Any coding languages still alive for Amiga?

[RedWarrior]

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.

[bloodline]

68k asm isn't going anywhere... And gcc still has a 68k backend.

Blitz and AmigaE are still usable too.

[vidarh]

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.

[bloodline]

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

[chris]

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.

[Iggy]

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.

[Crumb]

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.

[Iggy]

but that's slow and ugly.

As are most SDK based projects.

[matthey]

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/

[chris]

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.

[TheBilgeRat]

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

[Leffmann]

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.

[TheBilgeRat]

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.