Best 68000 programmer

[kamelito]

I read many times that Jez San was an excellent 68000 programmer, can we say he was the best?

[LongLifeA1200]

No.

[Hewitson]

No way. If we're talking general 68000, it would probably be someone from Sega, Capcom, or some other Japanese arcade game manufacturer.

[idrougge]

Is that based on their code or the hardware they used?

Even the Japanese requested Jez San's services.

[Tigerskunk]

How do you measure "The best"?

[ross]

I'm Jez San.
Or I'm Echo/LSD?


Seriously.
How can you judge who is the best 68k programmer? With what parameters?
EDIT: ops, Steryl707 preceded me

And above all, what does all this have to do with the Coders.Asm/Hardware section?
Much more suitable in the gossip section

[malko]

So you rejuvenate yourself a bit my friend or there's a homonymous one
2019 - 1966 <> 49

[ross]

Originally Posted by malko

So you rejuvenate yourself a bit my friend or there's a homonymous one
2019 - 1966 <> 49

Eh bien , you have unmasked me!

[kamelito]

Fastest possible code for any given problem delivered in an acceptable timeframe with no to few bugs?

[Photon]

I think even the concept "good programmer" needs a definition. If we take CompSci, you're expected to be able to solve a problem by breaking it down into concepts that you understand fully, and to implement the concepts in code without bugs or unintended side-effects. AFAIK, Jez San has implemented most of the common concepts: parsing, compression, recursion, trigonometry, and rendering. So by that, he's a good programmer. In fact, better than that - he understands the necessary math for 3D.

But so has quite a few others. I don't know of more releases on 68000 that he was a part of, than Starglider 1 & 2 and ArgAsm? But let's say I limit it to 3D games - I still think he got stiff competition from e.g. David Braben, Bob Dinnerman, and Archer MacLean.

[Rotareneg]

Everyone knows the best 68000 programmer was Sven Torgenson, a systems engineer at Milwaukee Industrial Equipment in 1987. He wrote the control software for their M4X88 milling machine, saving the company millions of dollars by getting the required performance out of the 68000 instead of upgrading to a faster CPU.

Or, to put it in another, less silly, way: The 68k series has been used in a whole heck of a lot more situations than just games on the Amiga.

[kamelito]

Jez has his name in the HRM 3rd édition and also in the AmigaOS wiki does anyone knows it’s contribution?

[Mark Wright]

[ Show youtube player ]

[redblade]

Originally Posted by Photon

But so has quite a few others. I don't know of more releases on 68000 that he was a part of, than Starglider 1 & 2 and ArgAsm? But let's say I limit it to 3D games - I still think he got stiff competition from e.g. David Braben, Bob Dinnerman, and Archer MacLean.

off topic here: How good is ArgAsm? I see that people here either use Devpac, AsmOne/AsmPro, phxasm, vasm.

I use AsmOne or A68k.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by redblade

off topic here: How good is ArgAsm? I see that people here either use Devpac, AsmOne/AsmPro, phxasm, vasm.

I use AsmOne or A68k.

My everlasting memory of Argasm is that it was buggy and prone to crashing quite a lot.

Theres no doubt Jez San was a good 68K programmer, but then so was Geoff Crammond.

However, as Photon mentioned, Archer Maclean was pretty damned good, going from IK+ to the Snooker and Pool games, both of those were excellent and belied their 68K origins.

I think it would be impossible to single out one guy out of 100 that would be clearly ahead of other 68K programmers on Amiga.

Andrew Braybrook is a good programmer, but he clearly wasn't the best Amiga programmer, he tried to emulate what Factor 5 did with limited success.

Anthony Crowther was pretty damned good.

What Azatoth did with the Enigma demo with some of the 3D, especially the rotating cube with the plane vectors and starfields etc rotating around, how does he rate?

A question with an impossible answer.

[dlfrsilver]

Ross is one of them. He knows why i say that, and it's a surprise to come.

Ronald Pieket Weeserik was a king of 68000 and sound chip. He perfectly understood how to make the coin-ops running on the Amiga.

Pierre Adane was also a king in 68000 coding. He learnt from ..... the best Atari ST 68000 coder, aka Mcoder other known as Jean-Charles Meyrignac.

Mcoder was an absolute king at optimising his code. Pierre Adane learn to do on Amiga what Mcoder on the ST.

[ross]

What Photon says is right, we are lacking a precise definition.
What are we talking about? A 68k Amiga programmer? A video game programmer? A routine support programmer? A code optimizer?
A mathematician, an engineer, a physicist who applies his concepts to 68k code, perhaps to give us an incredible demo?
In my opinion it doesn't make sense, for that I still think that the thread is in the wrong section. No talk of coding here

The truth is that there are many incredibly good 68000 programmers (on this board also!, I'm not going to list them).
Which in addition know the Amiga chipset which allows you to create, not only write code.

It's like asking who's the best painter or the best musician or the best... baker. It's totally subjective and specific.
For what I don't think we can find a 'best 68k coder' (nothing personal, kamelito, just my thought).

PS: Denis, you make me blush

[alexh]

Surely the "best" 68000 coders were on the Atari ST platform,? They had to do much more with the CPU than other platforms to make up for the lack of custom chips and count cycles all the time to work around the limitations of the video shifter just to draw full screen. I'd like to suggest Niclas Thisell (TCB) who wrote among other things Enchanted Land or maybe Arnaud Carre (Leonard of Oxygene),

[kamelito]

@Alexh
Yep same thoughts about the Atari ST coders.
The thread can be moved no problem with that, since it is an Amiga forum I was thinking about this platform. Usually game coders are the one who push to the limits but I guess Exec code is quite optimized for example.

[Hewitson]

Going by that logic Atari 2600 coders are the best on the 6502. Clearly not the case.