Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[William Park via talk]

Maybe not the original BASIC syntax, but you don't need all that much.  Read 
from register, write to register, some math operations, few control statements, 
etc.--William

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android 
 
  On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 2:07 PM, Clifford Ilkay wrote:   On 
Sat, Aug 24, 2019 at 10:22 PM William Park via talk  wrote:

On Tue, Aug 13, 2019 at 10:17:36PM -0400, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
> This is not a place of honour:.
> 
> https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic
> 
> Go do some damage!

You know, BASIC may come back to life in IofT and microprocessor boards.
Because if you look at things you do with those boards, you certainly
don't need Python (micro or not), those gas-guzzling IDE, or even C
compilers.


I work in the IoT space and I have yet to read anything, credible or otherwise, 
that BASIC may be useful in that market. C, C++, Python and Micro Python, Go 
(Flogo framework), JavaScript (Node-Red framework), and Elixir/Erlang (Nerves 
framework) are credible choices. I find the Elixir/Erlang stack the most 
interesting of the lot.
Regards,
Clifford Ilkay
+1 647-778-8696  
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[Christopher Browne via talk]

-ish

On Wed, Aug 28, 2019, 2:07 PM Clifford Ilkay via talk 
wrote:

> . I find the Elixir/Erlang stack the most interesting of the lot.
>

That does seem interesting.

Is there a pretty tiny runtime for Erlang?

I do recall someone doing a Kickstarter for a Pi-like board specifically
attuned to Erlang use, makes plenty of sense with 32 bits of address space,
but less so on highly constrained systems (e.g. 8bit)

>
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[Stewart C. Russell via talk]

On 2019-08-25 11:19 p.m., William Park via talk wrote:


At work, I once tried to use TI micro board (launchpad or something),
and to program that, I have to download their IDE and edit through that,
because only it knows which headers and libraries to pull in.


Ah yes: TI kind of went their own way and so the Energia IDE for MSP430 
- https://energia.nu/, forked from Arduino years ago - never quite 
became compatible with Arduino. This is a shame, because almost every 
other microcontroller (except PIC) now has native plugins for the 
Arduino IDE so the basic functionality is the same across a huge range 
of hardware.


Why Arduino uses its IDE is a messy story: partly because it wasn't 
meant for programmers but for creative technologists who use the 
Processing system, partly because the Arduino knocked off the fledgling 
Wiring IDE without much credit, and partly because the AVR chips that 
the first Wiring/Arduino systems used needed a very special rewrite of 
gcc to support those processors' Harvard architecture. But they are 
getting better in providing command line tools, if those are your jam.



cheers,
 Stewart
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[Russell Reiter via talk]

On Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 12:35 PM William Porquet,  wrote:

> I've come to the realization that, in this day and age of hypervisors and
> virutalization, Windows has become a rather complex and somewhat buggy
> service that runs under Linux. Or is has for me, anyway.
>
> My CDN$0.02.
>

I purchased a copy of Win4lin in 1999 so I could work on the software the
NGO's I volunteered for were using. I use to resent being asked to install
cracked copies of Windows, in the name of social justice or for any other
reason for that matter. I deleted windows from my PC and could honestly say
I dont have a copy and I can't do that for you in good conscience, even if
you tell me the disks that you have are legal when I can see they are not.

If I examine what I do know about Windows these days as a non-user

In Practical Unix and Internet Security 2nd Ed. O REILLY et. al. on Pg 331
the authors wrote.

"As a matter of good policy, new software should first be installed on some
noncritical systems for testing and familiarisation. This practice gives
you an opportunity to isolate problems, identify incompatibilities, an note
quirks, Don’t install new software on a “live” production system!

Note that you should not automatically trust software from a commercial
firm or group. Sometimes commercial firms insert back doors into their code
to allow for maintenance, or recovering lost passwords. These back doors
might be secret today, but become well-known tomorrow. ...”

Outside of whether Linux considers Windows TM a non critical system or not,
the questions I have from a Linux perspective of WSL convergance are; will
the corporation become more like the people accessing the technology? or,
will the people become more like the corporation providing the technology?

To make the argument for Open Source vs. Closed Source knowledge and
intelligence, I always tell people that I chose Linux because I always
learn something rather than just how to do something.

