As I said elsewhere that point of view certainly applies to systems like Commodore where everything including loading other programs is done through BASIC, the system prompt is actually a BASIC command prompt
IMO the Model T is uniquely different in fundamental ways; the 'system prompt' is the MENU and you can certainly load and run TELCOM, TEXT, etc. and most machine language programs without ever invoking BASIC at all. m On Thu, Oct 6, 2022 at 12:46 PM Jerry Stratton <model...@hoboes.com> wrote: > On Sep 29, 2022, at 4:52 PM, Tommy Phillips <to...@tommyphillips.info> > wrote: > > A BASIC operating environment doesn't really meet the definition of > "operating system". > > I just recently re-read John G. Kemeny’s “Man and the Computer”. He > specifically describes BASIC as an attempt to create “a new language… that > facilitated communication between man and machine.” > > While it was written for time-sharing computers rather than as the sole > operating system, this philosophy made it a natural choice for a very > simple operating system for these earlier computers. It was interactive and > was “a direct communication between computer and human being” that > translated well into a simple command-line operating system. > > Kemeny envisioned BASIC programming as “teaching the computer” and > “imparting intelligence to computers”. The “collaboration” that Kemeny > envisioned BASIC facilitating between man and machine is somewhat forgotten > today, when even BASIC tends to involve multiple steps and is used as an > application separate from the machine. But that philosophy baked into the > language, made it, in my opinion, almost inevitable (when combined with > BASIC’s very low memory and CPU overhead) that it would be used for the > operating system as well. > > https://archive.org/details/mancomputer00keme/ > Jerry Stratton > https://hoboes.com/coco/ > “We invented machinery to save and surpass our bodies’ labour; now we have > invented computers to save and surpass the labour of our minds.”—Peter > Laurie, The Joy of Computers > >
