Modern Retroprogramming on the Apple II. When was the last time you programmed a modern language on a 40 year old computer? Now is your chance. PLASMA is a combination of operating environment, virtual machine, and assembler/compiler matched closely to the 6502 architecture. Check out the Release Notes for details: https://github.com/dschmenk/PLASMA/blob ... n%201.0.md

With the inclusion of many ideas thrown around c.s.a2, and significant rewrite of the module loader to speed up the dynamic linking process, Developer Preview #2 is available: https://github.com/dschmenk/PLASMA/blob ... n%201.0.md

I really hadn't intended on releasing a DP#2, but there was just too much good stuff to let sit. I re-ran the sieve benchmark on DP#2, and it came in at 11.2% faster. To put this in perspective, the original PLASMA compiler could build a native 6502 executable (no bytecode). It was big, but fast. Eyeballing the performance of Rod's Colors with native code vs DP#2, it's not even twice as fast. Much of the time is spent in multiply and divide, but to have DP#2 be that close in performance and a fraction of the size is amazing.

DP#2 is actually usable on a 64K, floppy based system. Running the editor and compiler, even. Absolutely flies on a IIGS or accelerator and hard disk/CFFA.

Thanks again to all those that put so much of their time and effort into making this a reality.

Dave...

Great to see these public pre-releases!

("c.s.a2" - do you have a link for that? I don't know what it could be - can only think of comp.sys.amiga on Usenet and that can't be right. )

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/comp.sys.apple2, for example - but a real newsreader is probably less annoying to use.

Oh of course- apple2! Thanks.

My bad, I should have spelled it out. This thread on comp.sys.apple2.programmer, actually:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgr ... FY8pKRSaIQ

Even after staring at the code for years, fresh eyes and brains have shed great insights into improvements for the VM.

Dave...

I created a YouTube channel for PLASMA. I hope to have a whole series on programming in PLASMA (with assembly interfacing, too).

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... f4SP2Gw3yU

Dave...