I note some kernel now integrate ebpf tools, so the term trust but verify
hasn't lost all meaning as a core value.

https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/introduction-ebpf-red-hat-enterprise-linux-7


> William
>
> On Mon, 26 Aug 2019 at 12:31, Russell Reiter  wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 11:48 AM William Porquet via talk 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> "It's trivial to make fun of Microsoft products, but it takes a real
>>> hacker to make them work, and a god to make them do anything useful." -
>>> anonymous hacker
>>>
>>> Still true today? :-)
>>>
>>
>> I'd say so, considering the corporation which basically said Linux was
>> not secure, in order to keep their own market dominance, has now embraced
>> Linux with its own WSL.
>>
>> Perhaps the gods have their own ways of making things useful.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, 26 Aug 2019 at 11:43, James Knott via talk 
>>> wrote:
>>>
 On 2019-08-26 11:34 AM, Russell Reiter wrote:
 >
 >
 > On Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 10:05 AM James Knott via talk, >>> > > wrote:
 >
 > On 2019-08-26 08:49 AM, Russell Reiter wrote:
 > > Nobody likes to be called a thief and a parasite by somebody.
 This
 > > situation, after Gates et. al. purloined acadamec knowledge for
 > > commercial endeavor, was kind of "the pot calling the kettle
 > black,"
 > > all things considered.
 >
 > Of course, we can't forget BG was a dumpster diver, looking for
 > source code.
 >
 >
 > Sssh, you,re leaking M$ trade secrets. :-o
 >

 It's not a secret to anyone who's used Windows.  ;-)
 ---
 Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
 Unsubscribe from this mailing list
 https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> William Porquet, M.A. ⁂ mailto:will...@2038.org ⁂ http://www.2038.org/
>>> "I do not fear computers.  I fear the lack of them." (Isaac Asimov)
>>> ---
>>> Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
>>> Unsubscribe from this mailing list
>>> https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>>>
>>
>
> --
> William Porquet, M.A. ⁂ mailto:will...@2038.org ⁂ http://www.2038.org/
> "I do not fear computers.  I fear the lack of them." (Isaac Asimov)
>
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[William Porquet via talk]

I've come to the realization that, in this day and age of hypervisors and
virutalization, Windows has become a rather complex and somewhat buggy
service that runs under Linux. Or is has for me, anyway.

My CDN$0.02.

William

On Mon, 26 Aug 2019 at 12:31, Russell Reiter  wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 11:48 AM William Porquet via talk 
> wrote:
>
>> "It's trivial to make fun of Microsoft products, but it takes a real
>> hacker to make them work, and a god to make them do anything useful." -
>> anonymous hacker
>>
>> Still true today? :-)
>>
>
> I'd say so, considering the corporation which basically said Linux was not
> secure, in order to keep their own market dominance, has now embraced Linux
> with its own WSL.
>
> Perhaps the gods have their own ways of making things useful.
>
>
>>
>> On Mon, 26 Aug 2019 at 11:43, James Knott via talk 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2019-08-26 11:34 AM, Russell Reiter wrote:
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 10:05 AM James Knott via talk, >> > > wrote:
>>> >
>>> > On 2019-08-26 08:49 AM, Russell Reiter wrote:
>>> > > Nobody likes to be called a thief and a parasite by somebody.
>>> This
>>> > > situation, after Gates et. al. purloined acadamec knowledge for
>>> > > commercial endeavor, was kind of "the pot calling the kettle
>>> > black,"
>>> > > all things considered.
>>> >
>>> > Of course, we can't forget BG was a dumpster diver, looking for
>>> > source code.
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > Sssh, you,re leaking M$ trade secrets. :-o
>>> >
>>>
>>> It's not a secret to anyone who's used Windows.  ;-)
>>> ---
>>> Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
>>> Unsubscribe from this mailing list
>>> https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> William Porquet, M.A. ⁂ mailto:will...@2038.org ⁂ http://www.2038.org/
>> "I do not fear computers.  I fear the lack of them." (Isaac Asimov)
>> ---
>> Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
>> Unsubscribe from this mailing list
>> https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>>
>

-- 
William Porquet, M.A. ⁂ mailto:will...@2038.org ⁂ http://www.2038.org/
"I do not fear computers.  I fear the lack of them." (Isaac Asimov)
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[Russell Reiter via talk]

On Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 11:48 AM William Porquet via talk 
wrote:

> "It's trivial to make fun of Microsoft products, but it takes a real
> hacker to make them work, and a god to make them do anything useful." -
> anonymous hacker
>
> Still true today? :-)
>

I'd say so, considering the corporation which basically said Linux was not
secure, in order to keep their own market dominance, has now embraced Linux
with its own WSL.

