The Tao of Programming

The Tao of Programming by Geoffrey James is a short book of humourous computer parables inspired by an ancient Chinese text, the Tao Te Ching.

The Tao Te Ching is believed to have been written 2500 years ago by Lao Tzu and provides the basis for Taoist philosophy. The book is separated into 81 (3⁴) short chapters of parables and proverbs.

James divides The Tao of Programming into 32 (2⁵) chapters, a mix of tales paraphrased from the Tao Te Ching and anecdotes advocating the key principles of the hacker ethic:

• code should be small, elegant and easy to read
• management shouldn't interfere with programming

The preface (not included in the online copy) describes how James, an amateur computer archaeologist, stumbled upon and decoded The Tao of Programming while searching through a stack of obsolete punch cards.

My favourite chapter has to be the description of well-written programs closely followed by Turing's dream:

“A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity.”

-- The Tao of Programming, Chapter 4.1

“Grand Master Turing once dreamed that he was a machine. When he awoke he exclaimed:

‘I don't know whether I am Turing dreaming that I am a machine, or a machine dreaming that I am Turing!’”

-- The Tao of Programming, Chapter 2.2

Although the book is short and you probably won't learn anything new, it's definitely worth a read if you have 30 minutes to spare.

• Online copy of The Tao of Programming

Celebrating 30 Years of Color Robot Battle

Color Robot Battle is one of the earliest commercial programming games, published 30 years ago for the TRS-80 Color Computer by The Image Producers.

The game is played by writing programs to control a robot's movement, sensors and weapons. Programs are written in a hybrid of the BASIC / Logo programming languages. Two robots enter an arena with the survivor being declared the winner.

I asked the designer and programmer of Color Robot Battle what inspired the game:

“Well, the Apple II program did along with the feeling I could do it better. All of these were initially inspired by Core Wars, I believe. I did want to make the language complete enough to have quite a bit of control and flexibility over the robots.”

-- Glenn Sogge

“The robot controlling programming language was based on BASIC. Prior to working on CRB, I'd written a simple BASIC interpreter for the PDP-11, so it was a natural choice.”

-- Del Ogren

Color Robot Battle is a fantastic example of compact code. The game, compiler and full screen editor are all written in 6809 assembly language and somehow manage to fit on a 4K ROM.

Although the language of CRB only takes a few minutes to learn, a whole range of strategies are possible. There are four types of command available:

• movement: followed by a number. Movement commands are F(orwards), B(ackwards), L(eft), R(ight), H(alt), T(urn), D(irection).
• conditional: detect what the robot is facing. =(true) or #(false) followed by R(obot), W(all), M(issile), L(aser), S(omething - any direction), ?(random).
• flow control: C(all) or G(oto) a label. Labels are defined at the beginning of a line and terminated by a >.
• attack: XL to fire the laser or XM to fire a missile.

The program starts at the label START>. Multiple commands on one line are separated by a colon :. If a condition fails the rest of the line is skipped.

Here's a simple example that manages to win a few battles:

*SIGMA               ; robot name
START>               ; start here
F5                   ; move forward 5
=W:T1                ; if facing a wall, turn 45°                
=?:T1                ; randomly turn 45°
=R:XL                ; if facing a robot, fire laser
GSTART               ; repeat from start

Thanks to the simplicity of the language, CRB makes the perfect introduction to programming games. So, does anyone fancy a tournament? ;-)

• Color Robot Battle on the Programming Games Wiki
• Color Robot Battle: Adventures in Programming
• Tandy/TRS-80 Color Computer Robot Battle