Happy Birthday BASIC

[Peter Flass]

The BASIC programming language turns 60

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/the-basic-programming-language-turns-60/

[David LaRue]

Post by Peter Flass
The BASIC programming language turns 60
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/the-basic-programming-language-tu
rns-60/

I had two CS teachers over the years that were junior participants at
Dartmouth for creating BASIC. One taught at Clark College in the CS
department and another was at Iowa State Univerity. I've also run into
several creators of the IBM 360 and 370 at Iowa State University. Class with
these early developers was very interesting because they explained how things
got created and why while they were trying to explain concepts in other
languages. Sadly there were always a few students that hated digressions
into history that would interupt the attentive class with questions like --
"is this going to be on the test?" I presume those students didn't do well
long term.

I used the IBM 5150 and HP 2000/Access Time Share to work with BASIC. Later
it was available on the Apple ][+ that I had, but I spent most of my time on
the Apple in machine language writing OS extensions. All languages give us
concepts to learn and use over the years.

I hope all here have learned from some of the early pioneers in real life or
through their publications.

Great Memories

[Bob Eager]

Post by David LaRue
Sadly there were always a few students that hated
digressions into history that would interupt the attentive class with
questions like -- "is this going to be on the test?" I presume those
students didn't do well long term.

I used to get this. Very depressing.

The response is "I don't know, I haven't written it yet".

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Later it was available on the Apple ][+ that I had ...

I remember doing some computer tutoring on Apple machines at a local high
school. Most of the other tutors were seniors who were Applesoft BASIC
hot-shots. (Me, I was a University Comp Sci student.) But I found they had
LOGO disks as well, so I booted up one of those. I put together an
absolutely trivial table-lookup application, using the list-processing
functions in LOGO, that would look up a few simple words in one table and
replace them one-for-one with those in another.

And I used it to translate

THE CAT EATS THE FISH

into

LE CHAT MANGE LE POISSON

(completely leaving aside any issues of grammar, of course).

That left them suitably impressed, about how many lines of BASIC it would
take to recreate my few lines of LOGO code.

[Carlos E.R.]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Later it was available on the Apple ][+ that I had ...

I remember doing some computer tutoring on Apple machines at a local high
school. Most of the other tutors were seniors who were Applesoft BASIC
hot-shots. (Me, I was a University Comp Sci student.) But I found they had
LOGO disks as well, so I booted up one of those. I put together an
absolutely trivial table-lookup application, using the list-processing
functions in LOGO, that would look up a few simple words in one table and
replace them one-for-one with those in another.
And I used it to translate
THE CAT EATS THE FISH
into
LE CHAT MANGE LE POISSON
(completely leaving aside any issues of grammar, of course).
That left them suitably impressed, about how many lines of BASIC it would
take to recreate my few lines of LOGO code.

I have seen Elisa running in basic in a Casio calculator :-)

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by Carlos E.R.

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
That left them suitably impressed, about how many lines of BASIC it
would take to recreate my few lines of LOGO code.

I have seen Elisa running in basic in a Casio calculator :-)

How many lines of BASIC?

[Carlos E.R.]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by Carlos E.R.

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
That left them suitably impressed, about how many lines of BASIC it
would take to recreate my few lines of LOGO code.

I have seen Elisa running in basic in a Casio calculator :-)

How many lines of BASIC?

I don't remember, it was long ago. Not a lot.

[David LaRue]

Post by Carlos E.R.

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by Carlos E.R.

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
That left them suitably impressed, about how many lines of BASIC it
would take to recreate my few lines of LOGO code.

I have seen Elisa running in basic in a Casio calculator :-)

How many lines of BASIC?

I don't remember, it was long ago. Not a lot.

When I wrote ELISA it took about 30-50 lines of code and somewhere around 50
data lines. It wasn't big at all.

The size of a program in lines has nothing to do with its capabilities. LOGO
is good for some things but not for the things I wanted to build.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

LOGO is good for some things but not for the things I wanted to build.

LOGO was the first programming language successfully designed for children
to use.