Perhaps the gods have their own ways of making things useful.


>
> On Mon, 26 Aug 2019 at 11:43, James Knott via talk 
> wrote:
>
>> On 2019-08-26 11:34 AM, Russell Reiter wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > On Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 10:05 AM James Knott via talk, > > > wrote:
>> >
>> > On 2019-08-26 08:49 AM, Russell Reiter wrote:
>> > > Nobody likes to be called a thief and a parasite by somebody. This
>> > > situation, after Gates et. al. purloined acadamec knowledge for
>> > > commercial endeavor, was kind of "the pot calling the kettle
>> > black,"
>> > > all things considered.
>> >
>> > Of course, we can't forget BG was a dumpster diver, looking for
>> > source code.
>> >
>> >
>> > Sssh, you,re leaking M$ trade secrets. :-o
>> >
>>
>> It's not a secret to anyone who's used Windows.  ;-)
>> ---
>> Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
>> Unsubscribe from this mailing list
>> https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>>
>
>
> --
> William Porquet, M.A. ⁂ mailto:will...@2038.org ⁂ http://www.2038.org/
> "I do not fear computers.  I fear the lack of them." (Isaac Asimov)
> ---
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>
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[William Porquet via talk]

"It's trivial to make fun of Microsoft products, but it takes a real hacker
to make them work, and a god to make them do anything useful." - anonymous
hacker

Still true today? :-)


On Mon, 26 Aug 2019 at 11:43, James Knott via talk  wrote:

> On 2019-08-26 11:34 AM, Russell Reiter wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 10:05 AM James Knott via talk,  > > wrote:
> >
> > On 2019-08-26 08:49 AM, Russell Reiter wrote:
> > > Nobody likes to be called a thief and a parasite by somebody. This
> > > situation, after Gates et. al. purloined acadamec knowledge for
> > > commercial endeavor, was kind of "the pot calling the kettle
> > black,"
> > > all things considered.
> >
> > Of course, we can't forget BG was a dumpster diver, looking for
> > source code.
> >
> >
> > Sssh, you,re leaking M$ trade secrets. :-o
> >
>
> It's not a secret to anyone who's used Windows.  ;-)
> ---
> Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
> Unsubscribe from this mailing list
> https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>


-- 
William Porquet, M.A. ⁂ mailto:will...@2038.org ⁂ http://www.2038.org/
"I do not fear computers.  I fear the lack of them." (Isaac Asimov)
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[James Knott via talk]

On 2019-08-26 11:34 AM, Russell Reiter wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 10:05 AM James Knott via talk,  > wrote:
>
> On 2019-08-26 08:49 AM, Russell Reiter wrote:
> > Nobody likes to be called a thief and a parasite by somebody. This
> > situation, after Gates et. al. purloined acadamec knowledge for
> > commercial endeavor, was kind of "the pot calling the kettle
> black," 
> > all things considered.
>
> Of course, we can't forget BG was a dumpster diver, looking for
> source code.
>
>
> Sssh, you,re leaking M$ trade secrets. :-o
>

It's not a secret to anyone who's used Windows.  ;-)
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[Russell Reiter via talk]

On Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 10:05 AM James Knott via talk, 
wrote:

> On 2019-08-26 08:49 AM, Russell Reiter wrote:
> > Nobody likes to be called a thief and a parasite by somebody. This
> > situation, after Gates et. al. purloined acadamec knowledge for
> > commercial endeavor, was kind of "the pot calling the kettle black,"
> > all things considered.
>
> Of course, we can't forget BG was a dumpster diver, looking for source
> code.
>

Sssh, you,re leaking M$ trade secrets. :-o

>
> ---
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[Russell Reiter via talk]

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019, 12:01 PM James Knott via talk  wrote:

> I nominate Altair BASIC!  ;-)
>
> http://altairbasic.org/
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_BASIC
>

Interesting how legal jargon influenced its development. Harvard at the
time, did not have a written policy regarding authorized use of computers
for commercial purposes. They have since written one.

https://hls.harvard.edu/dept/its/its-policies/usage-policy

This gives them a measure of control over the purpose of the academic
research tools and the environment Harvard provides and protects the
resultant research from unauthorized commercial explotation.

