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dafelst 6 hours ago [-]
DJGPP and the Allegro game library were my first foray into C++ in around 1996-1997 if I recall. Having access to a proper 32-bit protected mode system in DOS (without having to pirate a bunch of other compilers!) was a pretty incredible step forward for the community.
I pretty quickly moved onto building in Win95/98 with MSVC not long after, but I am very grateful to DJ for the compiler and Shawn Hargreaves for Allegro.
grumbel 3 hours ago [-]
One really nice thing with Allegro is that it's still around, many Linux distributions still ship it and those 30 year old games can still be recompiled quite easily.
the_af 1 hours ago [-]
Ditto.
I'm surprised that DJGPP is sometimes mentioned here, but (my impression at least) Shawn Hargreaves and Allegro seldom are. To my young self, Allegro was a huge deal.
I wonder what became of DJ Delorie? His site doesn't seem updated anymore. Apparently Shawn Hargreaves isn't involved with Allegro anymore, but there are some recent updates to his website.
bacon_waffle 13 minutes ago [-]
I fondly remember DJGPP and Allegro from my youth as well, it turns out that DJ has just recently opened a few bugs against FreeCAD, which I used to contribute a bit of time to :)
oso2k 15 minutes ago [-]
DJ’s still at Red Hat. I talked to him in our (RH’s) retro slack channel occasionally. PDPs, DECs, VAXes, Commodore, Amiga, SUN, and DOS are frequently discussed there.
He’s also occasionally active here on HN.
bena 4 hours ago [-]
Same. Djgpp with allegro was a godsend for someone without the funds or means to purchase software.
mshroyer 5 hours ago [-]
DJGPP was foundational for me. It got me into C at an early age, as the second toolchain I spent much time with following Microsoft QuickBasic, and it was my gateway to eventually exploring Linux and Emacs.
I'm sure many others here have similar stories. It was especially valuable to have something like DJGPP back in the mid 90s, when many of us only had access to DOS PCs and compilers were expensive.
pacman128 2 hours ago [-]
I used this back in the 90s in the 32 bit protected mode assembly language course I taught (along with the NASM assembler); so that my students had a free development environment to use on their own pcs. It worked great when most courses used MASM 16 bit real mode.
My high school computer science program used DJGPP.
Also this title violates the capitalization rule at the very top of the page :)
oso2k 12 minutes ago [-]
I’m jealous. In 1996-1997, my AP Computer Science in Los Angeles used UCSD Pascal on Apple IIc’s and Turbo Pascal 5.5 on DOS 6.22 when the 5.25” floppies and IIc’s started to give out at the beginning of the Spring semester.
betterunix2 3 hours ago [-]
My introduction to programming! First compiler I used, I learned C++ (such as it was back then), and the author was responsive to my questions and ideas despite my youth (I was in middle school).
Dwedit 6 hours ago [-]
Needs a "1998" in the title.
martinclayton 6 hours ago [-]
Used this in 1992 for a photon counting imaging system. Worked great.
InsideOutSanta 6 hours ago [-]
According to the linked article, this title I correctly capitalizes djgpp.
urbnspacecowboy 6 hours ago [-]
DJGPP's author has some funny ideas about spelling and capitalization, including his own name, DJ Delorie (not "D. J." or the like). I guess it's his own personal "no brown M&M's" rule!
kelnos 6 hours ago [-]
> funny ideas about spelling and capitalization, including his own name, DJ Delorie (not "D. J." or the like)
If you read his about page, "DJ" is his legal name, as-is, with no spaces. It's not an initialism or abbreviation for something else.
Regardless, it's a little weird to criticize someone for how they spell their name. By definition, their name is spelled how they want it. It's a core component of identity.
exmadscientist 1 hours ago [-]
> It's not an initialism or abbreviation for something else.
And even apart from that and the common law right of name, it's not unusual in America to contract two-initial names like that into a single "word". Not extremely common, but not novel or particularly remarkable either.
skissane 4 hours ago [-]
> If you read his about page, "DJ" is his legal name, as-is, with no spaces. It's not an initialism or abbreviation for something else.
Not that it is really any of my business, but I wonder if that's always been his legal name, or if he changed it at some point. I can see how if someone is used to going by their initials, they might eventually decide it is more of their real name than their legal name is, and hence change their legal name to match their real one. Conversely, maybe that's actually the name his parents gave him.
OTOH, my mother's real name (what her family and friends call her) and her legal name have always been different. I asked her once if she ever thought of changing it, she told me she's lived her whole life with them being different – she's in her late 70s now – and doesn't see the point of trying to officially align them, the work involved would outweigh any benefit to her
bitwize 2 hours ago [-]
Buzz Aldrin, the astronaut, was legally Edwin Aldrin up until the 2010s or so, when he was in his 80s. People had been calling him Buzz for decades, so I guess he figured why not.
Unrelated fact about Aldrin: his mother's maiden name was Moon. Bit of nominative determinism by proxy there.
skissane 36 minutes ago [-]
My mother's situation is complicated by being a dual citizen – she'd have to update all her paperwork with the governments of two separate countries.
I am also a dual citizen, so would have the same issue – except unlike my mother, I can't think of any plausible reason why I might want to change my legal name.
I pretty quickly moved onto building in Win95/98 with MSVC not long after, but I am very grateful to DJ for the compiler and Shawn Hargreaves for Allegro.
I'm surprised that DJGPP is sometimes mentioned here, but (my impression at least) Shawn Hargreaves and Allegro seldom are. To my young self, Allegro was a huge deal.
I wonder what became of DJ Delorie? His site doesn't seem updated anymore. Apparently Shawn Hargreaves isn't involved with Allegro anymore, but there are some recent updates to his website.
He’s also occasionally active here on HN.
I'm sure many others here have similar stories. It was especially valuable to have something like DJGPP back in the mid 90s, when many of us only had access to DOS PCs and compilers were expensive.
Also this title violates the capitalization rule at the very top of the page :)
If you read his about page, "DJ" is his legal name, as-is, with no spaces. It's not an initialism or abbreviation for something else.
Regardless, it's a little weird to criticize someone for how they spell their name. By definition, their name is spelled how they want it. It's a core component of identity.
And even apart from that and the common law right of name, it's not unusual in America to contract two-initial names like that into a single "word". Not extremely common, but not novel or particularly remarkable either.
Not that it is really any of my business, but I wonder if that's always been his legal name, or if he changed it at some point. I can see how if someone is used to going by their initials, they might eventually decide it is more of their real name than their legal name is, and hence change their legal name to match their real one. Conversely, maybe that's actually the name his parents gave him.
OTOH, my mother's real name (what her family and friends call her) and her legal name have always been different. I asked her once if she ever thought of changing it, she told me she's lived her whole life with them being different – she's in her late 70s now – and doesn't see the point of trying to officially align them, the work involved would outweigh any benefit to her
Unrelated fact about Aldrin: his mother's maiden name was Moon. Bit of nominative determinism by proxy there.
I am also a dual citizen, so would have the same issue – except unlike my mother, I can't think of any plausible reason why I might want to change my legal name.