Similar to Norman's experience, my first BASIC was with ZX-Basic on
the
ZX81, in the 1980's; as well as looking at the BASIC's from other
popular personal computers published in magazines like PCW.
I missed programming with the Sinclair Spectrum, instead it was then
on
to BBC BASIC and QL SuperBASIC - both having a more satisfying
structural syntax to use, if you wanted to of course.
Halcyon days ... :-)
PS - I still enjoy programming with SuperBASIC.
I remember the move from non-structured basics on the early computers
I used, typing in spaghetti loops of GOTOs and GOSUBs from those early
computer books and magazines. Suddenly structured basics like BBC
BASIC and QL BASIC became popular and suddenly it was easier to work
out what went wrong with those listings.
I had a BBC micro and Z88 some time ago (both used BBC Basic of
course) and apart from a period I'd rather forget in the 1980s writing
office software for BBC micros when I worked at the Beeb, I never did
very much programming on them outside of work.
Structured basics were a godsend after the messy spaghetti programming
of tangled GOTOs etc on early micro$oft basics and Sinclair basics
(Zx80 up to Spectrum). Many of my programs were printed in magazines
in those early days and I remember many a late night phone call from
frustrated readers who hadn't been able to get their typed-in listings
to work. It was often easier to ask them to send me a cassette to
record a copy of the listing onto rather than trying to debug over a
phone, only to then find that their Zx81 failed to load from the tape
to compound the problems!!!
It wasn't just PCW either - there were so many magazines in those days
which carried Sinclair listings - Popular Computing Weekly, Personal
Computer News, Home Computing Weekly, Personal Computing Today,
Practical Computing and many others. I hate to think how much I spent
on magazines in the 1980s :-(
But Malcolm is right, QL basic was so easy to learn and use even if
you weren't to keen on the slowness of the QL, or the unreliable
microdrives (actually, I never really had much problems with mine!).
If you have to use basic at all, structured QL basic is probably as
easy as any basic. It's interesting to note that amid what went on at
Sinclair before the QL was launched, there have been suggestions that
Superbasic might not have seen the light of day on the QL at all had
it not been for Jan Jones's persistence in writing it at least partly
in her own time outside of Sinclair.
Summarising how I felt about earlier unstructured basics, QL Today
published a cartoon a few years ago depicting a policeman about to
arrest someone who'd just assaulted a fellow QLer at a QL meeting, and
the justification given was that "I was provoked constable, he used
the word GOTO..."
As Malcolm says, Halcyon days ;-)
--
Dilwyn Jones
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