Clinton Parker, Action!

Welcome to this special interview edition of Antic, the Atari 8-bit computer podcast.  All of our interviews are special in some way and we appreciate the time that the interviewees donate to the Atari 8-bit community at large.  This interview is a much-anticipated one due to the beloved nature of the software provided by the interviewee and due to the fact that the he has been away from the Atari 8-bit community for some time.  The software I’m talking about is the Action! programming language and the author is Clinton Parker.  Action! was released in 1983 by Optimized Systems Software (better known as OSS).  It quickly became one of the favorite programming languages ever produced for the Atari 8-bits and was used in the development of some commercial products.  The 6502 source code for Action! was made available under the GNU General Public License by the author in 2015.

This interview took place on September 6, 2015 via Skype.

Teaser Quotes

“It was an opportunity for me having a platform, which is what the Atari was to me.  It provided a platform where I could sit down and literally design a language that I liked and that had the features I liked.”

“It was selling well enough that I was able to for several years to pretty much make a living off the royalties of the sales of it.”

Links

Action! Review in ANALOG - http://www.cyberroach.com/analog/an16/action.htm

HI-RES VOL. 1, NO. 4 / MAY/JUNE 1984 / PAGE 72 - http://www.atarimagazines.com/hi-res/v1n4/action.php  

Action! at SourceForge - http://sourceforge.net/projects/atari-action/  

Action! Source at Archive.org - https://archive.org/details/ActionVersion36_SourceCode