If some older programmer came to you today and used the terms Pokes and Peeks what are they referring to and what would you say?

Question

As one who grew up with the terms and I know some of you will know who have been around but every programming language has them and without them nothing would work... Or should I say without them there would be no output...

Answer 1

I had the Beagle Bros "Peeks, Pokes and Pointers" reference very early on:
http://beagle.applearchives.com/the_posters/poster_3.html (or poster_2, I forget)

They work here, in the js-emulated Apple ][ system:
https://www.scullinsteel.com/apple2/

[meta, using the system]
~ [Load Disk] icon for games/gfx/DOS is under SYSTEM
~ [RESET] to drop to a BASIC prompt (no disk)

In DOS, CATALOG shows a directory listing (try RUN COLOR DEMO)

In AppleBASIC, using peeks/pokes/calls:
~ A random number, at the "]" prompt:
PRINT PEEK(78)

~ Print all registers:
CALL -1321

~ Flashing text (type this, then any syntax error):
POKE 50,127
to reset: POKE 50,255

Create a BASIC program:
10 ? "HELLO WORLD"
20 GOTO 10
LIST
RUN

(Ctrl-C to break, replace GOTO with GOSUB to OUT OF MEMORY instead)

Answer 2

IBM came to the market and destroyed it. Apple was one of the few companies that fought it. I owned a DEC PDP-11, Apple 2, Apple Lisa, and multiple Apple Macintosh systems. When my last Mac died, I didn't replace it. My wife gave me a laptop for Christmas so I had to learn Windows 10.

Answer 3

I spent the first 4 years of my professional career dealing with punched cards. I avoided them as best as possible. I used the Basic terminal interface to create files in various languages to execute and test before printing to the card punch to make the programs I submitted to my teachers or boss.

Answer 4

My friends PC's crashed many times. My Apple's never crashed. Maximum price for slow performance, I'll give you. That is why I got a HP in my retirement. Apple is out of my price range.

Answer 5

My first two languages were Fortran and Cobol. I had a Z80 card in my Apple 2 running CP/M.

Answer 6

The sad thing about IBM was they had two competing PCs and they chose the one they expected would stop the people moving towards PCs by being technologically inferior, instead of the one that was years ahead of the competion. They knew there was a great chance that people would buy their's and were using it as a marketing strategy to sell their mainframes.

Answer 7

Yeah I'm giving myself for Christmas the new macOS 10.14 MoJave ~ but my
last year's gift was the HP Spectre 13...

Answer 8

John Wells , Da2, Brian
Here is my work baby I work with and babysit daily from 8 to 5
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-11
She has been upgraded several times but still uses reel to reel and is also internet compatible with a harness that my buddy Joe worked tirelessly with me ~

Answer 9

Well said Kirk Schafer and I too had the poster by Beagle Brothers "Peeks, Pokes and Pointers" as well as the IBM guide which John Wells probably has tucked away somewhere.
Also had the Trash385 book by Tandy and the HP reference manual...
Not to leave out this dang mainframe I use for work still references some of them in day to day maintenance.

Answer 10

We all learn, there's a french adage, 'the more things change, the more they stay the stay the same' - "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"....

Answer 11

Brian I'm actually hand building her future replacement with brand new parts one section at a time...

My dad said you can drive the car as long as you know how to fix it...
i studied that car from bumper to bumper and even broke down the carburetor, the needle and point, and so on...

My PDP 11 is no different piece by piece she will have a living sister ~

Answer 12

peek command ....like "lets take a quick peek" guess it displays something on screen like "show" or "ls" or looks something up in memory.

poke command...like " lets poke it to see if it's alive" sounds like a command that tests stuff and returns responses

Answer 13

It has to do with accessing the contents of certain memory cells in some languages, I believe. Not a term I hear often, so don’t hold me to it

Answer 14

BroFarOps©®️™️ I was an Apple person since the Apple 2 came out. My first Windows system was my first computer, after 20 years of not having anything to do with computers except at work, for christmas a year ago. I barely touch it (maybe 20 times so far.)

Answer 15

I think some may have gotton confused as to why an old programmer was asking you about Peeks and Pokes

One s/he could have been your future job / interviewer.
One could have been your sr boss.
One could have been your immediate project management team boss.
Or someone who may have simply needed your advice.

There are hundreds of us old programmers around ~

Answer 16

This question can only be called NOSTALGIA. It's refreshing to find throwback questions these days. In gradeschool, I spent my after school time in a plant that printed IBM CARDS used for KEYPUNCHER... I remember trying to memorize EBCDIC codes so i can interprept the 80 columns on keypunched cards.

I can't forget the first time I saw a card sorter!!!! Those were the days

Answer 17

Brian never used Basic on mine. Assembler, C, Modula, and Pascal were the languages I used on it.

Answer 18

RANDOM Art 73 there was a time I might rate myself around 7, though most considered me a 10. I have never met anyone that could code thousands of lines of code perfectly (zero compile or runtime errors) like I could. These days my old brain loses more information that it keeps so more like 3 though I'm sure the hundreds I've helped here would disagree.

Answer 19

In the parlance around the early computer systems of the 1980s, “PEEK and POKE” were common terms for manipulating and evaluating memory storage. PEEK referred to looking at a particular memory address, while POKE referred to altering that memory address.

Answer 20

John Wells u used punched cards, it's amazing to hear
I was not even born at that time 😱