You'd think Harvard Law school would have understood law at the time. There
is a necessary legal implication when drafting policy, like trespass to
private property. If the intent is to restrict use of private facilities,
then that activity which is not specifically listed cannot be restricted
under those writings.

When MS and MITS went to arbitration over who owned the rights to BASIC
under the purchase agreement MITS lost for not using their "best efforts"
to market the product

This situation resulted from someone having recovered the BASIC punch tape
from Gates presentation at the Homebrew hobbyists convention. They did this
because they were to have a BASIC code as part of the package they
purchased and felt they had the rights to the property.

Gates had written his famous inflamitory open letter to hobbyists.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists

Losing control of that tape was probably the first identifiable securtity
flaw in an M$ product. Gates set the tone of his companies response
mechanisim in that letter and the rest is history.

Nobody likes to be called a thief and a parasite by somebody. This
situation, after Gates et. al. purloined acadamec knowledge for commercial
endeavor, was kind of "the pot calling the kettle black,"  all things
considered.


> On 2019-08-13 10:17 PM, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
> > This is not a place of honour:.
> >
> > https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic
> >
> > Go do some damage!
> >
> >
> >
> > ---
> > Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
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>
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[James Knott via talk]

On 2019-08-26 08:49 AM, Russell Reiter wrote:
> Nobody likes to be called a thief and a parasite by somebody. This
> situation, after Gates et. al. purloined acadamec knowledge for
> commercial endeavor, was kind of "the pot calling the kettle black," 
> all things considered.

Of course, we can't forget BG was a dumpster diver, looking for source code.

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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[William Park via talk]

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 01:30:15PM +, Dave Collier-Brown via talk wrote:
> On 2019-08-24 10:21 p.m., William Park via talk wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Aug 13, 2019 at 10:17:36PM -0400, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
> >> This is not a place of honour:.
> >>
> >> https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic
> >>
> >> Go do some damage!
> > You know, BASIC may come back to life in IofT and microprocessor boards.
> > Because if you look at things you do with those boards, you certainly
> > don't need Python (micro or not), those gas-guzzling IDE, or even C
> > compilers.
> 
> Many of the very small devices are programmed in cross-compiled C.
> 
> Karen McMurray, whom some you know, sells compilers and tools to this
> day from http://www.bytecraft.com/ in Waterloo

At work, I once tried to use TI micro board (launchpad or something),
and to program that, I have to download their IDE and edit through that,
because only it knows which headers and libraries to pull in.  Anything
I do or learn, cannot translate to boards from other company.
Eventually, I ended up using Beaglebone Black and wrote a little Python
program. Geez!
-- 
William Park 
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[Scott Allen via talk]

On Sun, 25 Aug 2019 at 11:56, Howard Gibson via talk  wrote:
>C++ is an object oriented language.  Arduino boards are used to
> execute simple procedures that don't require the effort of an object
> oriented language.

Arduino is an IDE and framework for development. One of the main
intents is to make it easy for "makers" and others who wish to quickly
create something to control hardware, and who may not be versed or
interested in becoming highly experienced programmers.

There are many boards, both official and third party, that are able to
work in the Arduino environment and thus have had boot loaders written
and libraries ported to allow them to do so. These range from being
quite low power ones, such as the popular 8 bit Arduino ATmega328P
based UNO, to some that are fairly powerful, such as the 32 bit
ATSAMD51J20 ARM Cortex-M4F based SparkFun SAMD51 Thing Plus.

Yes, C++ is the language used for Arduino but most documentation,
examples and tutorials for end users tend to use non-object oriented C
compatible programming style. That doesn't prevent the full use of all
the language features, for those who wish to. Many of the available
libraries are object oriented and/or take advantage of the additional
features of C++ over C. If you're careful to avoid certain aspects of
the language, such as those that make use of the heap, you can use
objects and other C++ capabilities to write Arduino programs that
compile to no more, or even less code than if written in true C, and
can be easier to maintain and understand.

-- 
Scott
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[James Knott via talk]

I nominate Altair BASIC!  ;-)

http://altairbasic.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_BASIC

On 2019-08-13 10:17 PM, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
> This is not a place of honour:. 
>
> https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic
>
> Go do some damage!
>
>
>
> ---
> Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[Howard Gibson via talk]

On Sun, 25 Aug 2019 09:52:39 -0400
Scott Allen via talk  wrote:

> On Sun, 25 Aug 2019 at 09:30, Dave Collier-Brown via talk
>  wrote:
> > Many of the very small devices are programmed in cross-compiled C.
> 
> Or C++

Scott,

   Arduino boards are programmed in C++.

