On Wed, 1 May 2024, Mike Katz via cctalk wrote:
Let's hear your earliest introduction to BASIC.
The first computer I used ran BASIC - HP9830A. I was at school in
Edinburgh in '77/'78. I was 15/16 at the time.
The "stupid computer" beat me at "NIM" then the teacher showed me the
listing - "Oh, that looks easy" followed by "How hard can it be" ...
Ah well. Seems a long time ago now.
Dial-up + TTY-33 to the local computing center after that then very soon
Apple II.
I'm still fond of BASIC (or Basic, whatever). Some 15 years back now I
decided I'd write my own "ideal" Basic - line numbers optional, named
procedures and functions with local variables - sort of in-line with the
last "micro" Basic I used on the BBC Micro (c1981) but with full graphics
commands, turtle graphics and more. That's all in C (Under Linux) and I
even did some real work with it for some geolocation analysis and even
sold a license to it to a company who were developing a Basic computer for
educational use. (didn't quite make me a "Bill Gates" though!)
And just last year I wrote a fairly traditional "Tiny" Basic that lives in
under 4KB of ROM on the 6502... Because why not.
I'm told Lua is the new Basic or Python is the new Basic, but the best
thing for me about Basic on the old micros was being able to turn the
computer on and type Basic into it immediately.... And to that end, I
decided to re-target my C Basic it to a bare metal framework for the
Raspberry Pi I'd been working on - boots to Basic in... well, it's not as
quick as an Apple II or BBC Micro, but under 2 seconds. It's a bit faster
on a Pi Zero as there's no USB to initialise... Still better than booting
Linux (or MS Win, whatever), logging in, launching the "IDE", ....
Cheers,
-Gordon
