[HN Gopher] BBC Basic Editor
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       BBC Basic Editor
        
       Author : bpierre
       Score  : 142 points
       Date   : 2022-07-15 16:17 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (bbcmic.ro)
 (TXT) w3m dump (bbcmic.ro)
        
       | peter_retief wrote:
       | The share code didn't fit in a tweet. What am I missing here?
        
         | makeworld wrote:
         | The tweet comes first.
         | 
         | > BBC Micro bot runs your tweet on an 8-bit computer emulator.
         | 
         | https://www.bbcmicrobot.com/owlet-test2.html
        
       | pvg wrote:
       | Previous 50 comment discussion from Nov 2020 with some author
       | talk:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25256853
        
       | bilekas wrote:
       | I've been playing with the editor and seeing the effects. It's
       | pretty fun but can someone explain to me like I'm 5 and fill me
       | in on what this is ?
       | 
       | BBC is the British broadcasting channel in the UK for me, and
       | their 80/90's graphics were pretty much the same!?
        
         | hvs wrote:
         | BASIC for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro
        
         | FooHentai wrote:
         | The language shipped on a computer the BBC released. This
         | should fill in the gap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro
        
         | pkage wrote:
         | It's an emulation environment for the BBC Micro[0], a popular
         | home computer distributed by the BBC in the early 1980s.
         | There's a long history of /why/ the BBC was involved in
         | producing computers, but the short version is that the BBC
         | wanted to increase computer literacy in the UK and decided the
         | best way of doing that was to create their own machine
         | (partnered with private industry).
         | 
         | [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro
        
           | thorin wrote:
           | And if you're interested in that watch the movie :-)
           | 
           | https://youtu.be/XXBxV6-zamM
           | 
           | Micro men, story of the zx spectrum vs the bbc
        
           | sedatk wrote:
           | Also, BBC BASIC was developed by Sophie Wilson who later
           | designed ARM processor architecture which we use everywhere
           | today.
        
           | bilekas wrote:
           | Thanks! I was looking for something to play with over the
           | weekend! Being an 80's baby I'm surprised I've never heard of
           | it!
        
       | zabzonk wrote:
       | Sorry, don't get what this is about, and I'm an ex BBC Micro
       | user. Enlighten me?
        
         | angrygoat wrote:
         | There's an explanation here: https://www.bbcmicrobot.com/owlet-
         | test2.html
         | 
         | > BBC Micro bot runs your tweet on an 8-bit computer emulator.
         | Below is output from 1000 programs that different users
         | submitted to the bot. Click any to see source.
        
       | jamiek88 wrote:
       | Oh the memories!
       | 
       | I haven't coded since then and am about to start again, I wish
       | learning now was as easy as control break to start again.
       | 
       | We squeezed everything out of basic then started learning
       | assembly.
       | 
       | We fucking owned our school econet making a port scanner that
       | polled station 100 (the teacher admin station) to eventually get
       | his password for *I AM SYS.
       | 
       | Password was paramecium!!! It took days to poll.
       | 
       | Then we got a copy of the advanced user guide for BBC Master and
       | became gods.
       | 
       | My best mate and hacking buddy went by Bruteus, I was Apollo!
       | 
       | Bruteus ? You on hacker news?!
       | 
       | We then used to change our station number to 100 whenever we
       | logged in to do naughtiness. (?&d22=100) It drove the admin crazy
       | reading logs or the printer spool we'd randomly trigger.
       | 
       | Our opsec was poor though and we boasted to the wrong person who
       | snitched.
       | 
       | Suspended from school and banned from all networked machines.
       | 
       | Still think they should have brought us in to volunteer instead.
       | 
       | A physics teacher actually let us use his non networked computer
       | because he saw we had talent and interest and he tried to harness
       | it. He was awesome. He put us in charge of downloading the NOAA
       | data to do weather maps via cassette tape!
       | 
       | Then when the admins car had left we had a sneaky super long eco
       | net cable we made that we hung out of a window to the floor below
       | to a network socket and resumed our pwnage.
       | 
       | Man we were little arseholes!
        
       | sequoia wrote:
       | Is basic always this inscrutable? Not a great intro example.
        
         | zerkten wrote:
         | It's not the best general example, but I'm curious why it was
         | selected. I was wondering if it was selected as a nod to
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Furber given that he's from
         | Manchester and was involved with original BBC Micro. Many UK
         | folks would get the Joy Division reference, but they are a bit
         | more of a niche globally.
        
       | abrax3141 wrote:
       | Oh my gosh; this is a truly awesome hack!
        
       | themodelplumber wrote:
       | Wow, that's really impressive. The VirtualBeeb feature is kind of
       | mind-blowing too! I did not expect to see everything working in
       | interactive 3D on top of all the rest.
        
         | pmyteh wrote:
         | ...and the 'Elite' disc seems to be in the drive by default!
        
           | OnlyMortal wrote:
           | Right On Commander!
        
         | iasay wrote:
         | Yeah that is dangerously good. Now I shall be off to eBay to
         | buy a real one again!
        
         | wigster wrote:
         | it's lovely. the sound of the keys...
        
       | asciiresort wrote:
       | Based on the package.json, this seems like a reskinned Monaco
       | plus some bespoke extensions
        
       | talideon wrote:
       | BBC BASIC was/is the wonderful lovechild of BASIC and BCPL, and
       | was a joy to code in back in the day. Significant amounts of the
       | regular user applications that weren't CPU bound for RISC OS were
       | coded in it, and most of the rest were coded _with_ it, as it had
       | a built-in multipass assembler.
        
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       (page generated 2022-07-15 23:00 UTC)