[HN Gopher] Birth of BASIC (2014) [video]
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Birth of BASIC (2014) [video]
Author : AlexeyBrin
Score : 29 points
Date : 2020-07-14 10:12 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| sergius wrote:
| Imagine if they had put a Forth interpreter instead? That would
| have been real genius... but alas we got a crappy BASIC because
| everyone else had one.
| nickt wrote:
| Like the Jupiter Ace?
|
| http://www.jupiter-ace.co.uk/
| Jtsummers wrote:
| To be clear, BASIC came out in 1964 versus 1970 for Forth. I'm
| not sure how the creators of BASIC could've used Forth instead.
| simonh wrote:
| I think what was great about BASIC back in the day on early home
| computers was that it gave direct access to the hardware. You
| could PEEK or POKE to any address in memory and write programs
| that could manipulate any of the features of any attached
| hardware at the lowest level with individual commands. You didn't
| even have to write a program, but could just invoke commands
| imperatively. It was an incredible learning environment. I
| remember hacking a BBC Micro so that it mapped system memory
| directly into the video display, so the colour of each pixel on
| the screen represented a byte of memory, which changed in
| realtime. Learning Pascal on a Prime minicomputer was fine, but
| never had the same fun factor.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| The feedback loop with BASIC was faster. You could execute the
| program directly from the editor (if not from an interactive
| prompt, our computer, a Tandy 1000 circa 1988/1989, didn't have
| that though). Even without the prompt, it was very close to the
| REPL experience (write a line or two, hit F5 to run it, see the
| result, edit, repeat). I didn't come to other languages until
| later, but even so the feedback loop was just slower: bring up
| editor, write code, save, compile, run, repeat. That extra bit
| of friction is noticeable after a while. And then there's just
| what makes a minimum viable program. In C it's something like:
| #include <stdio.h> int main(void) {
| printf("Hello, World!"); return 0; }
|
| In BASIC it's: 10 PRINT "Hello, World!"
|
| 4 extra lines don't seem like much, but to the novice it can be
| a massive difference. Especially when all that other stuff
| seems like magic, versus the BASIC program which just gets to
| the point ("I want to print something, so I tell it to print
| and it does.").
| cgh wrote:
| One of the advantages of the Commodore 64 was its crappy BASIC
| dialect. To do anything with graphics or sound, you had to pretty
| much learn assembly. I'm pretty sure that whoever decided to
| stick Commodore BASIC v2 in that thing had no idea they were
| creating an entire generation of assembly programmers.
| jbperry wrote:
| Agreed. The limitations of the C-64 lead me to learn a whole
| lot more about the internal workings of computers than I think
| I ever would have learned using something more advanced.
| Unfortunately(?) that has been the only assembly that I really
| ever used extensively. Still, it was a great initial
| foundation.
| wvenable wrote:
| I wish as a kid I had more resources to learn assembly back
| when I had a Commodore 64. I effectively maxed out what I could
| do with the machine; I had made it as far as redefining the
| character set to make games but I still working in BASIC.
|
| But I never had the tools or instructions to do assembly -- it
| wasn't until I got a PC and had BBS resources that I did any
| advanced programming.
| DannyB2 wrote:
| 10 INVENT NEW LANGUAGE
|
| 20 GOSUB 10
|
| 30 PROFIT
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Captain Nitpick here. That will eventually run out of memory
| and crash, because of GOSUB instead of GOTO.
|
| Clever, though...
| DannyB2 wrote:
| Eventually, when it reaches the obvious RETURN statement, it
| should then get to the PROFIT.
|
| And memory? Memory is unlimited! This is Java! Oh, wait, it's
| BASIC, memory isn't unlimited. Nevermind.
| vanilla-almond wrote:
| Something I've wanted to asked ask for a while: who is
| programming in Basic today?
|
| The language has evolved substantially from its early days and
| there are many dialects. But it's rare to hear someone admit they
| program in Basic (at least on this forum). Programmers can be
| quite judgemental about choice of programming language.
|
| Does anyone want to share their reason for using Basic? It is by
| choice or by necessity (e.g. maintaining a legacy codebase)?
|
| Are there modern incarnations of the language that you feel are
| overlooked? (For example, I recently came across _Pure Basic_ , a
| cross-platform compiler that lets you build self-contained
| binaries for Windows, Mac and Linux).
| kjs3 wrote:
| You can still get a supported, paid version of BBC Basic for
| Windows at http://www.bbcbasic.co.uk/bbcwin/bbcwin.html.
|
| A couple of years ago a shop I was at had a dev that used it to
| construct test frameworks for the apps he was working on. Said
| he'd been using it since the 80s and it worked for him. The dev
| leads said OK and the tests were apparently extremely well
| done. Got bought by IBM, so I don't know if they're still doing
| testing that way :-).
| 32bitkid wrote:
| QB64: https://www.qb64.org/portal/
|
| And
|
| Color Maximite 1/2: http://geoffg.net/maximite.html
|
| Are two interesting takes on modern BASIC
| foobarian wrote:
| I feel like a lot of the attraction of the early micro BASICs
| was: 1) Flip on power switch 2) Computer shows "READY" 0.5s
| later.
|
| With a modern Windows PC a 7 yro has to learn to use the mouse,
| to click, press icons, the concept of windows, etc. Which, she
| somehow picked up in about 1 month time frame and is now able
| to launch games and play PC Minecraft. But anyway...
| simonh wrote:
| My kids do their Computer Science course at school in VB.NET
| here in the UK. I understand it's also possible to do it in
| Python, but they don't offer that at their school.
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