   C++ is an object oriented language.  Arduino boards are used to
execute simple procedures that don't require the effort of an object
oriented language.  My background here is automating AutoCAD using
AutoLisp.  When I encountered SolidWorks and Visual Basic, I was
horrified.

-- 
Howard Gibson 
hgib...@eol.ca
jhowardgib...@gmail.com
http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[Scott Allen via talk]

On Sun, 25 Aug 2019 at 09:30, Dave Collier-Brown via talk
 wrote:
> Many of the very small devices are programmed in cross-compiled C.

Or C++

-- 
Scott
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[Dave Collier-Brown via talk]

On 2019-08-24 10:21 p.m., William Park via talk wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 13, 2019 at 10:17:36PM -0400, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
>> This is not a place of honour:.
>>
>> https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic
>>
>> Go do some damage!
> You know, BASIC may come back to life in IofT and microprocessor boards.
> Because if you look at things you do with those boards, you certainly
> don't need Python (micro or not), those gas-guzzling IDE, or even C
> compilers.

Many of the very small devices are programmed in cross-compiled C.

Karen McMurray, whom some you know, sells compilers and tools to this
day from http://www.bytecraft.com/ in Waterloo

--dave

--
David Collier-Brown, | Always do right. This will gratify
System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest
dave.collier-br...@indexexchange.com |  -- Mark Twain


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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[William Park via talk]

On Tue, Aug 13, 2019 at 10:17:36PM -0400, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
> This is not a place of honour:.
> 
> https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic
> 
> Go do some damage!

You know, BASIC may come back to life in IofT and microprocessor boards.
Because if you look at things you do with those boards, you certainly
don't need Python (micro or not), those gas-guzzling IDE, or even C
compilers.
-- 
William Park 
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[Stewart C. Russell via talk]

On 2019-08-16 11:52 a.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> 
> | I've been spending more time with BASIC on Linux than I should recently.
> 
> Why?  Legacy code?

I thought you knew me well enough never to ask why, Hugh.

> I cannot think of anything better done in BASIC rather than in Python
> or Logo.  And that's just for things in BASIC's niche.

Find me a computer that booted from ROM into a Python or Logo REPL and I
might believe you. There are some new tiny computer-like things shipping
with MicroPython in flash, but Python lacks exuberance. No-one ever
stayed up late trying to pack a Python program into a single < 255
character line limit because they could*.

> I have to admit that a good implementation of a bad language is often
> more useful than a bad implementation of a good language.

BASIC isn't a bad language even if EWD had a hate-on for it. It's one of
those get-the-job-done practical languages like Fortran, Cobol and Perl
that seem to annoy computer scientists. I mean, you've got to love a
language that when you ask it to reserve 10 array items it gives you 11,
just so FOR i=1 TO 10 and FOR i=0 TO 9 won't fail …

BASIC isn't rigidly defined, beyond a tiny subset lacking any useful
library (ANSI X3.60-1978, with accompanying test suite NBS SP 500-70).
It took Microsoft five versions before they hit that standard, just so
they could sell BASIC systems to the US federal government. There is a
current ISO BASIC standard, but I don't quite have enough interest to
shell out the $$$ to find out what it includes.

cheers,
 Stewart

*: this one-liner, running in an emulated BBC Micro in a browser,
remains one of my favourite games:

(caution: loud beep at start. Hold Return to climb, let go to not-climb.
Don't hit anything you can see. Space restarts. The game's called
Asterisk Tracker, and was a major reason for broken Return keys and
unfinished computer homework in the 1980s in the UK.)
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk]

| From: Stewart C. Russell via talk 

| On 2019-08-14 6:34 p.m., Chris F.A. Johnson via talk wrote:

| >    It was Northcastle Structured BASIC, and here is the article I wrote
| >    on it for the TPUG Magazine:
| >    https://archive.org/details/tpug-newsletter-23/page/n21

Chris J: Thanks for the pointer.  After I read your article, I looked at 
other parts of that issue.  There were some authors names that I 
remembered, even though I wasn't a Commodore guy: Avy Moise (he was also 
an Atari ST guy) and the famous Jim Butterfield.

| I've been spending more time with BASIC on Linux than I should recently.

