port Windows apps to Linux. Or GTK apps to native Window/BeOS GUI :-P Of course you can run x11 on your classic and run GTK/QT apps natively but that's slow and ugly.
Title: Re: Any coding languages still alive for Amiga?
Post by: Iggy on October 29, 2012, 12:48:37 PM
Quote from: Crumb;713034
but that's slow and ugly.

As are most SDK based projects.
Title: Re: Any coding languages still alive for Amiga?
Post by: matthey on October 29, 2012, 01:16:17 PM
Vbcc C and it's assembler vasm is actively developed for the Amiga:

http://sun.hasenbraten.de/vbcc/

I believe PortablE is also still developed for the Amiga:

http://cshandley.co.uk/portable/
Title: Re: Any coding languages still alive for Amiga?
Post by: chris on October 29, 2012, 02:01:20 PM
Quote from: Crumb;713034
Of course you can run x11 on your classic and run GTK/QT apps natively but that's slow and ugly.


Note there is a native version of Qt 4.7 for AmigaOS4.
Title: Re: Any coding languages still alive for Amiga?
Post by: TheBilgeRat on October 29, 2012, 02:14:41 PM
Quote from: matthey;713038
Vbcc C and it's assembler vasm is actively developed for the Amiga:

http://sun.hasenbraten.de/vbcc/
[/url]

They look cool, but are 68020+ only, just in case you were planning on coding on a 68000 machine.

There's always brainf***:

edit:  had to obscure the URL due to naughty words.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/9glar7j
Title: Re: Any coding languages still alive for Amiga?
Post by: Leffmann on October 29, 2012, 02:41:40 PM
Quote from: TheBilgeRat;713044
They look cool, but are 68020+ only, just in case you were planning on coding on a 68000 machine.

There's always brainf***:

edit:  had to obscure the URL due to naughty words.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/9glar7j

That's just the binaries currently on offer, but the source codes for vbcc, vasm and vlink are available, too, so you can compile them to run on a 68000 Amiga if you need to.
Title: Re: Any coding languages still alive for Amiga?
Post by: TheBilgeRat on October 29, 2012, 03:00:47 PM
Quote from: Leffmann;713053
That's just the binaries currently on offer, but the source codes for vbcc, vasm and vlink are available, too, so you can compile them to run on a 68000 Amiga if you need to.


Nice!  I'll have to play around with that.