Color Hassles

The design was bedeviled by a nasty problem with color. In those days, color displays had penetrated only a portion of the installed computer systems; black-and-white displays were still common. It was therefore necessary to write software to support both groups. This was especially difficult, because color systems were not as simple as they are now. Back then, there were three common color systems: 1-bit, 4-bit, and 8-bit. Each system had to be handled differently. Moreover, most of the color systems had larger displays than the black-and-white systems; this meant that, to properly utilize the color displays, I had to present the graphics in two different scales. I eventually settled on four different displays based on two Boolean variables: presence of color and big screen. Every single display action had to be programmed with a double nested if-then statement, covering each of the four possible displays. The resulting code was a bloody mess. Toward the end of the project, I was giving some of my local variables names like "HateColor", "KillColor", "MurderColor", and so forth.

26.1. Patton Strikes Back.