Why?  Legacy code?

I cannot think of anything better done in BASIC rather than in Python
or Logo.  And that's just for things in BASIC's niche.

| Some of the actually useful BASIC interpreters include:

Nice list.

I have to admit that a good implementation of a bad language is often
more useful than a bad implementation of a good language.

PS: the most amazing thing about BASIC is that the first implemention
was an incremental compiler, not an interpreter.  One consequence was
there were very few legal variable names (26 * (1 + 10) = 286).

(Wikipedia says that the compiler was "load and go", but I think that
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[Stewart C. Russell via talk]

On 2019-08-14 6:34 p.m., Chris F.A. Johnson via talk wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Aug 2019, Chris F.A. Johnson via talk wrote:
> 
>>> This doesn't have the Waterloo BASIC extensions to Commodore BASIC.
>>> Too bad.
>>   ...
>    It was Northcastle Structured BASIC, and here is the article I wrote
>    on it for the TPUG Magazine:
>    https://archive.org/details/tpug-newsletter-23/page/n21

While TPUG frowns upon distributing whole disks from its library (we
still have a positive income from selling the library CD, surprisingly),
I found Northcastle Structured BASIC on another disk and uploaded it
here: https://archive.org/details/qs-alliance-T217
(it doesn't work in the in-browser emulation for some reason that may be
my fault setting up the upload)

Chris B. may be amused to see that a dedicated nerd from the Raspberry
Pi forums wrote a bignum-handling massive Fibonacci number calculator
for "classic" BASIC. Size of result limited only by available memory:
https://github.com/ZiCog/fibo_4784969/blob/master/BASIC/classic.bas

I've been spending more time with BASIC on Linux than I should recently.
Some of the actually useful BASIC interpreters include:

* BBC BASIC for SDL 2.0 — http://www.bbcbasic.co.uk/bbcsdl/ - developed
by Richard Russell, who was on the original steering committee for the
language at the BBC before Acorn made the first implementation. Only
really works from a GUI, but has some very whizzy 3D graphics routines
(as might be expected, given Richard's work in video technology).

* stardot/MatrixBrandy: Fork of Brandy BASIC V for Linux —
https://github.com/stardot/MatrixBrandy - yet another BBC BASIC
interpreter, but faster and lighter and under very active development.
BBC BASIC has proper procedures and functions and even a very few matrix
commands, as Full BASIC should. This is being developed so actively that
it's the only package I auto-update via 'git pull' every day via a cron
job. Just last week it grew full audio support overnight!

* Bas - BASIC interpreter — http://www.moria.de/~michael/bas/ - *almost*
ANSI Full BASIC interpreter. Text only. Does all the MAT matrix commands
as BASIC should, but doesn't implement decimal arithmetic. Can't quite
manage the "10PRINT" one-line in one line, though:

10 DIM a$(2) : a$(1)="╱" : a$(2)="╲"
20 PRINT a$(2+(rnd(101)>50)); : GOTO 20

* Decimal BASIC — https://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA008683/english/ -
full ANSI BASIC with graphics and optional decimal arithmetic. English
is not the author's first language, so documentation might not be where
you'd want it.

cheers,
 Stewart
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[Howard Gibson via talk]

On Wed, 14 Aug 2019 10:07:00 -0400 (EDT)
"D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk"  wrote:

> | From: Stewart Russell via talk 
> 
> | This is not a place of honour:.
> | 
> | https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic
> 
> This doesn't have the Waterloo BASIC extensions to Commodore BASIC.
> Too bad.
> ---

   I still have a book on Comal lying around somewhere. 

   If you really need to program a C64, there is alway Vice...

   http://vice-emu.sourceforge.net/

-- 
Howard Gibson 
hgib...@eol.ca
jhowardgib...@gmail.com
http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Wed, 14 Aug 2019, Chris F.A. Johnson via talk wrote:


On Wed, 14 Aug 2019, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:


| From: Stewart Russell via talk 

| This is not a place of honour:.
| 
| https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic


This doesn't have the Waterloo BASIC extensions to Commodore BASIC.
Too bad.


  That was my first thought, too, although I used a clone of Waterloo
  BASIC that was available on a TPUG disc.


