Learn to program Amiga applications and games in #AmigaE

[SamuraiCrow]

@AmigaDave

I've been getting onto the IRC chatroom around 2PM Sundays CDT.  If you're on PDT that's noon on Sunday.

BTW, the orignal post says the #amiga channel.  That's incorrect, it's the #amigae channel.

[SamuraiCrow]

AmigaE is an OOP language.  We're just about to start covering inheritance soon.  There are some bugs in the way that some features are implemented in the emodule format so the class/hash.m module doesn't work right.  I'm working on a replacement for that in my spare time.  There are a few object-oriented classes in it for linked lists and so on but they aren't in a shared library.  In fact, the library mode of AmigaE is so borked that we won't be using it.

We're covering preprocessor macros also in an effort to make our emodule source work on PortablE as well as AmigaE.

@Thorham
OOP uses arrays of function pointers in order to implement inheritable methods.  They make those methods have more calling overhead than ordinary functions.  It's kind of like the way that the jump tables in shared libraries are slower than a normal function due to the calling overhead.

[SamuraiCrow]

It doesn't have a hardware-banging "Blitz Mode" like Blitz Basic has, but you can bang the hardware if you have to.  The code generator should be comparable to Blitz 2 otherwise.

The main advantage of AmigaE is that the modules are reusable for many applications.  You can make system-friendly code really easily with it.

[SamuraiCrow]

I've started redoing certain aspects of the IRC sessions on ArosWorld.org in the PortablE forum.  The first example I've done is the bitset inventory example which shows how to do a 64-bit bitset in PortablE.

I didn't archive anything offline but will be doing some of the same examples that I did in AmigaE and porting them to PortablE on the forum I described above.

It is undesirable to write PPC assembler in most compilers because the only inefficiency to be found in the existing compiled code is the cache loading optimizations.  PortablE uses G++ (the C++ frontend for GCC) as its backend.  It should generate clean enough code for most uses.

I forgot to mention that I'm putting the Sunday evening IRC sessions on hold for now.  I'm tutoring a close friend in math at that time.

[SamuraiCrow]

I know what it's like though - I commute 1.5 hours each way to a 9-5 job, so out of the house ~11 hours a day.  The little time I do have I hit issues (like PortablE not working under Icaros) and the little time I have is wasted.

Such is life

The problems with Icaros are being addressed.  The problems with the beta version of PortablE that came with Icaros have been addressed as well.  If you're having trouble with PortablE, try downloading the latest version and installing it over the top of the existing install.  That will fix some of the issues.   The GUI issues have to still be fixed in Icaros 1.3.2 but I hear 1.3.3 should be out soon.

[SamuraiCrow]

Lets turn your accusing compass around 180 degrees and ask what have you with the office, all Amigas and obviously all the time in the world have produced?

She's working on a TileMap editor in MUI using AmigaE.

[SamuraiCrow]

Sadly, no. Best you're gonna get there is using it with MUI Builder.  There was a project for AROS that showed promise bit I fear it was eaten by a grue.

MUI Builder has been bugfixed by Mazze, an AROS developer.  I've got commit privilages to MUI Builder also.  Do you have any bugs to report?  (Do you have any tips for MUI programming?  I could use those too.)

[SamuraiCrow]

Does MUI builder work on MorphOS ?  If so will try it out

It should.  It might generate obsolete code for MUI 4 though.  See here:  MUI Builder Project page on SourceForge.

--edit--
Be sure to hit "Browse all files" under the download link.  Otherwise, you'll get the AROS i386 version.