4
Python Programming in OpenGL/GLUT
Chapter 1 Introduction
Before we begin our journey with Python and OpenGL, we first need to go back
in time. History serves many purposes, but one of its more important functions is to
provide us with a reference point so that we may see how far we’ve traveled. We’ll go
back to about 1980 and the first computer programming class in our high school. We
were the proud “owners” of a single new Commodore VIC-20 and an old black and white
TV that served as a monitor (almost). There were about 5 or 6 students in the class and
we began to learn to program in BASIC.
1
There were no graphics worth mentioning and
the only thing I remember is that we made such a fuss about getting the VIC to find the
prime numbers from 2 to 997. If memory serves, it took about 30 minutes for the VIC to
run this “sophisticated”
2
prime finding program. We had no disk storage and the memory
in the computer was 4K.
3
I think the processor speed was about 1 Mhz and might have
been much lower
4
, but we didn’t care because we were computing!
The next step occurred the following year when we purchased 10 TI 99/4a
computers for $50 each.
5
They were not much better than the VIC-20, but we at least
were able to store programs using cassette tape recorders. Cassette storage wasn’t
much fun, extremely slow, and unreliable. I remember some slow, crude rudimentary
graphics, but nothing that stands out in my mind. Finally, in 1982, things began to get
exciting. We were able to purchase several Apple II+ computers with disk drives. We
thought we were in heaven! The Apples were neat looking, nearly indestructible
6
, and
much faster than anything we had used previously. Plus, they could actually produce
usable GRAPHICS. Not just crude blocky stuff (which you could choose if you wanted…
but why?), but nice points and lines on the screen! These Apples had 64K of memory
(all you could ever use… or so we thought) and the disk storage was amazing. We
could store 140K of programs on one floppy disk!
7
Our prime number generator took
only 53 seconds on the Apple, which was over 30 times faster than the VIC- 20. Had I
been acquainted with my friend George Francis at that time, we would have been able to
do even more with these dependable machines.
8
Our final conversion was to the PC platform in 1987-88. We now had a lab of 12
true-blue IBM PC’s with color monitors and hard drives running Windows 3.0 (or was it
1
BASIC is a computer language… Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. It has
been much maligned over the years; unjustly in my opinion.
2
Here, “sophisticated” means ‘brute strength and ignorance”. But the program worked and we
were thrilled!
3
This is 4 thousand bytes of memory. Compare this to my current laptop which has 2 BILLION
(gigabytes) of memory.
4
Again, my current laptop has a processor that runs at 2 Ghz, over 2000x faster!
5
These were truly awful computers. Texas Instruments introduced them at a price of over $1000
and ended up selling them at Wal-Mart for $49.95. I’m not certain they were worth that much.
6
I personally saw one dropped on a concrete sidewalk. It bounced once or twice and worked fine
for several years afterward. No, I wasn't the one who dropped it.
7
Again, my trusty laptop has a 60 gigabyte hard drive. That’s 60 billion bytes. I also have a
portable USB "diskless" drive that holds nearly 2000x the capacity of that Apple disk!
8
UIUC Math Prof. George K. Francis had a lab of Apples then that did some amazing graphics
with a 1983 Forth compiler written by one of his colleagues. It would have been nice to have that!
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starjjn2014-08-02关于python和OpenGL的书，英文文字版，帮助很大