   It was Northcastle Structured BASIC, and here is the article I wrote
   on it for the TPUG Magazine:
   https://archive.org/details/tpug-newsletter-23/page/n21

--
   Chris F.A. Johnson 
   === Author: ===
   Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)
   Pro Bash Programming: Scripting the GNU/Linux shell (2009, Apress)
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Wed, 14 Aug 2019, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:


| From: Stewart Russell via talk 

| This is not a place of honour:.
| 
| https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic


This doesn't have the Waterloo BASIC extensions to Commodore BASIC.
Too bad.


  That was my first thought, too, although I used a clone of Waterloo
  BASIC that was available on a TPUG disc.

--
   Chris F.A. Johnson 
   === Author: ===
   Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)
   Pro Bash Programming: Scripting the GNU/Linux shell (2009, Apress)
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[James Knott via talk]

On 2019-08-14 02:31 PM, Christopher Browne via talk wrote:
> When one fellow in
> the class was enough of an entitled twit (has anyone ever gained anything
> from telling the class how high their IQ was???) his decks got
> occasionally
> defaced, or cards swapped. 

Way back when I was learning programming (8008 assembler) on a Datapoint
2200, I'd occasionally "accidentally" trip over the power cord for
someone else's terminal.  ;-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datapoint_2200
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[Christopher Browne via talk]

On Wed, 14 Aug 2019 at 13:33, James Knott via talk  wrote:

> On 2019-08-14 01:24 PM, Christopher Browne via talk wrote:
> > Oh, the good times of doing matrix calculations in Grade 12 "Computer
> > Science"...
>
> Back in my Gr 12 computer programming class, we learned Fortran and used
> pencil mark cards for our programs.  The teacher would then take our
> cards down to the board office, to compile them.  As long as they
> compiled, they were OK.  They could have been complete garbage programs,
> but as long as they compiled...  ;-)
>

We did something like that in Gr 11, only the mark cards produced some form
of mainframe-based BASIC code.  We put the decks into a box, similar
story...

It was somewhat sensitive to quality of pencil marks, and an insufficiently
darkened cell would turn out badly for the program :-(.  When one fellow in
the class was enough of an entitled twit (has anyone ever gained anything
from telling the class how high their IQ was???) his decks got occasionally
defaced, or cards swapped.
-- 
When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[James Knott via talk]

On 2019-08-14 01:24 PM, Christopher Browne via talk wrote:
> Oh, the good times of doing matrix calculations in Grade 12 "Computer
> Science"...

Back in my Gr 12 computer programming class, we learned Fortran and used
pencil mark cards for our programs.  The teacher would then take our
cards down to the board office, to compile them.  As long as they
compiled, they were OK.  They could have been complete garbage programs,
but as long as they compiled...  ;-)
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[Christopher Browne via talk]

On Tue, 13 Aug 2019 at 22:18, Stewart Russell via talk 
wrote:

> This is not a place of honour:.
>
> https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic
>
> Go do some damage!
>

My first assumption had been that this wouldn't have any access out into
the filesystem.

Oh, my, given that it does allow opening files, you could indeed do some
"real" tasks with this.  And do some real damage!

I don't want to think about looping through files, but it could reasonably
be used to process a file!

cbbrowne@cbbrowne2 ~/G/c/test> cat fileio.bas

   130 master?
10 OPEN 1,1,1,"TEST.DAT"
20 PRINT#1, 1234
30 PRINT#1, "Hello"
40 CLOSE 1

50 OPEN 2,1,0,"TEST.DAT"
60 INPUT#2, A
70 INPUT#2, I$
80 CLOSE 2

90 PRINT A
100 PRINT I$

The prime number sieve (which does not capture primes into an array, hence
never speeds up searches by avoiding dividing by non-primes) is
surprisingly fast, all given, finding the first 11302 primes in about 11
seconds.

I'm with Hugh on being disappointed not to have the Waterloo "structured
BASIC" extensions.

That said, I hated Structured BASIC at the time; it prevented me from
handing in assignments on tiny slips of paper, which inevitably led to the
teacher losing my assignment because the piece of paper fell out when he
was shuffling papers.  Oh, the good times of doing matrix calculations in
Grade 12 "Computer Science"...
-- 
When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk]

| From: Stewart Russell via talk 

| This is not a place of honour:.
| 
| https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic

This doesn't have the Waterloo BASIC extensions to Commodore BASIC.
Too bad.
---
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[GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[Stewart Russell via talk]

This is not a place of honour:.

https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic

Go do some damage!
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