The Raspberry Pi project and my work at Oxford University supporting a science
department has had me thinking for some time about the need for a modern
equivalent to the old home computer systems and the BASIC language which came on
them.
On the home computer front, as shown in the second episode of the BBC's
"Electric Dreams", teenage boys are still enthused by being able to program, as
long as within 15 minutes they can start annoying their family with sounds and
putting their name on the screen in gaudy colours. Plotting things on the screen
simply is also important. The energy barrier must not be very high.
On the scientific front, there are many people who need to do some programming
but find the energy barrier for learning traditional programming languages (and
even Matlab) too steep. They need a simple language with which to process data
and plot their data in a publishable quality format.
To this end, I see SuperBASIC as a very good starting point, which needs to be
extended with modern data structures such as compound variables and proper
variable scoping.
I've been thinking about this quite hard in the last few days and have written
up my initial thoughts on my blog:
http://www.lingula.org.uk/wordpress/2012/02/23/notsobasic/
Any comments and possible help appreciated. ;-)
Steve
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