I think Smalltalk originally started out with a similar idea, but it
turned into something else instead.

[David LaRue]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

LOGO is good for some things but not for the things I wanted to build.

LOGO was the first programming language successfully designed for children
to use.
I think Smalltalk originally started out with a similar idea, but it
turned into something else instead.

IIRC, the Hennepin Turtle (or some name like that) came out about the time
LOGO did and allowed kids to draw with the turtle. I never saw one in
person.

[Carlos E.R.]

Post by David LaRue

Post by Peter Flass
The BASIC programming language turns 60
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/the-basic-programming-language-tu
rns-60/

I had two CS teachers over the years that were junior participants at
Dartmouth for creating BASIC. One taught at Clark College in the CS
department and another was at Iowa State Univerity. I've also run into
several creators of the IBM 360 and 370 at Iowa State University. Class with
these early developers was very interesting because they explained how things
got created and why while they were trying to explain concepts in other
languages.

Nice.

Post by David LaRue
Sadly there were always a few students that hated digressions
into history that would interupt the attentive class with questions like --
"is this going to be on the test?" I presume those students didn't do well
long term.

X-D

Post by David LaRue
I used the IBM 5150 and HP 2000/Access Time Share to work with BASIC. Later
it was available on the Apple ][+ that I had, but I spent most of my time on
the Apple in machine language writing OS extensions. All languages give us
concepts to learn and use over the years.
I hope all here have learned from some of the early pioneers in real life or
through their publications.
Great Memories

[Scott Lurndal]

Post by David LaRue

Post by Peter Flass
The BASIC programming language turns 60
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/the-basic-programming-language-tu
rns-60/

I had two CS teachers over the years that were junior participants at
Dartmouth for creating BASIC. One taught at Clark College in the CS
department and another was at Iowa State Univerity. I've also run into
several creators of the IBM 360 and 370 at Iowa State University. Class with
these early developers was very interesting because they explained how things
got created and why while they were trying to explain concepts in other
languages.

Nice.

John Atanasoff used to drop by at ISU (where he was professor emeritus)
and discuss the origins of his ABC computer in the 1930's (and the
visit by Eckart and Mauchly that led to the famous court case over
the "inventor" of the computer between Honeywell and Sperry).

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

... (and the visit
by Eckart and Mauchly that led to the famous court case over the
"inventor" of the computer between Honeywell and Sperry).

Imagine trying to patent such a concept.

Mind you, we have had worse in the computing business since then, namely
software patents.

[Stefan Ram]

Post by Peter Flass
The BASIC programming language turns 60

Back in '64, BASIC even had some matrix operations. For instance,

5 MAT C=A*B : REM matrix multiplication

In hindsight, that really seems like some next-level foresight,
because these days, matrix ops are the bread and butter for deep
neural nets.

The BASIC of our time is called "Python", and it's got some matrix
ops too - using the "@" operator and Numpy.

[Trog Woolley]

Post by Peter Flass
The BASIC programming language turns 60

When I was doing my Computing Degree in the late 1970s, BASIC was the
first language we learned to program with. I guess many others did too.
I did 9 years with the Pick Operating System, which used BASIC. Wrote
some good code too. I'm sad not of it probably survives.

[Kurt Weiske]

To: Trog Woolley
-=> Trog Woolley wrote to alt.folklore.computers <=-

TW> When I was doing my Computing Degree in the late 1970s, BASIC was the
TW> first language we learned to program with. I guess many others did too.
TW> I did 9 years with the Pick Operating System, which used BASIC. Wrote
TW> some good code too. I'm sad not of it probably survives.

My first job was writing code on a Microdata system running REALITY,
their version of PICK. I was working at a university bookstore running
separate inventory, ledger and POS programs, and we wrote all of the
interface gateways getting data to/from each application, and wrote user
utilities in PICK basic and their version of SQL. We wrote an email
system and a chat system in PICK BASIC. It was surprising what we could
do with it...

I still have a greenbar paper printout of an inventory app I wrote for
the sales-floor terminals. I should dig it up to see just how bad my
code was. :)

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