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pico: C64 Users Manual
December 05th, 2020
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This is what I am calling a "pico" entry -- a really small entry instead of a
longer burrows.

I've been spending some free time playing around in VICE's Commodore 64
emulator for fun and definitely not profit.  While I never owned a C64, I have
fond memories of using a PET in kindergarten as well as some sort of knock-off
microcomputer that I could play the 8-bit Ghostbusters game.  (So maybe a C64?)

Regardless, I have been playing around by reading the whole Commodore 64 Users
Manual (which you can find at archive.org) and learning BASIC from scratch.
It's wonderful in that the appeal of the machine grows on you, especially being
able to poke around and modify BASIC routines.  It makes me appreciate that the
Apple ][ had a built-in monitor compared to the C64, but the tooling is there
retrospectively 40+ years later in the guise of easy-to-load flash carts.

What is the point of this?  Nothing but fun.  I've sometimes struggled with
justifying spending time learning an archaic language that isn't applicable in
my daily life, but then that was really the point of these early computers --
to realize the potential of what computers *could* be.